My parents bought the set leather bound, and the books occupied shelves in the hall of our home so that anyone could read them. My father subscribed to the yearly updates and would keenly read through most and tell us how interesting it was to re-read what had happened.

I may have glanced at a topic here and there, but the only time I used EB was for research for a geography essay at school. I found it a real chore and hardly got any marks. Another boy in the class also had EB and he got good marks. When he heard I'd used EB he said I couldn't have used EB properly; I hadn't the heart to disagree.

Years later, my father told me buying EB probably wasn't the best use of money (his way of saying a waste of money) and wondered why we never really used it. I think the answer for me was that each book was heavy and wading through the index a chore. Something I like about the internet is that I'm spared having to wade through the index/contents, I just search for what I want and there it is. Just recently, I've scanned about 5000 pages from books in my law library to pdf so that I can search for what I'm looking without having to wade through contents/index after index in the hope of finding it. By way of a demonstration to myself, I searched for a particular phrase; it took all of a second or two to find and list all references to the phrase. It also makes it easier to quote extracts from the books, simply copy and paste.

I agree that not using a book means I miss out on items that might catch my attention but I think that's a good point; curiousity may be healthy but it's a cat-killer, also an inordinate waste of time. (It's also the downside of shopping on-line: unlike in a high street where you can browse different shop windows alongside one another, no retailer on-line will refer/link you to another shop unless that retailer is getting something out of it.)