The number of “Best of …” lists that fill my inbox and the pages of various publications this time of year makes me shake my head. I could never choose. There is something about most of the books I read that leaves its mark on me. This year, over Christmas Dinner, our conversation fell to everyone’s favorite reads of 2024. I was quiet until two of the seven at the table, with an added vote from a niece in abstentia, said with conviction, “North Woods by Daniel Mason.”

I’d read North Woods a few months back and wished I’d been in a book group at that time. (Perhaps one that looked like the gathering in the above painting.) The first thing I’d hope to discuss with this group of readers was how long it took them to fall into this story about a place over the course of history, to put it in the simplest of terms. For me, it was about page 80 when I was hooked. At about that point I started appreciating the fluid sense of time and how lives seep into others’ lives maybe even those gone before, or after. It reminded me of a college geology field trip to study a sedimentary outcrop where, at a distance, the layers of deposits seemed distinctive, each identifiable in some way – color, texture, depth. As I looked closer, the layers sometimes blurred as time and characters and non-human lives did in this story. This was a tantalizing discovery for me.

Mason’s first novel, The Piano Tuner, is one I’ve returned to a few times and imagine reading again. I think that helped me trust that I was in for a memorable adventure that would leave me satisfied, if not enthralled. So, I’d want to ask the others in this imagined book group if they’d read any other of Daniel Mason’s novels. Did that help them trust that they’d be satisfied with this swirling story of history on this one piece of land filled with striking violence yet also beauty and love and amazing ecological observations?

Mason made me believe in ghosts and dimensions of time and place that defy my more typical linear thinking. He made me wonder about what the small patch of land I live on holds in its predominantly clay soil beyond the tilling done by the farm that was once here and the planting of towering Norway pines that run along the edges of this neighborhood. How great it would be, I think, to have a conversation about what others took away from this most unusual telling of the story of one place over time. If you want to share what YOU thought of this novel, I’d love to hear about it.

The second end-of-year surprise is of a literary nature. I am so excited to know that friend, David Wright Faladé’s novel The New Internationals is coming out in January. (I am a biased reader: Why YA? and Black Cloud RIsing.) I just got word that my copy of The New Internationals will be arriving just after the new year when the original publication date was end of January. Consider adding it to your reads for 2025. I had the privilege and fun of reading an earlier draft of this story – talk about a swirling adventure!

Last surprise for this last day of the year is for anyone local to me. If you’re in the North Shore area of Massachusetts and want to come to a fun, creative and FREE event, consider this one: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/seed-stories-soiree-tickets-1076625017409?aff=ebdssbcitybrowse

Here’s hoping 2025 is full of good surprises!