Another Man's Junk Is Sometimes Just Junk

My father was and still is a pack-rat.  There was crap everywhere in the house when I was growing up: Scientific Americans from before I was born, textbooks long out of print that hadn't been opened since the 1950s, clothing that stopped fitting him decades ago.  

As a reaction I became his exact opposite, a bit of a neat-freak.  I was Kondo long before there was a Kondo, throwing away anything that was not immediately useful, never storing anything beyond its apparent utility.  When I was in my 20s I was proud that every material possession I owned could fit in my small one-bedroom apartment, which included my car since it could fit in the living room if I could get it in there.  I would still be at that level today if it weren't for the wife.

Of course one big difference is the Old Man has living memories of the Depression, so poor that he and his five siblings went barefoot during the summers in rural Tennessee.  I, on the other hand, grew up in a mass consumer society in a large city, with goods getting ever more abundant and cheaper, so if I ever did need anything it was a short drive away when I was younger, and starting about 15 years ago, a click away.  So the concept of "storing $*#t you might need" has different meanings for him and me.

Now that the Old Man is into his late 80s, he is actually starting to de-clutter a bit before someone does it for him after he is gone, with the expectation that the kids would take most of his stuff.  I don't want any of his stuff, but I have to make a showing of interest, because family.

One item that I am expected to take is the Britannica Great Books series, which happened to have been captured behind Yours Truly when I was a wee lad.  For anyone not familiar, this 54 book set is the foundational texts of Western Thought, and someone who is considered well-educated should at minimum have a passing familiarity with the authors, texts and concepts in the series, everything from Plato to Shakespeare to Freud.

Conceptually I appreciate the goal of the series, but from a practical standpoint I have read almost everything I want through other mediums (I read several in high school, many in college and a few out of intellectual curiosity as an adult), and am familiar with the works I haven't read because I do have a broad education. 

But despite what I wrote in 2011 when I already knew I would be inheriting these, I am not going to sit down and read anything in this series in this medium (I would read it digitally, or a version with in-line notes, which I did for Paradise Lost, and no one can read Kant without).  Nor do I have any interest of showing them off on a bookshelf.  As I wrote 13 years ago, I largely got rid of my own physical library as I don't want to store or move books (see comment above about immediate utility).  

But I will be picking them up this week.  Maybe I'll take an updated picture with them.