{"id":5043,"date":"2026-05-31T20:51:43","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T00:51:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/?p=5043"},"modified":"2026-06-17T20:27:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T00:27:10","slug":"may-2026-books-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/2026\/05\/may-2026-books-read\/","title":{"rendered":"May 2026 books read"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><em>Les cigares du pharon<\/em> &#8211; Herg\u00e9, 1934. Not my favorite Tintin, but a good one &#8211; a comfort re-read. <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Ast\u00e9rix en Corse<\/em> &#8211; Ren\u00e9 Goscinny &amp; Albert Uderzo, 1973. Another comfort re-read; this one <em>is<\/em> a favorite from the Ast\u00e9rix and Obelix series (number 20). I think I learned from this book that people could get very angry but still calm down &#8211; the image of Octarinetabellatchitchix furiously nose-to-nose with Obelix and then saying essentially &#8220;I like you, kid&#8221; stuck with me.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>This Book Made Me Think of You<\/em> &#8211; Libby Page, 2026. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.askamanager.org\/\">Ask a Manager<\/a> commentariat rec, a charming rom-com set in a bookstore. I wanted to compile all the books mentioned in order to look some of them up, and thank goodness Page already <a href=\"https:\/\/libbypage.co.uk\/your-guide-to-all-of-the-books-mentioned-in-libby-pages-this-book-made-me-think-of-you\/\">did that<\/a>.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>The Left Leg<\/em> &#8211; Phoebe Atwood Taylor writing as Alice Tilton, 1940. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.massbook.org\/readingchallenge\">Massachusetts Center for the Book<\/a>&#8216;s May challenge is &#8220;A book set in Massachusetts,&#8221; and coincidentally Jonathan had just recommended this Leonidas Witherall mystery. Alas it has very little state content, and although I found bits mildly amusing (like the annoying young woman they call &#8220;the Scarlet Wimpernel,&#8221; the take-charge Topsey Beaton, and the recurring joke that everyone calls Witherall &#8220;Bill&#8221; or &#8220;Shakespeare&#8221; because he looks so much like the playwright), it didn&#8217;t grab me. I wrote &#8220;A mildly-amusing mystery, indeed set in Massachusetts but without much local color.&#8221; I did look up one thing: &#8220;Stop-before-Entering streets&#8221; which as far as I can tell (see &#8220;Stop and Go&#8221;, top of page 4 in this <a href=\"https:\/\/mhl.org\/sites\/default\/files\/newspapers\/ATM-1929-05-10.pdf\">Andover newspaper<\/a>) was an early way of describing a street that has a stop sign at an intersection where cross traffic does not stop.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>James<\/em> &#8211; Percival Everett, 2024. Re-read, this time for Second Monday. Quotes TBD.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pgdp.net\/c\/project.php?id=projectID6842d82992dbc\">How to Become Mentally Superior<\/a><\/em> &#8211; Henry M. Le Chatelier, 1926. Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders smooth reading.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon<\/em> &#8211; Kevin Fedarko, 2024. Nature\/Enviro; quotes TBD.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich<\/em> &#8211; Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 1962 (tr. Ralph Parker). Great Books; quotes TBD.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Jane Eyre<\/em> &#8211; Charlotte Bront\u00eb, 1947. Re-read, this time for Amherst Book Group. Quotes TBD.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Still Running: The Art of Meditation in Motion<\/em> &#8211; Vanessa Zuisei Goddard, 2020. An interesting cross-over of running and meditation. I enjoyed it, and I&#8217;d like to try some of the excercises (like running while focusing on the breath, and stopping whenever you lose focus), but it didn&#8217;t blow me away.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Articles &#8211; all by Peter Caws<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Papers by my dad that I&#8217;ve been digitizing &#8211; focusing on the ones from which his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/kogblog\/2023\/02\/in-memoriam-peter-caws-philosophical-aphorisms\/\">philosophical aphorisms<\/a> were drawn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/philpapers.org\/archive\/CAWTCO-6.pdf\">The Case of the Athenian Stranger: Philosophy and World Citizenship<\/a>&#8221; &#8211; <em>Teaching Philosophy<\/em> 8:2, April 1985. A great one!<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/philpapers.org\/archive\/CAWTOO-5.pdf\">The Ontology of Criticism<\/a>&#8221; &#8211; <em>Semiotext(e<\/em>) 1:3, Spring 1975.\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>L\u00e9vi-Strauss, in his report to the Smithsonian Institution on the tribes of the Upper Xingu River, describes a magic use of certain tobaccos for what the natives called \u201cseeing-smoking,\u201d the inducing of a narcotic state in which they received messages, warnings, and visions; \u201cthe natives, he says, interpret reading as a sort of seeing-smoking.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.merriam-webster.com\/dictionary\/syntagma\">syntagma<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/philpapers.org\/archive\/CAWCIA.pdf\">Critical Innocence and Straight Reading<\/a>&#8221; &#8211; <em>New Literary History<\/em>&nbsp;V:XVII, Autumn 1985.\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>polysemy<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Inscrutability_of_reference\">gavagai<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>&#8220;the possibility of literature is the most spectacular gift of language&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/philpapers.org\/archive\/CAWIAI.pdf\">Instruction and Inquiry<\/a>&#8221; &#8211; <em>Daedalus<\/em>, Fall 1974.\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Re universities: &#8220;tak\u00ading in a homogeneous age group and putting them in courses by twenties or thirties can only be regarded as a form of lunacy. Students in universities are usually educated by accident, and this might be institutionalized by trying to make the uni\u00adversity a higher-order analogy of the &#8216;biological soup&#8217; out of which the earliest forms of life are supposed to have developed.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/philpapers.org\/archive\/CAWSCA.pdf\">Science, Computers, and the Complexity of Nature<\/a>&#8220;, <em>Philosophy of Science<\/em>, v. 30, 2 April 1963.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Articles &#8211; all by Peter Caws Papers by my dad that I&#8217;ve been digitizing &#8211; focusing on the ones from which his philosophical aphorisms were drawn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monthly-lists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5043"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5043\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5111,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5043\/revisions\/5111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}