#2018MMM Bracket and My Books from February

Daily Ramble 168: #2018MMM Bracket and My Books from February

Today I take my first look at the #2018MMM March Mammal Madness bracket to get a feel for what the contest will hold. 65 contenders all think they have a chance to become the 2018 victor but as this yearly contest always shows, things can be wildly unpredictable. What favorites will fall early and who will show up as the Cinderella this year? I can’t wait for the battles to begin.

I also ramble a bit about the books I read in February and I had a much wider range of appreciation for the books this month as opposed to those I read in January.

2018 March Mammal Madness Bracket

The 2018 March Mammal Madness bracket was release on Thursday so now we get to see who the contenders really are…

I’ll be looking more specifically at the 4 divisions in the days to come but today I’m looking more at some of the top seeds. In particular, the ones that are not even mammals. Yes…this year there are a bunch of contenders who are not hairy, warmblooded, milk drinking, live birthing mammals. This will prove interesting and makes me wonder what kind of madness will ensure if one of these “lower” animals happens to pull off a victory in the finals. As things stand, we’re definitely going to get one of them in the finals considering the Antecessors division faces off against the “When the Kat’s Away” (WTKA) division in the semifinals. Well, I suppose the Antecessors are technically in the mammalia classification but when I look at the Doedicurus the first thing that comes to mind is not mammal…it’s dinosaur.

It gets even worse when looking at the WTKA division as see the Green Anaconda…

or the Orinoco Crocodile who are the #2 and #1 seeds of the WTKA division.

In any case, I’m excited to take a closer look at the bracket and start making my picks. At first look, I’m kinda pulling for the Tasmanian Devil and the Dimetrodon but with so many varied contenders I’m gonna have to think about this carefully.

You can follow all the 2018 March Mammal Madness action at Mammals Suck…Milk! and in particular on Twitter with the hash tag #2108MMM.

Books of February 2018

I managed to get 8 books finished off in February and I feel pretty good about it. Prelude to Foundation by Isaac Asimov and The Rook by Daniel O’Malley are easy additions to my top list for the past couple of years as I gladly rate them a solid A. These two book were really good and I recommend them to anyone who enjoys fiction. PtF moves Asimov into his Foundation series and you can see how the world he’s built over the past Robot and Empire stories is going to play into this epic. The Rook, as I mentioned previously was one of my favorites of 2016 and again it held up on a re-read. I’ve heard that it may be coming to a visual media – TV or movie – and I can’t wait. I think this modern day magic, supernatural, and science tale would easily work as a very cool series. Silverthorn continued the Riftwar Saga and I’m happy to see that it is working just as well as when I first read it 2 decades ago.

Prelude to Foundation by Isaac Asimov, 1988 (A)
The Rook by Daniel O’Malley, 2012 (A)
Silverthorn by Raymond Feist, 1985 (B+)
The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod, 2012 (B+)
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle, 1962 (B)
No Excuses!: The Power of Self Discipline by Brian Tracy, 2010(B)
Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, 2017 (B-)
Winter Tide by Ruthanna Emrys, 2017 (C-)

One story I was surprised about was A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. I did not like this as much as I expected and while I rated it a B, I could easily have been convinced to give it a lower rating. It really didn’t grab my interest much. The same goes for Winter Tide by Ruthanna Emrys. This was dull and boring for me and while some of the ideas seemed like a cool extension to Lovecraft, I just didn’t enjoy this tale since I’ve read other pseudo-horror that have been much more enjoyable. Also, the science book I tackled this month was kinda blah. Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz was an okay read but I really didn’t feel that I learned much – and I was expecting to. Perhaps its because I really like statistics and probabilities and I really didn’t feel that this book went far enough in depth. It felt like a low level introductory text rather than the detailed, graduate level book I expected…too bad.

On the whole though, I enjoyed my reading in February.

Running Book List for 2018

The Rook by Daniel O’Malley, 2012 (A)
Prelude to Foundation by Isaac Asimov, 1988 (A)
Girl Waits With Gun by Amy Stewart, 2015 (B+)
Silverthorn by Raymond Feist, 1985 (B+)
The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod, 2012 (B+)
Touch by Claire North, 2015 (B)
Magician: Master by Raymond Feist, 1982 (B)
Pebble in the Sky by Isaac Asimov, 1950 (B)
The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, 1788 (B)
No Excuses!: The Power of Self Discipline by Brian Tracy, 2010 (B)
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle, 1962 (B)
The Periodic Table by Primo Levi, 1975 (B-)
Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, 2017 (B-)
Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley, 1818 (C+)
Winter Tide by Ruthanna Emrys, 2017 (C-)

My Top Books

These lists include all the A and A- titles that I’ve read since the start of 2017.

Rated A (7)

Elantris by Brandon Sanderson (2007)
Gateway by Frederick Pohl (1977)
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (2014)
I, Robot by Isaac Asimov (1950)
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick (1968)
Prelude to Foundation by Isaac Asimov (1988)
The Rook by Daniel O’Malley (2012)

Rated A- (10)

Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson (2009)
Dune by Frank Herbert (1965)
Red Rising by Pierce Brown (2014)
Beyond the Blue Event Horizon by Frederick Pohl (1980)
Lock In by John Scalzi (2014)
Heechee Rendezvous by Frederick Pohl (1985)
Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel (2016)
Arcadia: A Novel by Iain Pears (2015)
Magician:Apprentice by Raymond Feist (1982)
The Currents of Space by Isaac Asimov (1952)