Book report for February 2026

The doctor was a bit short on completions this month, mostly due to slow progress through the Crowley, which is not a breezy read. But then, the doctor is not a breeze fellow. Any volume purchased through Dr Essai’s Biliothèque results in a small kickback from Bookshop.org. All legal and aboveboard. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

Completed

• The Big Bang of Numbers, Manil Suri. Clever popular mathematics book. Suri writes it as a thought experiment: What if we imagined writing a set of instructions for the creation of the universe, and those instructions were all in math? In the beginning is a clever illustration of math creating something from nothing, and Suri then takes us through how arithmetic, geometry, and algebra could equip Creation to fashion our universe. Intellectual fun, if you like that sort of thing.

• The Solitudes, John Crowley. As has been true of every Crowley book I’ve read (this one is the fifth), The Solitudes is dense, challenging, erudite, sophisticated, and well crafted. A few sections were a bit much to get through, but my only real complaint is that the story halts without a sense of resolution. The book is the first of the four-volume Ægypt cycle and not enough of a self-contained story. I felt less like I’d finished a novel and more like I’d just stopped partway through a very long tale. Which, I guess, I did.

In progress

• Some Trick, Helen DeWitt.
• Fairyland, Paul McAuley.

Purchased

• Frog, and Other Essays, Anne Fadiman.
• The Silver Snarling Trumpet, Robert Hunter.
• Fairyland, Paul McAuley.

As always, dear Jogglers, thank you for reading.

Next up: Demagogues detest art because it’s impure. More fun than it sounds.