#fridayreads: Friday the 13th

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Friday the 13th is upon us at Jessup Library and we have removed all ladders and closed our umbrellas. However, this delicious black cat named Olive has snuck into the stacks to stretch and read some books. If you think cats can't read, that's just what they want you to believe. In the two hours per day that Olive isn't sleeping she can be found researching 1300 Real and Fanciful Animals to determine if six-legged felines exist. She will get back to you with her conclusions but while you're waiting perhaps you'd like to read The Encyclopedia of Superstitions which says that "A warm November is thought to promise a bad winter." Who needs the weather channel? If science appeals to you, Superstition: Belief in the age of science (also available as an e-book here) is written by a scientist who concludes that "science is the only way of knowing." 

Not sure whether you lean toward superstition or science? How about both! It's like getting tuna AND chicken for dinner. At least that's what Olive likes to believe. A Magical World: superstition and science from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment offers a fancy feast of information. Moving along the timeline to modern times Sparks of Genius includes the 13 (there is that number again) thinking tools of the world's most creative people. Among those tools are ones very familiar to cats at times when everyone else is asleep: observing, modeling, playing, and transforming.

If Friday the 13th makes you want to stay home and not tempt fate, we have electronic books that you can read while your cat naps. The Philosophy of Luck and Believing in Magic: the psychology of superstition are just two of them. Now, is it dinner time yet?