Oh March, you are such a wretched month. Every year I hope it will be better and it never is.

The problem with March is that it is upheaval, always. The light is changing dramatically around the equinox and the weather can’t figure out what it wants to do. People are always getting sick, and school gets interrupted by spring break. People in more temperate climates get to be excited about spring and blossoms and green things, and we get a blizzard. Always.

One thing about March is that I have a birthday in it. This year there were a lot of ordinary things happening on my birthday, so it wasn’t very exciting, but my family got me a matcha kit, which I have wanted for a while, and the baby ankylosaur Lego set, which I have also wanted for a while. It’s my favourite dinosaur because I, too, have bony outgrowths on my spine (that is why my arthritis is called ankylosing spondylitis). I also got to have two dinners out with my friends because we couldn’t make it work altogether this year. I was not mad about getting two opportunities to go to my favourite restaurant. So now I’m 42, the answer to the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. Wow.

I finished my winter longread, The Count of Monte Cristo. It’s definitely a doorstopper, and highly recommended whenever someone asks how to get into classic literature. It’s pretty nonstop; there’s not a much filler, and stuff is always happening, even if the stuff doesn’t seem like it’s going to fit into the plot for a while. I wrote about my impressions in my last blog post, and I think the end of the book turned around several of my concerns, but the last page took a turn that I didn’t especially care for.

SPOILER SECTION; AVOID IF YOU HAVE NOT READ IT

When I was explaining the end of the book to my kid, they noted that it sounded a lot like Romeo and Juliet, but where it all works out at the end. I agree with them; I did a little research (blessings upon other smart people who have written on topics I care about) and the book can almost be seen as Shakespeare fanfic in some ways – there are Macbeth references throughout; the Romeo and Juliet connection is clear; it can be read as an homage to The Tempest in Monte Cristo’s orchestration of events, like Prospero; and the final pages run parallel to A Winter’s Tale. I find that sort of thing fascinating. But after completing the entirely of his vengeance and arranging matters for everyone to his satisfaction, the Count fully plans to die by suicide, since he has nothing else to do. He’s prevented by Haydée, his slave-daughter, who was giving me cause to side-eye the book for quite some time before declaring that she sees the Count as both a husband AND a father. I know that I’m reading my twenty-first-century morals onto an old book, and of course he shouldn’t have killed himself, but I still find it questionable to call that a happy ending. On the other hand, neither of them fit into the world; they were both ripped out of it by selfish violence, and chose over and over again not to go through the painful process of reconditioning themselves to the world they knew. I just find the power imbalance gross, and that’s a me problem.

I also read a fantastic Substack about it, because I was looking for other people’s thoughts on the way the women’s plots resolved, given that they were pawns and victims for the men’s schemes, for the most part. My favourite takeaway is that Dumas realized he had to render Mercédès toothless if he didn’t want her rage and vengeance to overshadow Monte Cristo’s. She was treated so badly by everyone, including Monte Cristo, and she had as much right if not more to devote her life to revenge. And now I desperately want to read that book, the revenge of Mercédès, and I don’t even think it exists.

END OF SPOILERS

In summary, The Count of Monte Cristo was a great choice for a winter longread. This is the list of the books I’ve done:

• Villette by Charlotte Brontë
• The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
• Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
• Middlemarch by George Eliot
• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
• Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
• The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

I highly recommend the habit of starting a thicc boi on November 1 to read slowly over winter. It’s one of my favourite habits.

Also in March I finished knitting my brioche sweater that I started in December. It felt like it took ages, even though four months is pretty quick for a me-sized sweater, and brioche is slow because I was essentially knitting every row twice. It needed a little bit of wear to relax into the shape I was hoping for, but now I am quite pleased with it.

Finally, I will leave you with my glorious lemon meringue pie that I made for Pi Day on the 14th. It was a work of art. See you when April is done.