Mariah Came Home

I just found out. Best wishes and happy thoughts.

The end (for now)

I've finally cobbled together enough time to finish my guide to purchasing the Great Books on the nook. I need to clarify that I'm working from the original collection. I will eventually work in the books and authors who were added in the revision, but for now what I have seems plenty to keep me busy. I have also elected that with only three exceptions I will skip the scientists. They seem like they would be interesting, but science is only a side interest for me. If they are important to you, well, you're on your own. Once again all these items are available for free, but I've found the little perks that come with purchasing an upgraded version are often valuable. This half could set you back 72.69, if you buy the versions that offer extras, bringing our grand total to 137.08. That is absolutely amazing when you consider that that is 56 authors and many times that number of complete texts.

Great Books on a nook/the last half

Cervantes 1.99 Barnes and Noble
Bacon 3.99 Mobile Reference
Descartes (Could not find complete set) .99 Golgotha Press
Spinoza 1.99 B&N
Milton 3.99 MR
Pascal (Could not find complete set) 2.99 eBooksLib
.95 MR
Locke 2.99 MR
Berkeley .95 B&R Samizedat Express
Hume 3.19 MR
Swift 1.99 B&N
Sterne .95 MR
Fielding 1.99 B&N
Montesquieu .95 MR
Rousseau 4.79 MR
Adam Smith 1.99 B&N
Gibbon .95 MR (Abridged)
44.46 for 3 book set
Kant 4.79 MR
Federalist Papers .95 MR
J.S. Mill 2.99 Neeland Media LLC
Boswell 1.99 B&N
Hegel (could not find complete set) 1.99 B&N
Goethe 4.79 MR
Melville 1.99 B&N
Darwin 3.99 Archiebooks
Marx 4.79 MR
Tolstoy 4.79 MR
Dostoevesky .99 Douglas Editions
William James .00
Freud .00

On the Cheap

Things are looking up for the Great Books Group. I've found a few like-minded travelers, and I can't wait to begin. I promised a guide to purchasing the Great Books on the nook but first I need to clarify that we won't all be buying the Great Books set from Brittanica, even secondhand that's worth it but pricey. I recommend writing a list of authors and works and start checking the used tags on the internet (The Brittanica set goes from 995 down to 475) and second hand book stores and library sale rooms. Even new the Great Books can still be bought for around five dollars a book because they are public domain and the only cost to the publisher is ink and paper. I've scored Herodutus and Plutarch for a quarter each.

I've gone shopping on my nook for the first 27 books in the set. Sometimes they had multiple authors in one book, or I couldn't find the titles I needed in one download. The one thing I found every time is that everything I needed for this half was available for free. So far that's my favorite excuse for purchasing a nook--"Honey, I saved us 800 dollars by purchasing the nook." Of course it didn't work for me, since we had already inherited a set--might work for you. Following is my guide to getting the Great Books on the nook. You can just buy what's free, but I found that splurging for the perks offered by publishers like Mobile Reference are sometimes worth it. The total cost for buying what I'm calling "the plus package" is 64.39 cents for 26 authors and an amazing collection of texts.

Homer 4.79 Mobile Reference
Aeschylus 2.99 MR
Sophocles 5.59 Bantam
Euripedes 6.99 Penguin
Aristophanes .99 MR
Herodutus 1.99 Barnes and Noble
Thucydides .99 B&R Samizdat Express
Plato 4.79 MR (Dialogues)
.95 MR (Republic)
Aristotle 4.79 MR (Works of...)
.95 MR (Physics)
Lucretius .00 Take your pick he doesn't come in a plus version.
Epictetus .99 B&N
Marcus Aurelius .95 MR
Virgil .95 MR (Aeniad)
.95 MR (Georgics)
Plutarch 4.79 MR
Tacitus 3.99 MR
Plotinus 3.19 Neeland Media
Augustine 2.99 MR
Aquinas .95 MR
Dante .95 MR
Chaucer 3.99 MR
Machiavelli .95 MR
Hobbes .95 MR
Rabelais 1.99 B&N
Montaigne .95 MR
Shakespeare .99 Baxter Street

See, a great self-education on the cheap. I'll do the other half later. This turned out to be a much bigger project than I expected.