Book report for May 2026
Twenty days into June and I am just now getting out the May book report? Apparently.
Last month I bought nine books and completed two. A net gain on the shelves of seven unread volumes. We are redoing the den in our house, among other improvements adding book shelves. Those two details are not unrelated.
I have momentarily stalled on Jill Lepore’s These Truths but fear not abandonment. Just reviewing my notes on the first half before confronting the dismal story of postbellum Reconstruction in the US. Dismal indeed.
Dr Essai maintains a shop on Bookshop.org, a remarkable alternative to Amazon that so far has funneled $48 million to independent booksellers. Bite down on that, Jeff Bezos. Anything purchased through my storefront generates a commission for the doctor, who pledges to devote the funds to worthy causes: coffee, gin, and more books. And as always, thank you for reading, dear Jogglers.
Completed
- Schild’s Ladder, Greg Egan. Aussie Greg Egan knows quite a lot of physics, enough to make a fictional universe governed by an alternative physics plausible. Schild’s Ladder posits a far future in which a set of rules has reconciled classical physics and quantum physics. An experiment to test some of those rules goes so wrong, it creates a — what…a bubble? a new vacuum? a new universe? — that begins expanding and consuming the known universe. His story of what to do about this becomes a philosophical dialogue about meaning and existence and time. A challenge, but a worthy one if you have the patience to explore the alt-physics and, eventually, just let it wash over you.
- From Ted to Tom, Edward Gorey. For 18 months in the 1970s, the extraordinary eccentric artist Edward Gorey sent his friend Tom Fitzharris 50 notes in envelopes he illustrated, most of them with a pair of whimsical dogs dressed in onesies. (The Post Office would deliver such envelopes in those days. No longer, one suspects.) The enclosed notes are odd and funny, but the envelopes are the attraction. The book reproduces all 50. If you appreciate Gorey, you’ll want this book; if you don’t appreciate Gorey, that raises further troubling questions.
In progress
- These Truths, Jill Lepore.
- The Night Manager, John Le Carré
Purchased
- From Ted to Tom, Edward Gorey
- Owls and Other Fantasies, Mary Oliver
- Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry, Jane Hirshfield
- Lord Byron’s Novel, John Crowley
- Platform Decay, Martha Wells
- The Plover, Brian Doyle
- Deep Color: The Shades That Shape Our Souls, Keith Recker
- Playground, Richard Powers
- Abstract City, Christoph Niemann
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