Does anyone own the The Great Books of the Western World collection? Do you regret the purchase?
>>25466315Of course you should regret it. The best way to become a soulless materialist atheist is to buy a collection of what an American considers 'great books'.
>>25466396Give me your top 5 favorite books
>>25466497I don't read.
>>25466315read thishttps://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/macdonald-great-books.htmlin short>the formatting/presentation is not ideal>many of the translations are not the best available and lack useful scholarly notes/supporting contextual material>the selection criteria are very suspect; for example, Hippocrates, which includes such gems as (“We must avoid wetting all sorts of ulcers except with wine, unless the ulcer be situated in a joint.” “In women, blood collected in the breasts indicates madness.” “You should put persons on a course of hellebore who are troubled with a defluction from the head.” “Acute disease come [sic] to a crisis in fourteen days”)>meanwhile, "Minor works by major writers are consistently preferred to major works by minor writers. Thus nearly all Shakespeare is here, including even The Two Gentlemen of Verona, but not Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus or Webster’s Duchess of Malfi or Jonson’s Volpone. Nearly all Milton’s poetry is here, but no Donne, no Herrick, no Marvell, or, for that matter, any other English poetry except Chaucer and Shakespeare">I will add that, bafflingly, the lone selection of Dickens is Little Dorrit (surely not the first nor even the fifth work of his to spring to mind)the list should be considered a good place to start, but one should curate it to the items of particular interest and then look for the best versions of those works
>>25466622It’s explained in the companion book to the Great books series. Hippocrates is included because he influenced both Plato and Aristotle. Ex. The position of the ideal city in the Laws as regards the winds is taken from Airs waters and places where Hippocrates talks about the weaknesses and strengths of cities positioned by north vs south winds
>>25466539
>>25466631it surely doesn't follow from there that it's valuable to anyone, except for a tiny handful of niche historians, to read what he wrote about bone fractures, surgery, ulcers, hemorrhoids, etc.you're only highlighting how much better it would be to have annotated versions of Plato and Aristotle that explicitly note and explain such references where appropriate
>>25466396is the great books thing not a fundamentally catholic program. I think I've only ever heard religious people mention them, and of course Mortimer Adler, who sold this set, was a catholic
>>25466315I got it for $200 at a bookstore where the owner didn't know what he had, though some were already missing at that point. It's definitely interesting, some authors I would not have had otherwise. I wouldn't recommend trying to read through it all to consider yourself well read. I'd also only recommend it if you're rich, you will spend your money much more effectively curating your own collection.
>>25466755I have a decent collection already. I was thinking of just having it if I decide to impulse read something instead of waiting for it to be shipped. Not a great excuse but it's honest.
The Great Books series is considered a bit of a joke. The double-column layout is difficult to read, the selection is haphazard, and the Syntopicon is laughable. -- However, it does have a bit of cult following today as the epitome of middle-brow culture.
I am quite happy to have a copy of the older Homer volume with the Samuel Butler translations of Iliad and Odysseyit's an edge case, though: its compactness and lack of notes is an advantage precisely because I have other translations that do have the contextual material
>>25466315>Does anyone own the The Great Books of the Western World collection?yeahthey are currently stacked exactly like your image, but so are all my other booksthey stylish af, and my bro went to UoChaven't read them, but i've been tearing through books i haven't read, so it's likely i'll start going through them before too long>Do you regret the purchase?didn't buy them, inherited them. my family had them for as long as i can remember.
>>25466747university of chicagoi think they used to be the ugrad reading list
>>25466755Would you pay $150 for a decent used collection?
>>25466315This was literally created for rich people to brag about and never read. As such it has no readable qualities. Bible paper and bad formatting and random selections, shit smashed together in a single book. Genuinely you’re better off just pirating properly formatted books on your tablet or ereader. If you WANT to read classics, hardbacks of all the great books exist for a few dollars each as well. For 15 dollars you can get leather bound versions from Franklin Library or Easton Press. There’s no rational reason to get this series even if they’re just a dollar a piece and you can tell, because they’re a dollar a piece. They’re basically begging you to take it so they won’t have to bother trashing it.
>>25466755>>25468989>200 bucks>150You got scammed
>>25469732Considering people are paying +$500 for it on ebay you could technically sell it for a profit.
