Such juxtapositions were key to its charm. A set of Britannicas sent the message that all the world’s information could fit on one shelf. I marveled at the odd collision of words on the bindings (one volume runs from “Excretion” to “Geometry”). I fell hard for the familiar smell of leatherette covers and the crinkling of the pages. I adored the literal weight of each volume (4 pounds), which somehow lent it metaphorical gravitas as well. I know I sound like a crotchety old grandfather on the porch reminiscing about the good old days of rumble seats, but I loved having pages you could actually turn, not click or swipe. Forester, the author of “Horatio Hornblower,” found it so riveting that he read the whole thing twice. ![]() George Bernard Shaw and the heart surgeon Michael DeBakey are members of the start-to-finish club. Long before me, encyclopedia reading had an esteemed history. But as I learned from the Britannica, stunts can have their own absurd nobility, whether it was Tenzing Norgay summiting Everest or the 19th century French acrobat Charles Blondin strolling across the Niagara Falls on a tightrope, stopping midway to make and eat an omelet. ![]() About 10 years ago, worried that my brain was turning to tapioca, I decided to smarten up by reading the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica – all 32 leather-bound volumes. I spent many hundreds of hours with those gold-embossed Britannica volumes on my lap, flipping through the tissue-thin pages and squinting at the 9-point font.
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