Did Anyone Else Ever Read an Encyclopedia?
Back when I was about 12, my parents decided that our home needed an encyclopedia, since it was full of kids. So, they bought the Encyclopedia Americana from a door-to-door salesperson, on a plan that delivered one volume per month. I think they thought it would be useful for us to be able to look things up for our schoolwork or something.
Reading. It was my favorite thing to do, and I read everything with words I could find. So, when Volume I showed up, I grabbed it and started reading. By the end of the month, I had read every word, and started in on the next volume. I repeated that until all 20-something volumes were finished, a couple of years later. My parents tell me that it worried them that I was doing that, but that they couldn't think of any reason why I shouldn't, so they just left me alone with my reading. It wasn't the only thing I was reading, but I read those volumes systematically and carefully.
I stored all that information somewhere in my head, and still can call up facts from that reading today, in my late 60s. I can still remember the capital cities of all those countries and what their chief products were, and stuff like that. I learned about aardvarks and anatomy and all sorts of subjects from A to Z. As the number of volumes increased, I could even cross-reference subjects. It was amazing to this pre-adolescent kid.
I was a weird kid. How weird? Well, if nobody else read an entire encyclopedia, pretty weird, indeed, I guess. So, if you did that, let me know, so I can be comforted in my weirdness.
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Faber College motto...
And I read it all the time. Probably why I spend so much time reading online now - just so much more to read 
I didn't read them cover to cover but would pick up a volume and browse randomly and read what I wanted to read. I did read certain sections over and over that I liked on sections that I was particularly interested in, like art and birds. If I heard about something in history I would look it up and read about it, or read about famous people I'd heard about, etc. I still remember isolated articles I read back then about various subjects. I also used them for school reports too. I loved those books!
Each book included three related topics.
Earth, Astronomy, Meteorology,
Music, Drawing, Ballet,
Ships, Submarines, The Panama Canal,
And so on.
I was hooked from then on.
... make sort of a family quiz from our encyclopedia. He always hated the fact that he was not allowed to get higher education (in Hungary before WW2) So in the evenings he read to us some random articles or asked us questions: name all capital cities of Europe or the rivers that flow into the Danube. So I learned that the whole world was in those huge books. And I loved to read them. Not the whole book at a time but something here and there and then get led to another interesting word - just like we do nowadays following links in the internet.
But, alas, they were standing on the upper shelve of the bookcase. Little me wanted to look up the meaning of "Fidibus", an oldfashioned word (even then, some 45 years ago) for spill. So I climbed up the shelves, and the whole thing got some overbalance and buried me, the books and some precious knicknackery. Dad was really angry, but the encyclopedia was moved to a lower shelve, where I could reach it.
I loved reading the Encyclopedia Brittanica that my parents bought, but after so many articles, I could not make myself read about an exotic butterfly species. Or something else that undoubtedly is fascinating to someone else.
from one willful child to another.At least I don't get into fist fights anymore... that used to be a bad habit.
I doubt that I actually read any of them cover-to-cover, but probably nearly so.
And then again and again. Later, my parents gave the set to my sister, who threw it out. 
I purchased the introductory promotional copy for forty-nine cents at the supermarket. I could never make the nut to purchase the other volumes at the regular price of a dollar-fifty each.
Ask me about anything that starts with the letter 'A', as long as any geo/political questions happened before 1957.
the encyclopedia set he bought, wasn't Britannica or World Book... was some set that had dark, chocolate brown hard cover with gold embossed type and the presidential seal - or what looked a lot like it. All the pictures were B&W. There were annual updates that he got into the early 1970s. They weighed a ton each.
And I have a small collection of dictionaries, sold most of them but kept a few choice favorites.
My father was big on extending vocabulary and would grill me every month on the Reader's Digest column of the name in my title. It was quite rare when i didn't know one of the words.
I used them a lot and read sections that interested me but I never read everything.
We had a text book called The Student's Companion - it was an amazing reference book. I knew every word on every page by heart and can still unload pages and pages which makes my family and friends ROFL
The book was published to guide British students expand their knowledge and guide their studies. The text made its way into Canadian and American schools as well. There's even a Caribbean edition. It's called The Students' Companion by Wilfred D. Best and was first published by Collins, in London and Glasgow, in 1958. We got a copy when we were teaching high school students at De La Salle College in Toronto in 1970s.
The book is divided into eleven Sections. It starts with "Single Words for Phrases and Sentences." It covers words denoting numbers as in a number of geese is a gaggle and a number of leopards is a leap. The book contains a great deal of information about language, geography and mathematics. Here are the titles to the other Sections: "Figurative Expressions and their Explanations," "Proverbs," "Small Words for Big Ones," "Comparisons or Similes," "Abbreviations in Common Use," "Prefixes in Common Use," "Some Geographical Facts Worth Remembering," "Revision Notes in English" and "General Knowledge."
The last Section is all about Civics.
http://everydayforlifecanada.blogspot.com/2013/06/an-old-student-companion-that-is-still.html
the dictionary was my favorite. I have always loved to read and seem to retain a lot of what I read. My mom always said I had a retentive memory. Like you, sometimes it takes awhile for something to come up on my mental Rolodex
Yes indeed, the encyclopedia was a major part of growing up at our house.
It is interesting to see how many fellow information junkies there are here. 
I did the same thing, and also read the annual yearbooks.
JFK's listing shows him as the current president. And there's an entry for Dan Blocker (Hoss Cartwright from Bonanza).
I didn't read the whole thing, but I was never able to look up whatever topic I was researching without reading the next few entries...and then trying to get back on task after spending all that time reading about the other topics. 
I loved using them for report writing. My mom still has the set, on the same bookshelf I remember. I loved them so much I bought a set at a garage sale for $1 shortly after my first kid was born: Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia, 1957 edition.
No cable, no video games. living in the mountains. My choices were very limited for entertainment.
When I was a senior in high school, I went on a trip with other students from different schools to visit other cultures... we were called "student ambassadors" lol - we lived in homes of people in other countries, when that was available - but mostly we were tourists. every year this group did this - and every year this trip included a visit to a communist country - in those, we didn't live in people's homes.
so, that was when I discovered Ayn Rand (which I think is a common moment among high schoolers who want to assert their independence) - and I made sure I left my paperback of Atlas Shrugged in my hotel room in Russia - as if I were aiding the cause of the end of totalitarianism from the left.... 
...and when I came home, I felt like I was such an ill-informed person after talking to the students from other European nations. I even had a flirtation with a boy who came to Versailles to take me for a ride on his scooter... needless to say, I cried when I had to come home.
I locked myself in my bedroom and starting reading through the encyclopedia... with a pack of cigarettes. I would've worn a beret if I'd bought one. My dad knocked on my door and said, "I know what you're doing in there!" He meant that I was smoking cigarettes (so that I could morph into an cool existentialist) - not that I was reading the encyclopedia. Oh, and I'm also fascinated by etymologies. I've even been able to trace my last name through various iterations in various cultures - which I shared with my family. All was forgiven.
So, yeah. I'm still that much of a geek, too. 
One of my favorite aunts had a set of encyclopedias, and whenever we went to her house, I would read it.
In school, I would look up words in my dictionary.
I loved to look at road maps. Still do. Google Maps is like a toy for me
Cereal boxes, phone books, etc.
Nothing was safe from my reading
Oh, and PS...my Kindle is currently home to about 1200 books so far
Hey, it beat looking out the window while one was doing one's business, and the entries were often just a page or so. So I not only read "The Encyclopedia" (that massive single tome that weighed a half ton that was on a "book stand" , I also read several multi-volume versions, some in the crapper!
Now, kids think that "Encyclopedia" is the first name of a kid called Brown...if they even have a clue as to what it is.
in the book case. They bought all of the annual books too and the Childcraft set. I would read those to my younger siblings .
Only I grew up in the '90s, and could use Microsoft's Bookshelf to work with. Fun stuff.
That's how we did it back then.
You ain't weird. Just old.
My dad bought a set for us That was the three part edition: Micropædia, Macropædia and Propædia. I read it constantly but not in any kind of order.
was just surfing around actually beside [boyfriend]and me ,were talking telling stories about lives , he tells his experiences .mine as well ,that funny ...we ended up talking about what kind of books we had back home , that's when i started to show him some images ,so i started scanning that's why i bump with this post
it made me smile and reminiscing some memories , my memories , and while reading it ,its like its me , we have the same experiences >
Reading is one one the things that i mostly do when i was a kid , since all siblings of mine are boys , i cant actually get along with them always , so reading is the only thing that makes me feeling like having fun.
going back home to my parents place, i still do the same thing ,grab some of it then read , but then the storm Sendong happened then way back 2011 , it flooded ,people died , luckily in my family we were good but a lot of damages had happened , and one of those are my beloved books , they aren't just books for me , its as if they witness me growing , those were actually my memories , it did made me cry seeing it was damaged and there's no way we can do about it .
now just looking at it in this pictures , makes me my heart tick though ,
now makes me think if there's a way i can still save back those memories again , please tell me if there is an e-book version with these books .
