Books, books and more books!

One of my best friends from college is a doctor named Chris. Chris is an intellectual; he talks about incorporating literary factoids and other interesting tidbits into his classes teaching med students. Before I moved to Australia, Chris and I used to have the most fascinating intellectual conversations and debates in my car. 

I don't get to see Chris a lot these days, even though we now live in the same city again, so it was really nice that we touched base and he came over for dinner last night.

He started telling us about a fancy set of books that he is carrying around in the trunk of his car. They are all the classics of Western thought: the Britannica Great Books of the Western World series.

I have an interesting relationship with Western thought. My final paper when I studied community development was about the advantages and disadvantages of non-western world views. Non-Western world views, in my mind, are pretty important to the world for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that they form a pretty big part of it.  

There was something unsettling about this exclusive series of books of Western thought. I didn't say anything; the thoughts were not really clearly formed my mind, so much as I felt a general unease.  Maybe it was disturbing to think that this is the stuff that informs the way we think, and some university, the University of Chicago actually, has decided to publish this as some kind of complete set encapsulating the important thoughts of our times. 

The set unsettled Chris, too, albeit for different reasons; it was a gift from someone no longer in his life, a gift he did not wish to keep. He had tried to donate the set to a local library, but the collection was rejected. Apparently, Chicago Public Libraries (or at least, the one he tried) do not take book donations.

My first thought immediately went to the work with PIEs two weeks before, and I said, "I bet any public school in this city would love to have this set of books!"  I offered to take the books, thinking, surely I can find a home for these books. He doesn't need to keep them in the trunk of his car, I know there are kids who would relish these books. 

My husband flipped through the list of books on his phone next to me, reading out titles, and talked about how depressing it would be to have these books in our home because it would be a constant reminder that we haven't read them. I looked at the list as well, noticing a book by Goethe. I've been interested in exploring Goethe ever since I read Alan Kaplan. I commented on how interesting it was that there was only one book by Goethe in there, while the entire Shakespeare and Freud collections are part of the set. 

And suddenly, before we knew it, we became interested in this set of books. 

We went down to Chris's car and each brought inside one box filled with books.  We set them down, commenting on their smell. I asked if they were used books, and Chris confirmed they had previously been owned by a priest. 

I pulled one out, and wouldn't you know it, it was Goethe.