Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
I suspect there are a lot of those out there. I've still got mine. It was a very popular sign-on bonus for the Book-of-the-Month Club. Granted, that was decades ago, but it's the type of thing that hangs around gathering dust, if only because of the effort involved in getting rid of something so massive.
The magnifying glass is very handy, however; it lives next to my armchair and gets daily use.  |
I knew that the set originally included a magnifying glass, from viewing listings for used sets on
Bookfinder.com, most likely. Mine was
sans a magnifying glass. No biggie.
I live (just barely) "in the county," and we can burn outdoors almost anything but household trash. I've made up my mind that my set of OED is going to have its end through that means--and
soon.
Certainly one advantage of a subscription to the digital OED is that you don't have to come up with some way of disposing of it.
Please indulge me one quick story. It comes from an eminent history professor friend of mine, David Edwin Harrell (there's a stub at the English-language
Wikipedia about him), from whom I learned about the dynamic public speaker who owns a set of the OED. At the same time that he told a group of us about that, he also mentioned that he knew of
no one else who owned a set. Imagine that--of all of the colleagues and other intellectual-types that he has been associated with over his (long) career, he knew of
none of them who owned a set!
Maybe the availability of a digital subscription, with a very reasonable (IMHO) current price now of $90 in the U.S., will spur some people to buy the subscription. I'm afraid that I'm going to be a hold out.
