Daniel Mason - "A registry of my passage upon earth"

 Collectin of short(er) stories. Few of them actually grabbed me. 

That, he said, was why he no longer trusted his counselors, who ahd the intelligence of a fiteen-year-old bride, with none of the advantages.

(from "The Miraculous Discovery of Passmetichus I")

Daniel Mason - "The Winter Soldier"

Breathtaking book of a doctor in the first world war. As always, Masons' style is sublime. The landscape, the people.

The doctor ends up in working in a remote village, slowly learning and discovering the devout nurse's background. More than a bland love story, it's a fascinating view, no matter how fictitious.




    'Mother isn't anything if not blunt.'
    'My interest is yours,' she said, now utterly still. 'You are how old?'
    'Please, Mother. You don't need me to say it. I believe you were present at my birth.'



It occured to him that he had never seen a woman completely naked who wasn't on an autopsy slab, but decided this unsaid thought was best kept to himself.



    Moreover, said Zimmer, to Anna's credit, she even volunteered. Of course, mostly she read war poetry, and when she tended to teh men, it was above the waist only and not on the face, and she didn't like any wound with blood or pus.
    "What kind of wound is that?" asked Lucius.
    "So Mostly she reads war poetry," said Zimmer. But still she volunteered.



Again he looked at the girl, and as a man of science, he understood how it has happened - the rain, the ghost, the chemistries of memory, the magic way that crystals appeared out of solution, before dissolving once more into its haze.




He began to walk faster, skipped, and broke into a run, colliding into a young couple scurrying off beneath a newspaper glistening with rain. Another collision, this time with a man carrying his dog. The crowd seemed to converg: a policeman in black oicloth, a trio of young men in bowlers, a woman heaving a kicking child. He pushed through them, now not bothering to apologize, as little eddies of outrage exploded in his wake.

Erin Morgenstern - "The Night Circus"

A style like "Mechanique", hints of Daniel Mason. Presetn time writing, where often in a paragraph time flows fast and people are described by their actions, or actions put upon them. The end of chapters or half chapters are often one or two-liners, not exactly twisting the story line, but emphasizing an unexpected element, negating something one might have assumed.

Now finished... I liked it a lot. There's some comments on story, but hardly anything that matters. Cool book. Go read.

Daniel Mason - "A Far Country"

As poetic as "The Pianotuner"

There's not many quotes I wrote down. If I would have done so, half the book would be printed here.

When she thought of him now, she realized she couldn't remember his entire face, only fragments of it. He is ceasing to be, she thought, but then later she wondered: Maybe I am getting closer, to that place where a person breaks into pieces - a walk, a laugh, a smell, the strength in an arm. Isaias used to say this when they told stories of grandparents or aunts who were gone. Think, he said, of people you know, You don't know their faces, You know bits of them, their movement, their voice, The closer you are, the more broken they become.

Used this book while writing. Reading a few pages and then writing. It helped a lot to eliminate so many useless words, empty sentences.