ii march planning guide

 Sweet, sweet March! said no one, ever

Its that time of year friends; actually its 5 days into that time of year as I write this. My apologies for being late, and I hope I haven't messed up your ability to effectively plan your month's activities without the ii March Planning Guide at your fingertips. As today is the 5th, its Wolf, or the Wolf of March, in the generally accepted nomenclature of pretty much nobody but me. But maybe that's changing! 

New and Improved for this year!

This is exciting folks. Not only have we added the days of the week, but we've also highlighted the weekends. That's five full weekends this year in March, so now the ii March Planning Guide is even more useful than it ever was! no way to go but up, amiright

So what are you planning for Saturday, the Horse of March this year? Should be a pretty good one. Sunday the Pig, maybe not as much.

And finally, where else folks are you going to learn that the Snake of March this year--in the Year of the Snake--is on a Saturday! There's your party theme, right there! Sunset is at 6:51 PM in the Boston area that night. Its also the Ides of March, as it is every year, just not as stabby. Now that's a planning guide, brah.

UPDATE: There is a lunar eclipse late tonight, the Bat of March, into Monkey. The penumbral eclipse begins just 3 minutes before midnight, here in the east, or just before 9:00 PM on the west coast. Partially eclipse starts at 1:09 AM on Monkey here, and at 10:09 in Cali. Totality starts at 2:26 AM, here, and 11:26 tonight in the west. Totality goes for about an hour. If you're up late, take a peek! This is what color the moon will be!

MARCH 2025

March 1, Saturday - Lion: Its a good thing it was on a weekend. 4 inches of snow three weeks ago, and its still here!
March 2, Sunday - Tiger: About 11-feet long, they can leap over 30-feet in length.
March 3, Monday - Bear: Its a Monday, of course.
March 4, Tuesday - Shark: Dwarf lantern sharks are the smallest at about 8-inches. That's like... here to here
March 5, Wednesday - Wolf: They don't want to be friends.
March 6, Thursday - Bull: Ole! Looks like rain.
March 7, Friday - Moose: Up to 6 1/2 feet at the shoulder
March 8, Saturday - Eagle: America! Turn your clock ahead tonight
March 9, Sunday - Scorpion: Sunny but cool. Like a bug with sunglasses?
March 10, Monday - Dingo: Dogs that returned to their origins
March 11, Tuesday - Hawk: We have about 7 hawk types in Massachusetts. Skinny Accipiters & chubby Buteos
March 12, Wednesday - Lynx: Not the same as a bobcat, but similar.
March 13, Thursday - Bat: Hang a bat house!
March 14, Friday - Monkey: New world monkeys have prehensile tails. African & Asian monkeys don't. HBD Coleen!
March 15, Saturday - Snake: The Snake of March, on the Ides of March, in the Year of the Snake!? Dude! PARTY!
March 16, Sunday - Ox: Yep, just a trained cow.
March 17, Monday - Elephant: Green elephants for St. Patricks Day?
March 18, Tuesday - Raven: They still keep ravens in the Tower of London
March 19, Wednesday - Stag: Symbolic of many things from nobility to Christ trampling the devil.
March 20, Thursday - Crab: Sidewids walkin' sea bug. First day of spring! Equinox at 5:01 AM in the Boston area
March 2, Friday1 - Goat: Symbol for practical wisdom and diplomacy. And, you know, satan.
March 22, Saturday - Horse: Spanish horses were introduced to the American Continent in the 1500s.
March 23, Sunday - Pig: Thars mud in yer sty, varmint!
March 24, Monday - Dog: You have a dog? OMG, I have a dog too!
March 25, Tuesday - Dolphin: Dolphins have a snout. Porpoises are like small whales.
March 26, Wednesday - Rooster: One rooster for every ten hens is the rule. Harem say what?
March 27, Thursday - Turtle: All tortoises are turtles, but not all turtles are tortoises. Tortoise = just on land.
March 28, Friday - Toad: Frogs got thin, slippery skin. Toads have thick, lumpy skin to hold in moisture.
March 29, Saturday - Robin: "In flew a sea robin (la!)". Yeah, that's not it.
March 30, Sunday - Rabbit: We have New England Cottontail rabbits here AND snowshoe hares. Similar. HBD Kelton!
March 31, Monday - Lamb: Useful for socks, hats, and BBQ.

 

 

 

book of illusions

The Book of Illusions is a novel Paul Auster, published in 2002, and was apparently pretty well received at the time. I don't really follow things like that, but they show up when I do a little searching to put together my review, and lots of book descriptions say it was nominated for the International Dublin Literary Award in 2004. His work is generally lauded, I've come to understand. Go Paul Auster.

I picked this one up at the book sale at the Moses Greeley Parker Memorial Library in Dracut, Massachusetts. Library books sales are one of my favorite ways to find books. Lost of times the library will stock up on new books that are very popular so they can meet the demand. Often times it is the Friends of the Library group, who helps to funds these additional copies so that patrons aren't disappointed by not being able to secure a copy of the latest popular book by being put on a wait list. Once the rush is over, the library may begin to sell off additional copies to make room for the new popular title.

I enjoyed this false history* story very much. David Zimmer is a professor who stumbles upon some thought to be lost silent movies by a less than well known actor from the 1920s, and contemporary of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. Zimmer takes advantage of the discovery to create a project to help help cope with recent tragedy that has also left him with more time on his hands than he wants, and extra spending money to follow this pursuit. He takes it upon himself to find out all he can, and write the definitive book on this unknown champion of the silent film genre.

What he eventually finds changes his life more than he expected, and some of those experiences tilt into the surreal. I have read anything by Auster in the past that I recall, but I really like his writing style. Its direct, pared down, clean and easy to read. Like all the best writers, Auster is invisible, and the story just feels like its being absorbed rather than read and interpreted. Auster's first person story telling seamless slipped between Zimmer's story, the silent movies plots he was watching, and the book he was writing. All of which seem to inform, reflect, and in some cases foreshadow one another. Art evincing art, evincing art.

I'll keep my eye out for Paul Auster. Auster died last April at 77. Read this book. 

 

*In 2010, Duke Special recorded an album in tribute to the 12 fictional lost movies of the fictional silent film star, Hector Mann, in Auster's book. The 12 tracks on the album have the same names as the 12 silent films described in The Book of Illusions. Wild.

hail mary

Andy Weir, of The Martian fame, has revisited those roots for Project Hail Mary. The protagonist, Ryland Grace, has many of the same traits as the astronaut, Mark Watney in The Martian: he's a scientist at heart, and because of his love of science, he believes in the scientific method and its ability to solve problems. And man, are there problems. Weir's infectious love of science is clearly the seed planted in both of these characters, and his ability to use it to drive a story is what makes his stories stand out. 

What I read years ago, is that hard science fiction, relied on the futuristic technologies to support the story line, whereas soft sci-fi are more character driven stories, and the future and its technologies are more of a setting, which may help to enable the character stories in ways that may not be possible with our current understanding of science and technology. Weir is, by contrast, writing science fiction built on known science and technologies. Not as much in this book, as The Martian, however. Things get pretty wild in this one, but Weir's Ryland Grace uses the scientific method to understand and adapt these newer technologies and materials to solve problems.

What these two stories have in common then, are that they are both like complicated puzzle rooms, that if not solved will kill you. In The Martian, the astronaut had to continuously solve problems, using science and logic, to prevent his instant death. If only to increase the chances that he might ultimately survive. Project Hail Mary steps it up a notch. Not only does Ryland Grace have to work to stay alive, he simultaneously needs to solve a larger puzzle, which has all of humanity on the line. So this one steps further into that hard sci-fi sub-genre.

Weir uses an interesting plot structure that relies on flashbacks which Ryland Grace can't make sense of at first, as he recovers from memory loss. Memory loss which also hampers his ability to problem solve in some ways, at a time when its obviously critically needed.

According to the interwebs buzz, this book has been optioned for a movie, and we may actually see that in the next year or two. Based on my reading, its seems like a good candidate for a movie. This is Weir's third novel (that I'm aware of.) His second, Artemis was good too. You can read my review of that book here.

Read this book. Especially if you liked his other novels.

This review is for a book I read a while ago, and I'm trying to catch-up on the pile of books I read in 2024 that I didn't write about. You can see that hole in my blog entries listed on The Books tab at the top of the page.

aednan: an epic

 

Aednan: An Epic is a long form poetry saga by Linnea Axelsson, translated into English by Saskia Vogel. We're going to stick with the theme of exploitation and subjugation of natives that we started in Typee, although I didn't know that when I picked up this book at my local library. When I picked it up, what I thought was: Epic poetry? Hell yeah!

Its always great to read books written in other cultures, and from different perspectives. If I had all the time in the world I would learn multiple languages, so that I could read in different languages. That would be grand, but for now, I will continue to rely upon translators.

The story follows the lives, and is told from the points of view, of multiple generations of a Sami * family, from the 1910s until the present. At the beginning of this story, the protagonists and their tribal families, raised reindeer and followed their herds across all of their native land, Sapmi, * which stretched across Norway, Sweden, Finland, and into a part of Russia. At the the time they moved freely across their land, with little thought given to the national borders which had grown up around them. In a word, they were nomadic.

In time, the governments of these countries began to rope the Sami in, excluding them from areas where the various governments determined was off limits to their ranging due to things the Sami didn't recognize, such as private property, public works project, and other developments and exclusions they needed to learn to live with. Eventually, the Sami in this family were isolated in a part of Sweden, and their ranging was completely cut off. This was hard for the Sami, because their culture had grown up around following the natural ranging of the reindeer herds. But that was now curtailed, and hemmed in as well. Think Native American reservation. They even went through the a forced assimilation process that many aboriginal peoples were forced to endure.

Its clear that the assimilation process worked in many ways, and many Sami became the neighbors of other ordinary Swedes, but what Axelsson shows us is that there are many, that still suffer from that process, and others who fight for reparations for what was done to their people. 

An an epic, it was a little slow, and in some cases, a little hard to tell who was narrating. Its epic in its scope, but this isn't Beowulf or The Iliad, nor is it trying to be. This is an epic of suffering and injustice, which should be read, lest we let it happen again. The Sami have begun to regain and rebuild their cultural heritage and have won recognition from the Swedish government.

* The words Sami and Sapmi are both properly spelled with an acute accent mark over the A, ( a straight line pointing at 2:00 o'clock, rather than a grave accent mark, which points at 10:00) but in my experience, those things don't always render properly on Blogger, so I've left them off rather than taking the chance that you'll see question marks or gray boxes in their place.

utopia avenue

I'm a fan of David Mitchell and his surrealistic, fantastical worlds--which in some ways, all seem to be related to one another--that flow beneath our own world, occasionally rising to the surface, to turn and twist into our reality. Cloud Atlas is what turned me, and probably many others, on to Mitchell's writing. Cloud Atlas is a series of stories strung out on a very long timeline, but nevertheless are woven together. In Cloud Atlas, we see inklings of how not just these stories, but perhaps all stories are connected, often by much less than seven degrees of separation.*

Utopia Avenue takes its title from a fictional 1960s psychedelic rock band from England, that makes a small splash in the rock world of the time, releasing just two albums, and rubbing elbows with a whole cast of rock legends, who are written in as supporting characters, that interact with, and in some cases support and advise, members of the band and their manager, during their short tour of the United States. 

Mitchell has gone out of his way to create a rock band and a manager that defies the typical rock genre novel; all of the band members seem to get a long, and their manager isn't trying to screw them. Its amazing to a read a story about a rock band without these tropes, if only that in their absence, the writer needs something else to build narrative tension with. Mitchell does that by giving us a story about the very human interactions between the band members, their manager, and those they encounter in their initial struggles, rise to fame, and somewhat abrupt exit from fame and renown, which Mitchell uses cleverly to give us the impression that Utopia Avenue was so short lived, and with just a few hit songs, that they could have actually been there, and we just missed them or perhaps forgotten them in the decades since.

This one was probably more based in reality, with less dips below the surface, than some of Mitchell's other works, which some have compared to Black Swan Green, on the reality to fantastical scale. There were clear references to other stories however, including the connection between the tour de force lead guitarist Jasper de Zoet and his ancestor Jacob de Zoet, from The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. But that isn't all, there were a few other things I noticed that I won't get into here.** If you are interested in these connections (which may contain spoilers) the supergeeks over at Wikipedia have a whole list of interconnections to other stories identified. †

This is a review of a book I read earlier in 2024 when I wasn't doing a great job keeping up with the blog. These impressions are from early in January 2025, so its been some time since I've read this book, but I wanted to get it down before I forgot. You can see a list of the books I read, including those from last year that I haven't written about in The Books tab at the top of the page.

* When I originally read Cloud Atlas, I hadn't seen the movie, and looking back at my review of the book, I couldn't imagine how you'd make a movie given the story's complexity, but they pulled it off. The movie, which I eventually saw was pretty good, but not nearly as complex as the book.

** Some of the things I noticed while reading were not conscience connections. Just niggling feelings that there is something there that relates to something else I've read or encountered before. That, in my opinion, can be even more fun; knowing that something you've just read is somehow tied to something else, but without know exactly what it is. It could be another Mitchell book, or perhaps something else...

† The other thing you'll find on the wiki page is a list of Mitchell's short stories, published in various periodicals, and some of them include links. I just read "Muggins Here" on the Guardian website, and that too, has connections to Mitchell's other works. Those connections were put down in this Reddit thread by someone with the handle FormalDinner7.

wolf and woodsman

The Wolf and the Woodsman reads like a cross between a swords and sorcery fantasy and modern mythology. This is the debut novel by Ava Reid, and it was pretty good. Reid took on a huge task for her first book, creating a new world, with its own history, multiple cultures, languages, flora and fauna. She was aided in her world building by basing many of those things our our world, from the wolves to the cultures, which not only align with some of ours, but also seem to include some similarities in their histories, languages, and for this book specifically, their conflicts and prejudices.

Into that complex soup of people, Reid weaves a magical system that is pretty simple, and I don't think the story arc relies to heavily on it, which is good. It does help to define who some folks are, from a status point of view as well, and there are some personal struggles and interpersonal dynamics that play on that, but that's not really about the magic, its more normal personal, pecking-order behavior.

At its core, I guess I'd call this a hero adventure, and along the way, Reid is touching on themes from coming of age, to romance, and from racism, exploitation, and oppression to revolution. There are some surprises here too, and not all of the fauna are as simple as wolves. I think Reid does a good job of keeping the pace moving along, and managing all of the threads she has set in this book. I'll keep my eye out for her next venture.*

This is another catch-up book review, which I read months ago and didn't get my thoughts down then. I've tried to recreate the list of books I read in 2024 as completely as I could, and to put them in the order that I read them. You can find where this one sits on the list by going to The Books tab at the top of the page.

* Since this book was published in 2021, Ava Reid has been cranking them out. She's written four since then, and a fifth is available for preorder now. Dang!

typee

Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life was Herman Melville's first book. The paperback version I read, is from Penguin Classics, printed in 1996. I borrowed this copy from my office lending library.

This version looks like it may have been prepared with the school market in mind. There is an introduction (about 20 pages) by Professor John Bryant, who also prepared other commentary on the text, and an extensive appendixes. Bryant's introduction helps to place Typee within Melville's life, as well is within the larger context of the world in which it was written. Bryant, according to the bio in the front matter, is a professor at Hofstra University and an author and/or editor of all things Melville, basically. yeah, Melville nerd 

It was interesting to learn that Typee was published in Britain, and then in America, but editors in each took offense to differing things, and so Melville modified or removed items to suit the local tastes, actually, more than once, which means there are two authorized versions--British and American--each with its own various editions, as ther edits and corrections were made. That, of course, makes it difficult to know what the original, unmodified author's intent was. Bryant has edited this version as a hybrid between the two, to try and get at the most complete and accurate interpretation of the author's original story. To that end he has also made 'corrections' to the manuscript for typos and in some case words that Melville may have selected in error. These edits and corrections, along with explanatory notes are included in the appendixes.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Melville was essentially stranded on this island for months,* living with the natives, and essentially shacked up with a local young woman. That, along with the fact that the women went around topless--when they weren't completely naked whilst swimming, bathing, or just hanging out on a canoe--was one of the things Melville needed to edit out or tone down, in order to keep from stunning British and/or American readers.

What was maybe most problematic, however, is that Melville had a real problem with what so call 'modern society' had brought to the natives of the South Pacific at the hands of missionaries. Its was Melville's believe that way the natives lived, in harmony with nature, and at ease in their tribal societies, was not improved by the introduction of modern society. He was heartbroken that in an attempt to improve the lives of the natives, the missionaries brought structure and religion to a place where Melville that it wasn't required to improve either the people or their lives. The introduction of structure and religion also meant rules, governance, and money. In reality, from Melville's point of view, at least, that meant the white men came to exploit what the islands had to offer, and what the native used to take for free from the forest they now had to work for, and quickly came under the thumb of westerners. It was apparently too much for his readers, worried his editors, that men of god could be making the lives of those they were trying to 'save' so much worse. Melville uses the colonization of the Hawaiian Islands as an example of the corruption, poverty, and exploitation that westernization had brought at the hands of missionaries. He also didn't believe that all missionaries were innocent of the tragedy they wrought. On the contrary, it was his believe that even some who came with good intentions were swayed by the luxuries that exploitation brought and were soon become exploiters themselves.

Its clear then, that Melville isn't interested in a purely maritime adventure story, based on his escapades. Melville's ability to fatten up his stories appears to have been born here in Typee. From what was essentially a tale he told at parties, Melville, at the urging of his listeners, put down his adventures, and then added in a bunch of other information that he had researched or heard about, along with his personal thoughts about colonization and evangelism, in order to flesh it out to a novel. Whole chapters on how harpoons are made and used in Moby Dick, I'm looking at you.

Is this nonfiction? A journal of actual events with some additional researched information (which may or may not be completely accurate) thrown in? Or is it a fictionalized account, inspired by the true events witnessed by Melville while he was stranded on the island for those few months and some other information that Melville used to support his social commentary conclusions about western interference in native cultures and the societal damage caused by religious indoctrination? To be honest, I'm sympathetic to Melville's thoughts about western exploitation of native cultures. Not just here, but everywhere. 

I called this Melville's first novel, multiple times during this entry, but perhaps that's unfair. Lets just say this is Melville's first book and leave it at that. This was is worth a read if you haven't already.

* Depending on what you read (or believe) Melville may have been in captivity, albeit a very relaxed captivity, for multiple months, as the story indicates, or maybe just a month.

metropolis

Metropolis by Philip Kerr.

I'm trying to play catch up, so I'm working in reverse to gets some notes down, or a review, I guess you could say, of the recent books I've read. I tried to list them all in 'the books' tab above, and I did my best to put them in rough order. I fell down on the job of keeping track for most of this year, but I was able to cobble the list together based on the stack of books I have here, quick lists of books I jotted down in a draft posts here on the blog, and some photos I took of the book covers to help me remember, whenever it occurred to me that I wasn't getting the job done.

At some point, the books I've read will have been completed far enough in the past that I may not remember enough about them to be worth it to actually write about them. My guess is that it may depend on whether I still have the book and can flip through it, how much I liked it when I read it, etc. Metropolis is just a few books back, and while I don't recall the names of the characters, I do recall them, and the story.

As you can see in the Amazon link for the paperback version, linked above, Metropolis is a Bernie Gunther novel. Gunther is a recurring character in Kerr's books, altho I think this is the first one I've read. There is one other Kerr book included here on the blog,* but its not a crime story. Gunther is a detective (newly minted in this book) on the Berlin police force, between world wars I and II. Its the late 20s I think, and Nazism is on the rise. The murders Gunter is looking into appear to be hate related, and targeted at specific groups of people--prostitutes and disabled WWI veterans. Gunther is following leads, that no one else he works with thinks are worth his time, but he's young, and once he gets an idea in his head...

The story follows Gunther's rise into the Berlin Murder Squad, or whatever that group is called, and his investigation into these two groups of murders. His investigations take him to some of the seedier parts of Berlin, and his adventures (or misadventures) in that secret layer of Berlin society is what provides the colorful backdrop to this story, which was at times horrifying, disgusting, and sad, but was also, in some cases, sensual, and occasionally sexy.

Kerr has woven quite a tapestry upon which he has set these Bernie Gunther novels it seems, so I can see why folks keep reading. I'll keep my eyes out for more, but I won't be jumping in the car to get them today.

 

* in the link to the other Kerr story on the blog, you find a link to a third Philip Kerr book I read, called Dark Matter, which was pretty good.

ex-libris

Ex-Libris is from 1998, so its been kicking around for a while. I borrowed this copy from my small lending library we have at my office. It pre-dates this blog so I wasn't sure if I had read it or not, but I do recall reading Ross King's Brunelleschi's Dome years ago, and it was very good--you can find it in the right-hand column in my 'great' list--so I thought I may have. But no, I don't think I did, or at least I don't remember reading it, tho the first part did seem familiar. After looking back at the blog, I did find two others Domino (which I didn't finish) and Leonardo and the Last Supper, which I did finish. In that review, I noted a few other books from Ross King that I had read, but this isn't one of them.

So if I was looking for a pattern in my reactions to Ross King's writing, I would say that I tend to like his novelized historical books, versus his historical novels. It seems like when his work is based more on a single historical work and how it came to be, he does better than straight fictional stories, even if those stories do include a fair amount of historical research and content. I would put Ex-Libris in the latter category, but that said, I liked this one better than some of the others. I may have read this one, I guessed that I did in my review of Domino (linked above) but I didn't remember then either. Forgettable is probably not a great attribute for a book, but perhaps its apt here.

If this one had a draw back, its that it has so much research and history, that it was, at times, a little hard to follow. There were so many interlacing facts, spread out over a hundred or so years, that it would take a college history class to untangle them, never mind understand them in context. So I did what I assume most readers who aren't 17th century historian would do, I ignored most of it, tried to remember the high points, and assumed that King would help fill in the blanks as we went along, which he obligingly did.

This story is about the power of knowledge, the concentrated power of libraries as fonts of learning, and the various historical powers that struggled to control, ban, censor, and contain that knowledge and keep its power for themselves. It was also a powerful reminder, for me, of why public libraries are the great democratizers, as they have taken that power from the rich and wealthy few that used to hoard it for themselves, and delivered it into the hands of the people.

If you enjoyed King's books on the duomo in Florence, and the frescoes by DaVinci and Michelangelo, you'll enjoy this one too, just not as much.