I had part of one of those. Never finished the set, though.
Huh, I’m the exact same way - always know where I am (and it freaks me out when I don’t know exactly where I am or what route I’m being taken on as a passenger), but struggle with left and right.
As I recall, paper encyclopedias had entries too short and crammed with numbers to really be interesting. If the Wikipedia had been around, maybe I would have read it, since it has the space to actually cover its topics at a reasonable length.
As an adult, I certainly have read the Wikipedia for fun. Not the other two, though.
When I was eight, I wished for a kid’s lexicon for Christmas. I got not only one, but two different ones, one from my parents and one from my grandparents. I read them both from A-Z, fascinated about the things that exist in the world. One was age-appropriate, but the other was rather for older kids from 12 upwards, and this has an extensive article about Geschlechtskunde (sex education), and though I knew the raw basics (penis into vagina), it taught me everything about the technicalities of procreation and sex, so I never had to ask my parents about it (and I suspect that had been my parents’ intention). The article even had a color photo of a full-frontal naked male/female couple with a child, seventies bushes and all (they looked like Cindy and Bert). That was of course my favorite part.
I still have both lexicons in my shelves somewhere for sentimental reasons.
Yeah, sometimes I go on google maps to look up a specific place… but then spend the next hour or so exploring the world.
Definitely! We had a hardbound Rand McNally atlas, which I could spend hours “exploring.”
Yes! I still remember how pleased I was when I discovered eBay 22 years ago and realized I could get my own copy of the compact OED. No case or magnifying glass, but that was fine with me. In fact I just got up from typing this to go to the bookshelf in the other room and gloat over the 2 fat volumes.
We had a 2 volume condensed/abridged OED when I was growing up, as well as an encyclopedic Merriam-Webster. I didn’t grow up in the US, but when I was 7 we got hold of some middle school Social Studies textbooks which I really enjoyed. (Probably a lot of us here were precocious readers which may be a topic for another poll?)
My parents got the UK New Caxton Encyclopedia for us when I was 10; it was on thick glossy paper with loads of color maps, illustrations and photos. I read it quite thoroughly. I think that my brother has our copy and should take a look when I visit him which may not be until next year. There are several sets in the UK for GBP 25 or less and I’d be tempted if shipping costs weren’t prohibitive
https://picclick.co.uk/The-New-Caxton-Encyclopaedia-Edtion-“1966”-Full-Set-333781407795.html
And like others here I’m a map/atlas/gazetteer fan too!
We had the Britannica Junior Encyclopedia:
(Also the grown-up Encyclopedia Britannica, but the red-bound Junior edition was the one I mostly explored.)
Two of the first things I ever bought on the internet (circa 2001) were an unabridged dictionary and a big atlas. They just sit in my basement gathering dust nowadays. Damn you, Google and Wikipedia!
We never had an encyclopedia in our house, and I’m kind of surprised how unusual this seems to make us! Possibly home encyclopedias were more of a ‘thing’ in the US - though of course school had some.
However, my grandparents did have the “shorter” (two volume!) Oxford dictionary, which gave me many a happy hour
We had a Funk & Wagnell’s encyclopedia growing up. After a while it was outdated, but I still read each book cover to cover, with the dictionary nearby to look up words I did not understand. That dictionary was a small paperback.
One Christmas I asked for a specific dictionary, large, hard covered, red book. Webster’s maybe? EVERY christmas I asked for a World Almanac. Later I also included an Old Farmer’s Almanac.
My brother called me his “weird” sister. Many years later when I met my future husband, he told me about one of his brothers who was institutionalized. I did not ask, but just assumed that brother was somehow physically disabled.
It later came out that this brother, read and memorized whole encyclopedias,and would spend his days reciting word for word what he had memorized. I was horrified for a moment, but then realized that while I read encyclopedias, I never even attempted to memorize them.
Today, he might have been considered a genius.
Doper homes are/were probably not typical of the world at large.
Home encyclopedias were frequently sold by door-to-door salesmen. If you had kids and let one of those guys through the front door, chances are you’d wind up buying a set after hearing how NOT having a set would likely derail your child’s academic future leading them to wind up broke, homeless, living on the street, etc.
Aside: Who learned to spell the word “encyclopedia” from Jiminy Cricket on the Mickey Mouse Club?
Yeah, that’s kind of what I mean by encyclopedias being more of a US thing. Like Prom, Girl-scout cookies or trick-or-treating … ‘encyclopedia salesmen’ is something that I was aware of from American movies growing up, but never saw happening anywhere in my neighborhood
Did much homework, (book reports and the like) at my Grandparents house(surprise surprise). They had an Encyclopedia Americana(I think it was) that even though old and outdated at the time, was still current enough for a 3rd grade report on the State of Tennessee or 5th grade report about Abraham Lincoln.
My paternal Grandparents and Aunt (along with me and my dad) would play a game where you look up a word in the dictionary (HUGE dictionary, unabridged I think and not strictly English, but that was the main language), give the either the definition and they have to twenty questions the word or give the word and they have to come up with the correct definition. I still remember to this day, the first time I stumped them all, zloty was the word.
This reminds me. My grandmother told me whenever she took me someplace when I was 2-4, I spent the time pointing at things and asking “Whazzat?”
I guess no one was Polish in the group then.
Have you ever tried GeoGessr? (Click ‘Play Free’)
It shows you a random Google street view anywhere in the world.
You can look around and move in different directions, and you have to guess where it is. The closer you guess, the more points you score.
Sometimes you’re on a road in the middle of nowhere, and you can only guess from the terrain and vegetation. More often you’ll be a in a city or town, and you can see the language on the signs and the style of buildings.
Expand the world map to guess. You can expand it as much as you like, then click somewhere and guess.
Warning: May be addictive!
Ha ha, indeed. I was definitely the only kid with a “floccinaucinihilipilification” promotional t-shirt in my neighborhood (full disclosure - I googled it to get the spelling right).
Reading the later responses - maps were definitely part of sating my curiosity and to this day when I fly I imagine I can remember the shape of some lake or whatever and then find it exactly on a map when I get home. But I rarely follow up.
That reminds me: we had a different set of encyclopedias when I was in high school. Don’t remember who printed them but they were smallish volumes with dark green covers. Might have been Funk & Wagnalls.
Those books had very detailed maps; the map of Illinois even showed the tiny little town where I spent my first 11 years! The only other maps I had seen that on were those giant ones in Illinois rest areas.
nope, that side of the family is all English, Scottish, Welsh, with a dab of French for flavor.