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by Julie Mersch (Author)
This book has been difficult to classify, for what unifies its various materials is our yearly journey through the seasons, and that is not a convention yet established in the traditions of authorship, yet it would be a mistake to classify this as fiction (though parts of it are as juicy as the best in that genre) for every word of it is true.
A closer look reveals that this isn't really a book at all: it's a luni-solar calendar. Yes, it includes a companion book (a collection of true stories and poems) on the calendar's opposing, right-hand pages, but what's shown on the left-hand pages is a sample luni-solar calendar with a detailed explanation about how it works. Each calendar page sports an interesting and appropriate factoid, mostly having to do with space or the origins of names.
The companion book - seasonally appropriate and including holiday traditions, folklore, bits of history, more starry science and/or lore, a few recipes, and even a game (at the very back of the book), includes an excavation into the origins of our current calendar and takes a peek at what's known of a European one in use previously. Digging even deeper, it explores the names of our
current weekdays and the old Anglish gods behind them, inadvertently drawing back a small part of the curtain shrouding Europe's earth-friendly roots. The whole collection was born of the author's longing for a more organic way of telling time.
A carton of the author's not-quite-finished books en route to her disappeared from the San Francisco post office months prior to publication date, only to surface later for sale as "used" on eBay and from a number of sellers at Amazon. When messaged, one withdrew the offering, one acknowledged having many sources and that pinning down what came from where was difficult and two ("Honest" Abe and The BookMonger, both having the same New Jersey address) responded by lowering the price to almost nothing. Have you ever wondered how they could sell so many books so cheaply? Now we know!
