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.