#Daniel Mason

[mythologyofblue]

“The only way to understand the world as something other than a tale of loss is to see it as a tale of change.”

-Daniel Mason, North Woods

[bangbangwhoa]

books I’ve read in 2023 📖 no. 104

North Woods by Daniel Mason

“Sometimes, overwhelmed, she retreats into the forests of the past. …and she has found that the only way to understand the world as something other than a tale of loss is to see it as a tale of change.”

[theinquisitxor]

March 2024 Reading Wrap Up

I read 6 books in March, which was a little less than I was hoping for, but I thought the quality of what I read was very good. I read 3 fantasy books, 1 nonfiction, and 2 fiction. I read a few new releases and continued some series.

1.Us Against You by Frederik Backman (Beartown 2), 4/5 stars. I started March with reading the second book in this series, and it was just as emotional and good as book 1. I don't read a lot of fiction like this anymore, but I have been enjoying these books. I'm hoping to finish the series next month.

2. The Poison Prince by SC Emmet (Hostage of Empire 2), 4/5 stars. This is the second book in this courtly political east asian fantasy series. While the first book has bursts of action, this book was primarily no action/just politics. This is really shaping up to be a new favorite series which I hope to finish next month.

3. The Prisoner's Throne by Holly Black (The Stolen Heir Duology 2), 4/5 stars. This was a good conclusion to this duology, and I think I enjoyed this book more than the first. I liked seeing some of the characters from the first series, and get caught up with what is going on in Holly Black's world.

4. Knowing What We Know: The Transmission of Knowledge from Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic by Simon Winchester. This was my nonfiction audiobook for the month, and the author narrated the audiobook himself. This is a huge topic for an author to try and address in one book, and I enjoyed the stories that Winchester tells throughout.

5. An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors by Curtis Craddock (The Risen Kingdoms 1), 3/5 stars. This was my Random TBR Pick for the month of March. This book has been on my tbr since 2018, so I was happy to finally read it. This had a very unique world and setting which was cool to explore. Even though this is a series, I feel like you could read this just as a standalone. As of right now I don't plan on continuing.

6. North Woods by Daniel Mason, 5/5 stars. This was my favorite book I read this month, and a new all around favorite. This is exactly the type of literary fiction I enjoy, and checked so many boxes for me. I'll be thinking about this book for a long time to come.

That's all the books I read in March!

April TBR:

The Book of Doors by Gareth Brown

The Winners (Beartown 3) by Frederick Backman

The Bloody Throne (Hostage of Empire 3) by SC Emmet

Random TBR Pick: The Wall by Marlen Haushofer

The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo

Nonfiction Audiobook / The Language of Trees

If I have time:

The Hedgewitch of Fox Hall by Anna Bright

Song of the Huntress by Lucy Holland

[teenagedirtstache]

[pleasuredelaying]

"Such joy that your sweet company makes, does leave a shadow in its wake.

To think that you were here but a week! -it felt both a minute and a lifetime.

You are like no one else I know, have ever met. My sole consolation, and it is a great one, is the realization of my life's fortune in your friendship, for it is fortune.

To think of all that had to happen so that we might meet, and all that might have happened to prevent it.”

- Daniel Mason, excerpt from North Woods.

[contedivaldoca]

Dove la parola non basta, il contatto ci soccorre

“L’accordatore di piano”, D. Mason

[i-will-not-be-caged]

I’ve been reading this book the past few days and just finished it this afternoon. It was an oddly comforting thing to be reading during the midst of *gestures* all of this, but I was particularly struck by this line towards the very end:

“The only way to understand the world as something other than a tale of loss is to see it as a tale of change.”

Not really an encouraging quote in the traditional sense, but it did give me some comfort.

[7r0773r]

The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason

He stood and watched her and for a moment she held his gaze, and in the deep recesses of his chest he felt something stir, a longing, that she would invite him to her room, to dry off only, of course, he would never ask for more. To dry off only, and then in the darkness of the room, scented with coconut and cinnamon, a wish that perhaps their hands would brush, first accidentally, then again, perhaps, bolder, deliberate, that their fingers would meet and entwine and they would stand like that for a moment before she looked up and he looked down. And he wondered if she thought the same, as they stood outside and felt the coolness of the water on their skin.

And perhaps it could have been, had Edgar acted with the spontaneity of the rain, had he moved toward her with the same boldness with which water falls. But not now. This expects too much of a man whose life is defined by creating order so that others may make beauty. It expects too much of one who makes rules to ask that he break them. And so, after a long silence, as they both stand and listen to the rain, his voice cracks and he says, "We'd better change then. I must find dry clothes." Fleeting words that mean little and much. (p. 240)

***

He thought of the room where he had learned to tune, and the cold afternoons when the old man would wax poetically about the role of a tuner, and Edgar would listen with amusement. As a young apprentice, his master's words had seemed maudlin. Why do you want to tune pianos? asked the old man. Because I have good hands and I like music, the boy had answered, and his teacher laughed, Is that it? What more? replied the boy. More? And the man raised a glass and smiled. Don't you know, he asked, that in every piano there lies a song, hidden? The boy shook his head. Just the mumblings of an old man perhaps, But you see, the movement of a pianist's fingers are purely mechanical, an ordinary collection of muscles and tendons that know only a few simple rules of rate and rhythm. We must tune pianos, he said, so that something as mundane as muscles and tendons and keys and wire and wood can become song. And what is the name of the song that lies in this old piano? the boy had asked, pointing to a dusty upright. Song, said the man, It doesn't have a name, Only song. And the boy had laughed because he hadn't heard of a song without a name, and the old man laughed because he was drunk and happy.

The keys and hammers trembled with the sway of the current, and in the faint ringing that rose up Edgar again heard a song with no name, a song made only of notes but no melody, a song that repeated itself, each echo a ripple of the first, a song that came from the piano itself, for there was no musician but the river. He thought back to the night in Mae Lwin, to The Well-Tempered Clavier, It is a piece bound by strict rules of counterpoint, as all fugues are, the song is but an elaboration of one simple melody, we are destined to follow the rules established in the first few lines.

It makes you wonder, said the old man, lifting his wineglass, why a man who composed such melodies of worship, of faith, named his greatest fugue after the act of tuning a piano. (pp. 284-85)

[bookjotter6865]

Winding Up the Week #386

An end of week recap “The greatest gift is a passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination.” – Elizabeth Hardwick (born 27th July 1916) This is a post in which I summarise books read, reviewed and currently on my TBR shelf. In addition to a variety of literary titbits, I look…

[lilianeruyters]

Daniel Mason || North Woods

I might have bought this novel because I was intrigued by its layout: chapters alternated with poetry and photography. I had no idea what I was about to read. Fortunately North Woods did not disappoint me, I was drawn into the novel right from the start. North Woods is the history of a certain spot deep in the woods of New England. This woodland is a given, the people coming to live there in…

[bookcoversonly]

Title: A Registry of My Passage upon the Earth | Author: Daniel Mason | Publisher: Little, Brown and Company (2020)

[kimbazee]

Fiction to Read or Consider

This post contains Amazon affiliate links. If you click through and make a purchase, I will receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. This helps keep my blog ad-free. Family Family by Laurie Frankel had such an unusual feel to me. Themes include teen pregnancy, adoption, and childhood trauma, but it isn’t sad or even serious. Everything almost feels like a joke. Her main character,…

[anokatony]

My Favorite Fiction I've Read in 2023

Another year. Here are my favorite fiction reads of 2023, and as always, fiction is all that really counts.     ‘Glassworks’ by Olivia Wolfgang-Smith – ‘Glassworks’ is an intriguing and endlessly fascinating quirky family saga with one family member of each of four generations involved with working with glass in one form or another. The situations that Olivia Wolfgang-Smith creates for her…

[andreabadgley]

Thanksgiving week read 🍂🍁

[judgingbooksbycovers]

North Woods: A Novel

By Daniel Mason.

[bargainsleuthbooks]

#ARCReview #NorthWoods #DanielMason #BookReview #LiteraryFiction #NetGalley #HistoricalFiction #RandomHouse

#PulitzerPrize nominee #DanielMason is back with a new book called #NorthWoods. I suspect this book will be nominated 4 lots of awards, too. #literaryfiction #Bookreview #ARCReview #historical fiction #nature #environment #ghosts #netgalley #bargainsleuth

A sweeping novel about a single house in the woods of New England, told through the lives of those who inhabit it across the centuries—a daring, moving tale of memory and fate from the Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Piano Tuner and The Winter Soldier. When a pair of young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become home to…