The Book of Superstitions: Black Cats, Yellow Flowers, Broken Mirrors, Cracked Sidewalks, and More Cultural Behaviors and Myths Explained Hardcover – March 28, 2023

Very cool gift idea

Very interesting and fun

Cute book

Entertaining, easy read- picked up on impulse in a bookstore for conversation during a road trip, will buy a few more for gifts!

The book could have been cut down by about 30 pages. it seemed like the author had to make sure to get their own anecdotes involved that didn't exactly help explain the superstitions.

The book is cute but too much of it is (admittedly) speculation and silly hypothetical anecdotes about how something could be explained.For example, here is an excerpt from the section pertaining to whistling inside being bad luck:“Maybe you’re cooking, for example, hear your partner whistling in another room, and, distracted by the unsettling tune, you absently put a dish cloth on the stove top, and it catches fire. Hey, it could happen!”I’m a little disappointed. There is -some- factual information and history to some of each topic, but far too much of it is comedic speculation and interpretation. I was hoping for a bit more of a dive into the fact-based origins of these based on the description.In the end I ended up flipping to the superstitions I was most interested in and reading until the text turned speculative or silly and then moved on.A little disappointing.