North Woods – Daniel Mason – Episode 92

The Buddies headed up north for their most recent book, into the woods… the North Woods by Daniel Mason. This Pulitzer Prize finalist novel had the Buddies fighting for their lives as their 8th grade reading abilities were really put to the test. It had them chatting about their love of apples, if they believe in ghosts, and Buddy love letters. So, strap in for this one, get your dictionary out, and your trusty ax, as we chop it up with the North Woods.

Intro/Book Report (0:00-3:15)
Stock Up/Down (3:16-31:57)
Favorite Story (31:58-38:18)
Love/Hate (38:19-45:05)
Lingering Questions (45:06-46:37)
Conclusion (46:38-49:18)

NEXT BOOK: The Righteous Arrows by Brian J. Morra

Transcript for SEO purposes 🙂

Alright, welcome buddy book club.
I’m Dylan, here with my brother from another mother, who hopefully wouldn’t murder me
with an axe.
Keith, what’s up buddy?
Probably more of a knife guy.
Maybe a gun.
It probably wouldn’t be that personal.
Well, here at the buddy book club we’re bringing out some best dollars and this week we’ll
be discussing North Woods by Daniel Mason, which was published in 2023.
Another fairly recent one, back to back, recent book is good for us.
If you’d like to recommend a book for us to read or reach out to busy past episodes,
you can visit our website buddybookhub.com or sign to our DMs on Twitter or Instagram,
buddybookuppodcast.
And let’s do us an iTunes, Spotify, wherever you get your podcast, so please download.
Give us a review, five stars would be nice and if you hate it, give us the five stars
and just say hate it in the comments.
If nothing else, give us a follow on social channels, please and thanks.
Keith, 4.18 on Goodreads is North Woods and after almost 100 episodes, I think this is
our first foray into potential Pulitzer Prize winning novels.
How are you feeling about getting into the erudite discussion about literature?
Yeah, this is what you would call beautiful prose and you make jokes about me not understanding
things and not knowing a lot.
And sometimes that’s true, but this time I’m not exaggerating it anyway.
When I’m saying this was well, well above my pay grade.
If it makes you feel any better, I did listen to an NPR interview.
I think it was NPR with the author, like a long format.
I think it was like an hour long interview.
She was asking him all these deep questions about the book and he was like, I don’t know.
I just wrote the book.
The host at one point, she asked him about Alice and Mary.
Yeah, so they’re like stand-ins for the apple trees themselves, right?
And he was like, huh?
When she cuts her down, it’s like they’re cutting down the apple tree.
And he was like, yeah, you know, I mean, it is like, yeah, she was cutting down the apple
trees and then she kills her.
So yeah, sure.
Any who Keith, I got a book report for you.
Can I stand up in front of the class and share it?
Please, please do.
And announce it to everyone in the back of the class can hear a nun C8.
What did I say?
Announcate.
Announce.
He ate.
You think it’s a nun C8?
What are you an idiot?
Announcate.
The New York Times said North Woods is almost impossible to summarize.
Well, if that’s the case, call me Tom Cruise and strap me into a motorcycle because I’m
on an impossible mission.
North Woods is a tale told in the series of vignettes of a house in western part of Massachusetts
from the time its first piece of Stone Foundation was laid up through its destruction 400 years
later.
Over that time, we learned of the different inhabitants in the changing flora of a quiet
rural cottage, but mostly the book is about ghosts, apples and beetles fucking.
Not quite so possible as you thought New York Times.
Quick to the point.
I liked it.
I mean, you summarize those about as good as you can get.
I’m going to give you without any Austin powers in there.
I’m going to give you a B minus.
Oh, shoot.
The book is about ghosts, apples and Randy Beatles fucking.
Do I make you Randy Beatles?
Let’s get into some stock ups, stock down for North Woods Keith stock up.
Stock up apples over everything.
Oh, or should I say apple orchards before being nurtured honey crisps before a lovers
kiss pink ladies before pink ladies apple pies before warm thighs Fuji apples before
shooting spackle apple course before dirty horse.
Shall I go on D.
Now what is this talk about pros?
It’s kind of a major theme here right the the apples, especially with Mary and Alice and
Johnny Appleseed guy.
Oz good.
This book did have a lot of sexual and new and those are just just straight sexual stuff.
Yeah, which is a little bit uncomfortable, especially the Beatles thing that you’re
really eluded to.
If you have something that you love and you’re about then you can’t let women or men get
in the way of that you need to focus completely on that.
And if someone goes against that, then you put an axe in their back or in their stomach
or however you want to do that’s I think what we learned here.
I actually have one more for you.
Mary picked up the mantle and she added into the mix.
Axe inside her before allowing apple cider.
That’s that one’s that one’s crumbled that one up toss in the basket.
The rest of them are great.
Did you know they’re pink lady apples?
I didn’t even know that was a good idea.
What’s your favorite type of apple?
I never really know the difference, but I’ve been going I’ve been getting apples recently
in this book probably is the biggest marketing for it, but I’ve been going honey crisps
yeah.
Oh yeah.
Before a lovers kiss.
What do you go with?
Well, I have an unfortunate allergy to apples.
Oh, that’s right.
The skins.
Well, it’s not the skin.
The skins definitely make it worse I feel like, but you know, you just get.
You should eat all your skin.
Yeah, that was great.
I trimmed the, yeah.
I trimmed the apple and then you eat it.
That was great.
So you were allergic to them without that.
So you just battled through.
Yeah, you just fight through it because apples are so good.
So I mean, they just make my mouth, my mouth itchy for a little bit.
You know, it’s not going to, it’s not going to kill me.
Actually the wife loves apples, so I’ll cut her up some apples and peanut butter and
I’ll take a couple and then I’ll just go, that was a mistake, but it was delicious.
Delicious mistake.
Yeah.
So yeah, I go with, I go with the honey Christmas well, although if I’m bacon anything, it’s
granny Smith all the way.
I was also kind of fascinated by the way that apples grow and I appreciate that he did some
some research in here because Charles Osgood is searching for a local apple just to some
sort of crazy varietal that no one’s had before, so I respect it, but he was talking about
the grafting process, but he didn’t really dive deep into it, but obviously was familiar
with it and apple trees are very interesting.
If you want to grow kind of an apple that can’t really survive in the current climate,
you basically, but you take whatever’s grown out of the ground for an apple tree, like
a little bit and you graph pretty much glue onto it, the fruiting part of the apple that
you want.
And then when it grows, it grows into the apple that you want, not the original apple
that was on that tree.
Like that’s how you make a hybrid or that’s a well, that’s also how you do hybrids from
a from my understanding, but it just in general, like if you had a granny Smith fruiting part
of a tree, you can find another apple tree that’s just starting out and like chop the
top off pretty much like tape the granny Smith part to it and it’ll grow into a granny Smith
tree.
Yeah.
Interesting.
My first stock up, which is doctors stock up doctors.
What can these folks not do?
So I don’t know how much you looked into Daniel Mason here, but he’s not only the author
of this book, but he’s practicing psychiatrist and teaches literature at Stanford.
He only writes on the side.
What’s pretty nice.
This is like Herman Melville or something.
It’s, it’s poetic.
The pros like you talked about it.
It’s like, I don’t even know how someone could come up with this stuff.
And this is his side gig.
Just before I was, and we may have talked about the pot.
I don’t know.
I was reading this other book called outlive.
I try to do a couple of like quote unquote self health books a year.
This one’s just about how to live longer and live healthier for long.
Outlive your enemies.
Yeah.
Yeah, pretty much.
But not just have a longer health span is what it’s called, not just lifespan, but so
be able to play sports until you’re older and all that stuff.
And the guy wrote it is a doctor, Peter, and he talks about all this stuff you have to
do.
And this is kind of the thing for all of these books where I just wonder how these people
find all the hours in the day, because also an important part of the book is sleep.
Like you have to sleep eight hours.
So that I’m doing the math.
Like, all right, that gives me 16 hours.
What do I do with this?
And he’s talking about all these different exercises you have to do and meditations and
then also pay attention to your kids and work your full time job.
I’m like, maybe if you’re a doctor, you can do this, but I as a simpleton cannot.
So I do not know how Daniel Mason was able to put this Pulitzer prize nominee together
as he’s doing his full time job and also teaching on the side.
But good for him.
You’ve ever edited or looked at a paper of a classmate that was like just top of the
class, go off and become some mathematician, but you read their papers and they’re like,
Oh, they also just could be an English person.
You know, like it’s not like they’re only good one thing.
They’re just brilliant.
So it’s not surprising that they’re also can be a writer if they wanted.
They could be a, you know, so it’s just, they’re just smart people in the world and it’s tumbling
and the actual word.
Oh, and the actual meaning of the word got it.
Well, if you say something nice to me, I’ll feel humble.
Thank you.
What else do you have for stock up?
Buddy love letters stock up.
Oh, you talking about those letters that you last week?
I wrote this note before it was revealed that the painter and poet were exchanging love
letters that are obviously gay.
But to be fair, right when this started, I was like, there’s no way these two guys are
not gay because there’s no way you’d write this eloquently and like over the top friendly
to just a random dude.
And there’s an issue with that.
Why do I think that immediately?
I’d love to have some buddy letters back and forth.
They’re just hyping people up gas and people.
Mm hmm.
I don’t know why that’s that’s frowned upon.
But you know, back in the day, I think it wasn’t as frowned upon.
And that’s why they could kind of initially get away with this.
But yeah, I want to bring this back and what it would actually happen when I was working
at with you and we used to have on Fridays, we’d have friends like email chains, just
like gas and everyone up.
It’d be like big weekend today, weekend coming up boys, like what’s everyone doing?
And it was like, it’s is a thing I looked forward to most.
And then on Mondays, there would be recaps of like what happened over the weekend and
funny stories.
And you just have these email chains and it was just love letters for buddies.
We didn’t bring those back.
I don’t know what happened to them.
I guess people have kids and got married.
But still it was that was my favorite part of the day.
I mean, I didn’t work.
So okay.
So I got a couple of thoughts here.
One is this this idea supposedly came to him because he was reading letters that have
come up between Nathaniel Hawthorne and Melville.
Yeah.
I don’t know who Melville is.
Herman Melville.
Herman Moore.
Detroit lines receiver.
You were a Moby Dick.
Okay.
Fair enough.
So there were letters between them that were I wouldn’t say salacious, but there was some
parts that could be considered of a sexual nature.
So there’s ideas that they might have been in some sort of love of hair.
So that was point one just for history and context.
Yeah.
So originally I saw this other thing on Reddit about these guys who send video messages
to their group.
So it’s like a group like our group would be like the two P’s boys.
And every Wednesday they send video messages to the group basically what’s going on with
their life.
What happened that week?
And they send them all and then their buddies gas them up.
You know what I mean?
There’s a gas to the other people up and you know it starts a conversation and then goes
into next Wednesday until they send another video.
So in terms of like a, I’m not going to say bro mants because it’s really a man-mance.
You know, it’s just a mance.
It was nice.
It seemed like something that I was like, wow, this would be great to do that I just obviously
never, never started.
And if that did happen, I would start to fret every Wednesday.
You know, shit, I didn’t do anything this week.
Like what am I going to share with the boys I don’t know.
I do think if you were like, you’re talking about the gardening stuff you’re doing.
If you were like, boys, progress in the garden, let’s go.
And you just did a video of that and it was 30 seconds.
I think everyone would appreciate that honestly.
Yeah, okay.
Well, maybe yeah, I’d show all the trees I cut down last week would have been something.
Nothing gets people more jazzed out than a before and after.
It doesn’t really matter what it is.
My next stock up is a little ode to Will Ferrell in boy that escalated quickly is the stock
up.
So after the Red Coat trader loyalist Charles Osgood dies, we get this nice story of his
daughter supporting one another and the care for the house, the property and one another.
That is until Mary one day just decides to go and axe Alice in half.
And I just want to say to Mary really that I think the message was clear after you chopped
down all of your father’s beloved apple trees, Alice was going to get the message.
Keep it in the family.
Don’t go with any guys, whatever the case is.
But also if you loved your sister so much that you were willing to sleep next to her
decomposing corpse for 10 years, maybe don’t brutally murder her.
It didn’t seem right, Mary.
That was then deserved that the trees didn’t deserve it.
Your father didn’t deserve that desecration to his land and his family.
So something was going on with Mary between the years.
I needed a little more background.
Were they actually identical twins or they?
Yeah, they were identical twins, but Alice was a little bit better.
Right, it didn’t make any sense that people would be like, Oh my God, Alice is like stop
you in the street.
Good looking.
And then they’re like, and then she’s identical to this girl.
And they’re like, gross, get a cutter out of here.
It’s like, what does that work?
Well, it’s interesting because my sister had a couple of twins who a pair of twins.
Oh, here we go.
Who are twins, Basil, that she was best friends with one of them.
And they were identical twins.
If you saw them from afar, you wouldn’t be able to tell them apart.
But when you got close, one was substantially better looking than the other.
So I can kind of understand this idea because of that experience that one daughter would
kind of know that she was uglier and also the fact that she’s not getting courted as
much.
But beauty is in the eye of the beholder people and conventional beauty that it doesn’t really
matter so much.
Like just Mary, the reason why people don’t come and knock on your doors because they
can see that deep inside of you, you’re an axe murderer.
You know, you have that in you.
You have that demon in your eye.
It has nothing to do with the way you look.
Like put yourself out there.
Alice wants to go out in the town and talk to people and do this and do that.
And Mary’s like, no, let’s just stay in this orchard and live our lives together.
It has nothing to do with beauty.
It has all the things to do with your personality, which is terrible.
Well, the problem was is that it’s a small town and you don’t have the ability to go
outside that.
The town only sees them too and it’s like going up and looking at like two cars and
it’s like, here’s like the convertible top down fucking money car and here’s the Toyota
Prius like next to it.
And it’s like, great.
Some people don’t like to guzzle gas.
If you’re going to only compare these two things, but if you bring that Toyota Prius
to another town and that and now all of a sudden becomes, oh, great.
Like, look, this is trying to Prius.
Awesome.
Now, but the fact of the matter is that if you were to go after Mary and you have, you
think there’s this distinct difference between them, then you just feel like you’re settling
for the lesser of the cars.
Maybe the better comparison is like, you know, like cars have different levels.
Yeah, sure.
There’s like the luxury level, but it’s the same car.
You’re saying Mary’s cloth seats.
No, no, no sunroof.
Yeah, you’re going to take a set and yeah, cloth seats rather than the fully tricked out
stereo system and leather seats.
And you’re like, I could have had those this whole time.
I do need heated seats.
So that’s a good point.
My last one is just post and beam houses because that’s what the cottage on the on the orchard
is.
And this is the house that we see throughout these 400 years as a post and beam house and
salt box as well.
And I myself do own a post and beam salt box house.
So yeah, you know, just got just got to do my own horn there, humbled, humbled myself.
I’m looking for that means, but nice.
Yeah, totally.
You know, even to my house, you know, there’s, there’s, yeah, I don’t know what’s different
between posts and beans.
That normal house is just like a new England house then, I would say, right?
No, it’s got posts and beams.
Doesn’t every house have posts and beams?
No, they have two by fours and not posts and beeps.
I mean, are they native posts two by fours?
I think the post and beam is the exposed the exposed beams.
Okay, it’s suppose being exposed posts that make up the structure of the house, although
there are two by fours in between to create the walls.
Oh, okay.
Kids been watching this old house a lot.
Haven’t you just been watching the Magnolia.
I’m going to be on the channel with Joanna Gaines.
I don’t know that is.
All right.
Yes, you do.
Chip and Joanna.
Come on.
All right.
I’m just going to go right into my stock down because the stock down is cock blockery,
which is back to our story about and Mary.
And there’s 11 other stories here, but the one that sticks out the most is that one.
Yeah, Mary’s got a chill.
You know, you’re not conjoined twins.
Let Alice meet a man if she wants to.
What’s the problem if she meets a guy and they bring, she brings him into the house,
like you’re still together.
They start a family and now you’re like a kick ass aunt helping out around the place.
It’s weird that you want to just be this spinster with your sister and age and only be friends
with each other.
It’s just, it’s a little weird.
So, so, so, so, so, so, I agreed.
I won’t talk about that.
I won’t talk with that story anymore.
That was, that was it.
Well, I’m going to bring it right back.
Okay.
My next stock down is ambiguous ghosts.
Was it just me or the, was the ghost things confusing to you?
The ghost?
It didn’t seem to have any laws or rules or what was going on there.
Give me a Casper, the friendly ghost.
Give me someone that’s not ambiguous.
I need to understand what the rules are in this ghost world that I can.
When you die, you can become a ghost or you sometimes go.
Yeah, but they’re haunting only certain people.
They like can communicate or they can hear them in certain people.
And then the, the slave catcher that goes to the house.
Salen.
Yeah.
Does he get killed by the ghost?
And that was so confusing to me that I never brought it back up.
The failing story almost reminded me of like a scary stories to tell in the dark because
it ends with him basically going in and seeing Mary and Alice, right?
In the under the floor.
Mm hmm.
And, and then it just like fades to black or cuts.
So you don’t know what happens.
It’s just like a fun, weird story.
And I’m glad he got his comeuppance because the only bounty hunter I respect is Boba Fett.
Yeah, and Django, but yeah.
Well, oh, oh, I’m sorry.
How dare I?
Yes.
Yes.
Django and Boba Fett, of course.
At first I was like Django Fett.
I thought his son’s name was something else, but isn’t his son’s name also like Django
Fett though?
Yeah.
Oh, you’re talking about Django and chain.
Yeah.
It was also about.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
No, yeah.
Interesting.
What a crossover there.
Nice to go.
Humble.
Humble.
Humble.
Humble.
When you die, they become ghosts and they live on the property.
It’s like that show that Caroline watches on CBS or.
Well, only certain people could see them though.
A bunch of people lived on the property and no one else noticed them.
I think we get a little bit more at the end with Nora when Nora becomes a ghost and says
all the things that she’s doing as a ghost.
And it seems like they can do absolutely nothing.
Like when they turned the house into a wedding venue or whatever the case was or they turned
they were going to destroy the house or destroy the orchards or something.
And she was like, oh, so me and Charles Osgood went out, grabbed a deer and brought a deer
into the wedding or into the bridal suite.
And then they stopped doing that.
You can remain unseen if you want to or you can be seen.
The problem is what you were talking about is when they showed themselves to Robert and
then they like diagnosed him with schizophrenia and was he schizophrenic?
Like the mom, there’s also the mom or the wife that was the same thing, right?
Yeah, the wife of the of the lodge owner.
It’s very confusing.
The wife or the lodge owner who heard the two men having coital and she couldn’t say sodomy.
So she had to say something else that was funny.
Yeah, rhymes with sodomy.
Yeah.
What an absent rhyme.
It was the same word.
Yeah.
So yeah, they, I don’t know, maybe they were into some voyeuristic stuff and they wanted
her to hear or maybe when you’re saying a lot of maybes.
This is my whole point.
Yeah.
Well, that’s part is we don’t know about the other side.
We don’t know about it.
Give me a little Casper.
Give me a little Harry Potter ghost.
Give me something.
What are the rules with Casper?
Devin Sawa dies and he becomes.
No, no, I’ve been called that a lot, but whatever.
Just because of your translucent skin.
Yeah, that’s right.
Don’t worry about that.
I respect it.
All right.
My stock down and I hate, I hate to do it.
I really do.
I don’t know.
Stock down, sir, David Attenborough.
It pains me to say that such an important man to planet Earth, but after a lifetime of
guiding us through the wonders of nature, he hasn’t come close to the majesty of the
play by play.
We get from Daniel Mason on Beatle Fuckery.
I don’t know how deeply you read that chapter or listened to it, presumably if you listed
the audio book, but there was some real Beatle, Coidus happening over several pages.
You know when you look up grimace gifts?
That was my expression for that whole chapter.
I was like, wait, are they talking about actual Beatles here?
Wait, when you mean grimace, do you mean the purple thing from the dogs?
No, I mean grimacing.
Oh, watches.
And I also looked like that because I was embarrassed.
I was purple, you know, either way.
So you’re grimacing it at the explanation of the Beatles stuff.
Any time we’ve read a book that has any sort of intercourse in it, I’m always like, this
makes me uncomfortable.
And this was just like, oh, this makes me very uncomfortable.
I don’t know what’s going on with this Beatles stuff.
So are you saying that this Beatles stuff made you more uncomfortable than 50 Shades?
50 Shades.
All right, at least I can, you know, picture this.
The Beatles stuff they’re like, and then the Beatles thrust.
It’s hard.
I’m like, oh, right.
What the hell?
He used a word for the Beatles penis that I don’t remember, but if you thought that was
uncomfortable back to that NPR interview, I was talking about.
It was in front of a live audience.
It wasn’t just like in a studio.
And at the beginning, he says that his mother-in-law is in the audience, like she came to listen
to the chat.
And the host has the gall to not only bring up the Beatles sex scene, but to hand to him
her book and have him read two paragraphs of the Beatles having sex in front of his own
mother-in-law.
Yeah, that’s a hard pass.
So I was like, wow, whoever this NPR host is, like that’s…
It was just also hard to imagine Paul McCartney and John Lennon like that, you know?
So that was the biggest, all right, I’ll be here all week.
Here we go.
What else have you ever stocked up?
Not having a bookmark stocked down.
I did read the audiobook for this and by reading, I mean, listen.
And honestly, I’ve never used bookmarks.
There’s never been something I’ve ever used.
I just don’t know why, but I just never do it.
But this book, after listening to it, I would need a bookmark.
I’d put it down for 15 minutes, come back and start listening again.
And I’m like, where am I?
Who am I?
What’s going on?
I’d have to like back it up like five minutes to like repeat.
There was so much change going on constantly.
And then the narrative wasn’t exactly right to the point.
There’d be points where it was just like, wait, what person is this?
And where is it going on?
And then it references something from like four stories ago.
It was way, way over my head.
I really, really needed a previously on alias or lost or Lois and Clark.
I needed one of those so I could just get back into it.
This is like watching a TV show back in the day and then two weeks later, you pick it
back up and you’re like, what did I just watch?
But a thousand times harder to remember.
And it would be 15 minutes different than I would forget.
Yeah, I would suggest for those that haven’t listened to it yet.
And if you are Reddit and if you’re listening to us and you haven’t already, I’d apologize.
Alice dies to Mary’s axe.
But to stop at the end of chapters or specifically like the end of a storyline of the chapter
because it’s hard to in the middle, especially because it’s interposed with these like articles
or letters or whatnot.
And sometimes like that letter will go first and then the story will come after that.
So you don’t even know who the characters are really.
When you read this whole letter and then the story kind of fills you in to what was actually
happening in that letter.
And once you got comfortable with certain characters, they’re like, and we’ll never see
it in a minute.
I did like those totems or whatnot that came up between the stories, you know, whether
that be the axe head that they would find later.
And I thought it was interesting that you’d have this axe head where Mary brutally murdered
her sister with it.
And then someone finds it a hundred years later and is like, oh, this is a cool accent.
Like I’ll use it on the property.
I just got a new handle for it.
It’s like, wow, like you don’t even know that you’re handling a murder weapon.
Like all the memory of that or even the Bible that was from our second story of the woman
who lived in the house when she was kidnapped or whatever the case was, that’s all marked
up.
Like that Bible ends up in Canada and then ends up in someone else’s and they don’t even
know the history behind the person.
So I thought that was awesome.
But at the same time, kind of sad in the sense that these things that matter so much to us,
if someone else found them down the road, it would just be a thing to them.
It’s funny how much we put into, I mean, we’re a consumer society.
So how much weight we put into things that are just our things and to us, they matter.
But if to someone else, they’re just trash or used for something totally different.
I would also just end with it.
I think this was the anti beach book.
It’s like a cold mystery, wintery beach book.
You want it to be like, everything’s good, very quick pace.
And you know the characters that don’t have to think a lot, pick it back up, jump in the
water, pick it, you know, this was the opposite of that.
You had to be like, have your study guide ready to go when you were at this one.
Yeah, I agree.
I think, I mean, we’ll probably talk a little bit more when we say whether we, you know,
would recommend it or not.
But I felt personally like it was a good change of pace as to all of the talking about pace,
like all the fast paced, thriller-y type stuff or sci-fi or fantasy stuff that we read,
where I totally agree with you, this is a leather chair in front of a fire, got nothing
else going on, grab a glass of brown if that’s your thing.
It’s not mine.
So I’ll have a cosmopolitan or something.
And you know, just just kind of sit there and don’t feel like you need to be turning
the page because when I’m reading a thriller, I’m like, Oh, turn the page.
I got to keep on with the story where this is like, Oh, kind of let that poetic wording
hit you or not and just move on.
You know, it’s like, you know, kind of take it slow, take it slow.
My next stock down is the historical society of Western Massachusetts.
So I think the character in this chapter was about a guy named Morris.
I don’t remember the, the character’s name and I went back to listen to that chapter,
but then they never said his name and I was like, I’m listening to this book all over again.
Like, I’m not ready for this.
So I’m just going to go with Morris.
But Morris had as faced some tragedy in his life.
His wife left him for another man.
He called himself a cuck.
So, you know, if you’re calling yourself a cock, it’s just not, not a good time.
She eventually returned to him when she was diagnosed with cancer.
Morris took her back in and cared for her and tell her death.
And he’s now a widower through this whole experience.
He found solace in the historical society of Western Massachusetts, an organization of
like-minded amateur archeologists and metal detectors.
And it seems foreignigators.
Yeah.
Morris used these meetings to woo some lonely ladies.
So what?
That’s not grounds in my mind to kick him out.
How dare you, honestly?
It would be key for you.
For you, this would be like your flag football team kicking you out if you made a pass at
the quarterback during a post victory gated at the local watering hole, you know?
A pass like he passed the ball to me or a pass.
Yeah, right.
No, like you made a pass at him.
Yeah, okay.
So people meet each other in all different places and have all different interests in
those relationships.
So if these women are interested and willing and consent to sleeping with Morris, whether
that’s because his wife died or because he’s a great archeologist, whatever the case is,
it’s none of the business of the historical society of Western Massachusetts and its leaders.
I honestly think that these male leaders who kicked him out, they’re jealous because-
Yeah.
Okay.
So you had some meetings and he’s given some winks to the ladies and then they sleep with
him.
He ended up finding this very interesting story about these deaths in Western Massachusetts,
just doing all the research for it and they won’t let him present to the society because
they kicked him out because he slept with a couple of the ladies.
Like give me a break.
Ridiculous.
I also think like the best place to meet someone is one of these groups that is a social group
because you can see the person in their zone, what they’re like in public, what their interests
are, things like that.
When you go into these clubs and things like that, you’re being yourself right away.
You’re not having to put on your date face, you know what I mean?
So you kind of get to see that- Yeah, people are in a comfortable environment that they
want to be in and so totally like you said, like you can be your authentic self and those
people can take you for your authentic self or not and it doesn’t matter one way or the
other but if they’re taking more as first authentic self then what, it happened.
You know, let that beetle love go down.
A lot of people I think would say that you go to the club and you shouldn’t have to be
harassed by people, all this stuff.
I don’t think you’re saying that but I think that people would argue that.
Oh no, I mean I think that’s fair.
I didn’t get from what- Yeah, he didn’t seem like a- It didn’t-
A raster.
I mean he’s obviously really into what this historical society does.
You know, it’s not like he’s going to a book club where it’s one guy and a bunch of ladies
and he’s like, I didn’t read the book but who’s coming home with me tonight?
You know, it’s not- I tried that, it doesn’t work.
It doesn’t sound like just eating all the little hand sandwiches and the wine and, you
know, cheese and crackers.
My company does a book club that’s only in the women’s chat.
I was like, what the fuck?
I want to read books in the book club.
What the hell is this?
Someone told me about it.
They’re like, oh you should- we should add it to the book club and I’m like, I’m in
the book club chat.
What are they talking about?
They’re like, oh yeah, it’s only in like the women’s club.
Oh cool, like I guess guys don’t like to read it.
So that’s why we made this right here.
I’m angry.
But you know what, to be fair, feel like guys in businesses and whatnot have like sports
clubs and they don’t invite women into it.
And that did not exist where we worked together.
Like it was all inclusive anyone could join for both things.
But I could see how there’s an idea of a barrier to entry into like that kind of thing.
So you know, if they want their own thing fine, but at the same time, it’s- I don’t think
it’s a good look.
I think everyone’s-
But there’s co-ed sport leagues.
Like that’s not crazy.
Yeah, no, I’m crazy.
Like we did that co-ed bowling league with- we had a team of all guys and we won.
Nice.
Nice.
I was going to say favorite scene, but this definitely isn’t like a scene book.
But maybe we can do like a favorite storyline.
So I did write down the ones I could remember and I think I got 11.
Granted, I don’t know if these are the actual ones because I think some of them weren’t
maybe the full story.
So whatever, I might be missing some, but we got the Puritan couple who starts the house
at the beginning.
I believe in Puritan colony to build house.
The female settler that gets kidnapped by the Native Americans and turned into the house.
Fail in the slave catcher or bounty hunter.
The Osgoods.
So you have both Charlie’s story and his daughters.
The painter William and his lover, Rasmus.
Anastasia, the phony clairvoyant.
Daughter of the hunting lodge owner with her son, Robert, who has this schizophrenia.
The archeology guy, I think we settled on Morris.
Then there’s animal stuff.
So there’s a panther.
There’s some Randy Beatles.
There’s fungus.
And oh, this is an animal.
Why guess it is?
Was a panther one a poem?
I didn’t get it.
Okay.
All right.
Good.
Because I was like, when did the panther come?
I know it’s the cover.
I’m like, I don’t remember this at all.
I don’t understand any of the poems.
Okay.
The poem, when that poem happened and there’s also a fungus poem, I think, those two right
over my head.
And then the last one I could remember was the last one of the book, which is Nora’s
story, which Nora’s story I feel like is almost the theatrical version of the ghost
situation, where she dies in a car crash because she’s swerving to an American band.
American gods ask, I feel like the ending man.
Yeah.
Yeah, I could see that.
And she doesn’t realize she’s dead, but meets Charles Osgoode and he gives her, you
know, kind of the lay of the land of being a ghost.
And then it kind of goes for maybe another hundred years or so of the house and then
the house getting destroyed.
And I think there’s like a dystopian moment going on there where there’s no more people
around and then people come back.
Lots of stuff happening.
But out of those stories, which one, and I’m going to say you can’t pick Mary and Alice.
Yeah, I wasn’t going to, I was going to actually pick the Anastasia one.
Okay.
I actually liked that one a lot, although the sexual stuff again, I was like, I don’t
know.
This seems weird.
And was she like conning him by having sex with?
I didn’t know.
No, she just.
She’s just voracious.
Oh, okay.
But they also, I feel like our buddy, Dr. Daniel Mason, went out of his way to keep explaining
how fat she was, which was a little weird.
But I did like that.
I like any confidence person, like any sort of con.
So yeah, I’m always a big fan of that.
I actually did a blog back in the day with my top five cons.
I got to look back up.
Real life cons or movies?
Yeah, real life cons because there’s like a whole Wikipedia page on, you could like
look it up of like confidence games, like like different ones you can do.
Yeah.
Kind of interesting.
The violin, that’s a classic, right?
What movie is that from?
It’s like a guy goes in and says he’s got a cell of violin and it’s like super like
expensive.
And then another guy comes in and he’s like, let me get that violin.
Have you ever seen the sting?
The movie, Robert Redford and Paul Newman?
No.
You should watch that.
It’s a great con.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
So I got to look at the ultimate confidence and then it became like the green mile, which
I just think this is actually writing was a little bit like a lot of Stephen King feels
to this to me.
I don’t know if you’re feeling that, but there’s a lot of like supernatural, but also tangents
of stuff going on and I didn’t know why there’s tangents on them.
But very Stephen Kinnek, King asking some instances and it was up north, you know, northeast?
Yeah.
So a lot of northeast references.
I did enjoy how she’s the phoniest of all cons.
Although she was very good at her con.
But she was really good.
Yeah.
She had all the tricks and, you know, literally tricks up her sleeve, but did also like how
that story ended with her doing the seance and then hearing the actual ghost and be like,
what the fuck?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Cut to black.
That’s a green mile.
I’m talking about where like the magic stuff starts happening.
Yeah.
That was another thing that was found later on.
They found her crystal ball and they were like, well, what the heck’s a crystal ball
doing here?
But yeah, can’t say I remember the green mile.
Honestly, that’s, I feel bad.
I don’t, I don’t remember that film.
Tom Hanks has like some, I think a venereal disease and he like sucks it out of them.
But you don’t have to, I don’t think I’m making that up.
I think that’s true.
Pardon me.
I really liked, I mean, the Ozgood story, like Charles’ story, not his daughter’s story.
Like Charles is his lone story, but the apples.
I really enjoyed.
And I also enjoyed William and Erasmus’ story.
It felt like a classic.
What is it?
I think it’s love or whatever the case is where William loves him so much.
Erasmus’ is, but they can’t be together.
A little bit of Shakespeare in love.
I don’t know if you’ve seen that since we last talked, but.
What do you think happened there, by the way?
So he just, they were basically communicating.
He visited and then just went radio silent.
I think his wife found the letters and was basically like, you either pick us or him kind
of thing, gave him the ultimatum and he was like, okay, I’m going to pick you.
But then his wife died because he says wife died.
Like, let me ask you something.
You’re the maid that nooks him back to health there.
Are you ripping up that letter also?
Me personally?
Yeah.
A thousand percent.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You’re going to kill the other way of being like, of course not.
I want to see unbridled love.
No, no, no, no.
Love the honesty.
Yeah.
I’d be like, I love this guy now.
He’s only got so much more to live.
What am I going to take care of two old guys who are loving each other?
Yeah.
And now it is on me.
Like no, I didn’t sign up for that.
I’m not ripping it up.
I’m basically tripping and falling and throwing it into the fire.
Oh, what happened to that letter?
That’s crazy.
It’s one of those things where I’m like tricking myself into thinking I didn’t read it and
then throwing it into the fire.
Yeah, because you do have to live with the fact that you’re a total piece of shit afterwards.
Yeah, yeah.
Of course.
Because you know, she’s a terrible person.
Like he, this is the love of his life.
He almost killed himself over this man.
And now he wants to get together with him and you think he’s gonna read that.
So yeah.
What a great answer.
I’m glad I asked that.
Yeah.
But yeah, so I like that story too.
And then yeah, that was about it.
I thought the more story was pretty good.
They were all good except for some of the poems stuff in there and the songs I wasn’t
really into.
Let’s go to a quick love.
Hey, what’d you love?
When I actually get into the story and I got my bearings, I think the story were captivating
and interesting.
I think they’re all original.
He wrote different variations of different characters, good and bad.
I thought it was really, really cool.
And I did think it was kind of like cloud Alice.
I’ve referenced that book a few times, but it’s similar where they have like all these
different stories and different points of view.
Yeah.
That book was very hard to read also.
So, but yeah, it was very similar.
Remind me of that in that sense.
I didn’t read that book.
I started the movie and I’m one of those people that like you start a movie, you have to
finish it.
Like there’s no rules.
I watched like 20 minutes that movie.
I was like, I’m out.
Like no, thank you.
I am out.
I think I’ve told you before that the movie I thought was a hundred times right in the
book.
So just imagine.
Like I also know the payoff that’s coming in the movie.
So it’s like, okay, I’ll stick around because I know they’re jumping, but I know they’re
going to come back and they’re going to finish the stories.
What I loved is it’s a novel idea, pun totally intended, but we’re talking 12 chapters, 12
different perspectives and time periods, 12 months in the Northwoods.
And more impressive is it’s 12 different writing styles.
Like he writes as different people in different ways going through time.
I don’t know when they say that baseball player is a five tool player.
I’d have no idea what that means.
You probably do, but he’s doing five tool playing of literature.
Like he can do it all.
So I thought that was something I’ve never seen before in a book.
And that fact alone, I was impressed by.
Okay.
Yeah.
So what is the five tool player?
I think it’s hitting, hitting for power, running, fielding and throwing.
I think those are the five tools.
How do you measure throwing?
Like, if you have a good arm.
Oh, got you.
So it’s not like there’s no stats behind it.
Just like, oh, that guy can do it all.
What else do you love?
This might not be a love really, but I thought it was good to do an audio book for this because
I wouldn’t have finished this as a physical book.
I feel like my rate of zone out audio book wise is very low to low rate reading wise.
I like the reason I don’t love reading is because I like zone out.
I like will read a paragraph.
I read ridiculously slow and then I don’t know what I read, you know, and then I’ll go back
where this was, I thought I did that a lot and it was an audio book.
So good as an audio book.
That’s what that way.
That’s more of a love hate there.
Yeah.
No, I get what you’re saying.
And especially for me where I’m mostly listening to this while I’m walking the dog or toiling
in the yard or putting away groceries, whatever the case is, those things are mindless.
So I can do those things.
And then also I’m focusing on the book.
So it helps with the focus on the book because I’m not just saying they’re reading it being
like letting my thoughts wander to something else, you know, because like sometimes you’re
reading it and you like read 10 pages and you’re like, what did I read?
I have no idea.
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
My last love is I just thought it was fun to experience real literature.
We don’t do that a lot here and I’m okay with that.
I like all the books we read and I like kind of our wheelhouse that we stick with, but
this was a fun kind of deviation from that.
It felt like I was listening to 11 hours of poetry that I could mostly understand.
You know, if someone said, Hey, read this Shakespeare play or whatever the case was,
I’d be like, I don’t know what any of this stuff means.
It sounds beautiful, but I don’t know what that means.
This was like, it sounds beautiful.
And I think I know what it means.
And a lot of times I was just stopping, like there’d be a great paragraph of stuff he
would say.
And I was like, how does someone come up with a book of this?
Like I couldn’t even imagine coming up with a paragraph of something that this is beautifully
written.
If I came up with one of these ideas, I’d be like, I’m a genius.
I’m going to write a whole book on it.
And he was like, I’ll just cut it in one twelfth.
Yeah.
Like my mom was big into throw growing up and maybe that’s just because, you know, we grew
up in that area.
Well, my grandfather was as well, but whatever the case is, she would have that book around
and like sometimes you poke in and you start reading some of it.
And it’s like, I don’t understand anything that’s going on, but it’s beautiful about
nature.
Like I understand that this is beautiful about nature.
So this felt a little bit like that, but then in a story or form.
Yeah, you know, it’s like Walden Pond, I guess.
What about hates?
Hey, for me, it was kind of forgettable.
I told you I had to look up the plot after because I was like, what happened again?
That’s never a good thing to be necessarily.
But I think it’s more because it’s, it’s a lot in a lot of characters and a lot of different
stories that you, when you listed out everything, I remember all of them like, oh yeah, but
I like, I would have not been able to go through like you just did and name all 12.
There was a lot of tangent stuff.
I already mentioned this, but I feel like in this type of story, you kind of need to
stick in the fucking lane.
You can’t be telling me about how Mary and Alice went off and talked to a Native American
for 10 minutes.
And I’m like, what does this have to do with anything?
Like, you know, if you’re going to give me this character for 30 minutes of the book,
I need you to lock in and tell me what’s going on with this story, you know, whereas like
there’s definitely some stuff that was rambling and seemed like that I was well outside the
range of, and maybe that’s supposed to build the character, but I didn’t pick up much from
those.
No, I think that’s a criticism that other people have had just from what I’ve read on
like criticisms of the book in general.
So yeah, just like that the characters weren’t necessarily like fleshed out, then they happen
so quickly and they kind of move on to something else.
But for me, you know, my only real hate is it’s a bit too creative and smart for me.
It’s like I was, you know, in the waiting room at a dentist and some snot knows kid already
took the highlights magazine that I was eyeing and, you know, the
You’re in New Yorker exactly.
The only thing that was left was the New Yorker and I pick it up and read it.
Sure.
But will I understand all the big words unlikely?
You know, I almost had sometimes felt bad reading it because I couldn’t give it the level
of respect that I’m sure it deserved.
It’d be like sitting down at a three Michelin star restaurant, but I’d burnt my tongue
on coffee that morning so I couldn’t taste anything.
And they’re explaining to me all these amazing dishes that’s taken them all day to create.
And I’m like, I can’t taste any of this stuff.
What you’re saying is my brain is a permanently burnt time.
Is that what you’re saying?
Our brain.
Our brain.
Okay.
Yes, that’s exactly what I was saying.
So, you know, I didn’t hate it necessarily.
It’s just like I’m just not that literature.
It was.
And I did read Moby Dick over the last two years because I read it and then I put it
down and I picked it up again.
And it did feel a lot like that where I understood the story that was going on in the background,
but then there’s these long chapters of better explaining stuff.
And it’s beautifully explaining whaling and whales.
But I was like, I, what are these words?
I don’t even know.
You have any lingering questions?
I do not.
I have one and it’s just, do you believe in ghosts?
I think if I’m in a situation of this type of place where you’re only a log cabin out
in the woods, then yes, I’m not going to say no, but I’m not going to say yes.
But if I’m in the situation, I would say yes.
That makes sense.
Yeah.
Yeah, it does.
Like if you were in a cabin in the woods, you’d be freaked out a little bit.
Like creeks and stuff would freak you out and it wouldn’t be people.
It’d be the ether.
Yeah.
I think that’s totally fair.
I agree with you.
All those ghost shows when they go into these crazy places, those are all fake.
But would I do that on my own?
Absolutely not.
I suppose my, you know, house I grew up in is haunted, quote unquote other people have
had ghost experiences.
And I thought I had over the years as a child, but looking back, I think I can explain them
rationally, but at the time they were scary.
I’m kind of with you.
I don’t believe I don’t not believe, but I would be scared of that situation.
It’s like when you go to the zoo, you know, it’s hard to believe that a giraffe exists
and then you see it and you’re like, Oh shit, okay, I guess it does exist.
You know, that’s one of those things.
So once you’re in the setting, you get it.
Yeah, if like we didn’t have zoo books as a kid and I had never heard of a giraffe and
someone around a campfire was explaining to me about this mythical animal called a giraffe,
I would say that’s bullshit.
Nick is 10 feet long.
Yeah, right.
What has seven vertebrae?
Yeah.
How does that make any sense?
Northwoods Daniel Mason, doctor Daniel Mason.
What do we think?
Would you recommend it?
Not for me.
There’s definitely books we’ve read here that I would get on my pedestal and be like,
this book is terrible.
I hated it.
Well, this book is like, it’s above anything that I could read.
It’s above my pay grade.
I’ve read other books that are, I would say beautiful prose and I think that had a little
bit better stories in this, but that’s just, this is just not my book.
I don’t want to bash it because again, I just, I don’t understand it that well.
It’s not my time for me to criticize it.
Yeah, I feel like this must be high up on the recent book club books.
I would not recommend it to most people I know.
I think like my mom, for example, is in a book club.
I just talked to her before this.
She said, what have you read?
I actually was reading, what’s the kvoth book?
The name of the wind.
Oh, really?
That’s a book club book?
No, it’s not.
It’s like, is this for your book club?
She was like, no, it’s my accountant recommended it to me.
It’s like, look, okay.
She says it’s favorite book.
I was like, pretty cool accountant.
Yeah, granted the rest of them kind of suck.
She was like, oh, I’m reading this.
And, you know, I suggested this book for her book club because, you know, it’s up for,
it was up for Pulitzer Prize.
Oh, wait, actually, is that for a Pulitzer?
I didn’t know that.
Well, I think that I don’t think it won, but it was a finalist.
Wow.
And she’s got this ladies book club.
So I think it’d be good for that, where they like literature.
You know, they want to read literature, but I mean, they want to read all sorts of stuff.
They’re like prose.
But I think this is something that if you suggested could be good for that kind of format.
My buddy who suggested to me is a teacher, you know, is an English teacher, so that checks
out.
I liked it.
I’m glad I read it.
It was a nice change of pace.
But do I want to get back to sci-fi and fantasy and thriller-y type stuff?
Yeah, I think I’m ready for that.
So I wouldn’t recommend it, but I wouldn’t bash it, you know?
Okay.
Yeah, I think we’re on the same page.
Speaking about all the things that are in our wheelhouse, what do we have coming up next?
The Righteous Arrow by Brian J. Mora.
This is a new book that is coming out.
It comes out April 16th.
Righteous Arrow.
And we’re doing an interview with it.
Yep.
Sweet.
So if you guys want to check in for Righteous Arrow, you can now get yourself a copy.
So order yourself wherever you eat your book.
Check us out next week for that.
Otherwise, Keith, this was North Woods and it was fun to talk to you about it.
I actually think we got a lot more content out of this than I expected.
Yeah, yeah.
I had no notes at first.
So I’m glad we were able to get some stuff.
Well, good talk to you, buddy.
All right.
Bye now.
Bye now.