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Comment by jh00ker | Hacker News Reader

I have a similar story about a set of books from the 80s that weren't as much as inspiration for me and the future, but instead became a major source of forming my own broad general knowledge on core topics: Charlie Brown's 'Cyclopedia.

Every week, at the local grocery store, a new volume would be available for purchase, covering a new subject area (Anatomy, Animals, Aircraft, Watercraft, Electricity, Space, Weather, etc.). I was obsessed. I re-read all 15 of them countless times.

30+ years later, I bought a set off ebay in great shape to read with my kids. Seeing the diagrams and pictures I realized it was the source of many of the facts I know today.

You never know what's going to have an impact on your kids helping them realize what they are (going to be) interested in!

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I had the Marshall Cavendish Tree of Knowledge - a collectible encyclopedia week by week.

This is one of the few areas where paper really wins. You get concentrated information in one physical object with hard boundaries which arrives on a regular slow schedule. You have plenty of time to read it thoroughly and start thinking and imagining.

The web is a constant hurricane of distractions. Wikipedia has far more information than any paper encyclopedia, and in a superficial sense it's far more accessible. But there's always more, and always something else. You firehose it, forget most it, and don't get the bigger picture or the implied narrative linking everything together.

I had the same thought. I initially believed that the Web would be the replacement for the Catalog, but it really isn't - it lacks curation. I've never really found any place on the Web with a similar level of curation; maybe OpenCulture, but even that's kind of a firehose. If anyone knows of any places out there, I'd love to hear recommendations.

There's another benefit of an encyclopedia set of books over Wikipedia: in the physical process of looking up a desired topic in a book, you can stumble upon COMPLETELY unrelated topics as you flip through the pages. This serendipitous effect led to reading random encyclopedia articles for HOURS as a kid, an interaction that's hard to replicate with Wikipedia today. Sure there's Wikipedia:Random [0], but you have to intentionally access it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Random

Just ordered this (used) for my 7-year-old grandson after reading your review. We thank you!

N.B. There are many used sets available on eBay/Poshmark/Mercari/Amazon etc.

Full disclosure, they're from the 80s so they're out of date on some topics (space, aircraft, etc.) and there's some occasional insensitive language, e.g. "stupid".

thanks for the heads up - looks like a sharpie sanitization pre-read is necessary

I loved those, too! I didn’t have all the volumes, but I read each one through several times.

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