Photo courtesy of Neeru and Asish Patel.
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by Amie Barrodale
Trip: A Novel by Amie Barrodale follows a woman who embarks on a journey to the afterlife to help her son, who is lost at sea. Her voyage begins on a limbo-drifting ghost ship, blending humor and emotion as she explores the body and mind. Barrodale skillfully combines humor with poignant moments, making the supernatural feel personal. The book moved me, reflecting the emotional tides between mother and son.
Sandra dies suddenly at a death conference in Nepal. Days later in America, her son, Trip, runs away with a man. Sandra tries to send a message to Trip through the mystics, but they are distracted while her son and the man set out to sea.
Amie Barrodale‘s first novel follows the unpredictable journey of Sandra and her son, Trip, as they navigate the realms of restless souls and Buddhist deities. As they move between life and death, Sandra’s unwavering devotion to saving her child and striving to be a good mother anchors the narrative, propelling it forward with emotional depth and urgency. This book will particularly resonate with fans of literary fiction, magical realism, and those intrigued by philosophical explorations of life and death. Readers who appreciate stories rich in emotional complexity and spiritual themes will find themselves eagerly immersed in this enthralling tale.
Wide-eyed with wonder, hilariously funny and painfully moving, Trip: A Novel reveals the deeper meaning of The Tibetan Book of the Dead: the past is a memory, the future is a projection, the present disappears before we can see it.
Amie Barrodale’s stories and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, Harper’s Magazine, and other publications. In 2012, she was awarded The Paris Review’s Plimpton Prize for Fiction for her story “William Wei.” She is the author of You Are Having a Good Time: Stories.
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by Helen Garner
Stories: The Collected Short Fiction by Helen Garner, one of Australia’s most cherished writers, is featured as a Most Anticipated Book of the Year by The New Yorker. This collection presents a finely crafted assortment of short stories showcasing Garner’s “generous, category-defying imagination,” as noted by the New York Times Book Review. Helen Garner is best known for her frank, unsparing, and intricate portraits of Australian life.
A woman sends postcards from the beautiful Gold Coast to a former lover. A chorus of voices from her hometown gossips about a friend who has returned after going astray. A young girl discovers a hidden box filled with frightening secrets.
In Stories, you will find a collection of short fiction from a unique literary voice. These tales explore the complexities of love and longing, capturing the pain, darkness, and joy of life, all conveyed with Garner’s characteristic sharpness, honesty, and humor. Each story stands on its own as a perfect piece, but together they showcase the remarkable talent of a master of various literary forms.
Helen Garner is an accomplished writer known for her novels, short stories, screenplays, and non-fiction works. In 2006, she received the inaugural Melbourne Prize for Literature. A decade later, in 2016, she was honored with the prestigious Windham-Campbell Literature Prize for Non-Fiction. In 2019, she received the Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature.
Among her notable works are Monkey Grip, The Children’s Bach, Cosmo Cosmolino, The Spare Room, The First Stone, This House of Grief, and Everywhere I Look. Her diaries, titled Yellow Notebook, One Day I’ll Remember This, and How to End a Story, were published together as a single volume in the United States.
Discover your next favorite book and dive into a world of curated, exciting reads by purchasing through my links. You’ll have access to a diverse selection of books I’ve personally vetted for quality and enjoyment. Supporting these selections not only helps me continue to provide you with personalized recommendations but also ensures you have access to meaningful stories that enrich your life. Your support truly makes a difference in helping me share more books and insights with you!
by Rebecca Roanhorse
Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse. Black Sun is the first book in the Between Earth and Sky trilogy, inspired by the civilizations of the Pre-Columbian Americas and woven into a tale of celestial prophecies, political intrigue, and forbidden magic.
I have always enjoyed fantasy novels like Black Sun, and this is the first one set in the Pre-Columbian Americas.
A god will return
When the earth and sky converge
Under the black sunIn the holy city of Tova, the winter solstice is usually a time for celebration and renewal, but this year, it coincides with a solar eclipse, a rare celestial event proscribed by the Sun Priest as an unbalancing of the world.
Meanwhile, a ship launches from a distant city bound for Tova and set to arrive on the solstice. The captain of the ship, Xiala, is a disgraced Teek whose song can calm the waters around her as quickly as it can warp a man’s mind. Her ship carries one passenger. Described as harmless, the passenger, Serapio, is a young man, blind, scarred, and cloaked in destiny. As Xiala well knows, when a man is described as harmless, he usually ends up being a villain.
Will Serapio be harmless or a villain? The answer, my friend, will be known when you read this book or perhaps the second one in the trilogy.
Before meeting and falling forever in love with Jan, I had dreamed of the life of an American Studies professor. Thousands of students are relieved to know I did not pursue that life. If I had opened that door, an area of focus would have been on Pre-Columbian Americas.
I recommend this book and will read the next two in the Between Earth and Sky trilogy.
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by Ocean Vuong
In “The Emperor of Gladness,” Ocean Vuong explores the interconnected themes of history, memory, and time, revealing how love, labor, and loneliness are the foundation of American life. At its core, the narrative presents a courageous epic that examines what it means to live on the margins of society and confront the wounds that affect our shared humanity. It highlights the lengths we are willing to go to grasp one of life’s most fleeting gifts: a second chance.
One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak, with the power to transform Hai’s relationship with himself, his family, and a community on the brink.
Hallmarks of Ocean Vuong‘s writing—formal innovation, syntactic dexterity, and the ability to twin grit with grace through tenderness—are on full display in this story.
Ocean Vuong is the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collections Night Sky with Exit Wounds and Time Is a Mother, as well as the New York Times bestselling novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. A recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and the American Book Award, he once worked as a fast-food server, which inspired The Emperor of Gladness. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, he currently splits his time between Northampton, Massachusetts, and New York City.
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by Viktor E. Frankl
I recall reading portions of Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl at various times, but I never completed the book. However, recently, eight and a half months after Jan’s passing, my wife and I were discussing in one of my groups. Frankl’s theory of logotherapy, which derives from the Greek word for “meaning,” centers around the idea that the primary human drive is not pleasure, as Freud believed, but rather the search for what gives life meaning. I now have a framework for my life without Jan.
For those like me who are widows, Frankl understands suffering,
In some ways, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.
Jan and I lived meaningful lives. My challenge now is to continue to find meaning in my life without Jan.
As Frankl writes,
Those who have a ‘why’ to live can bear with almost any ‘how.
The love Jan and I shared was one of my primary sources of meaning. In addition, I stopped working full-time at the end of 2018 and struggled to replace the purpose I had gained from repairing the world. After Jan died, I suffered the “provisional existence of an unknown limit, ” which Frankl experienced when he was in the concentration camps.
I have replaced the loss of meaning and purpose with a series of activities:
I am also beginning to serve on the board of a few non-profits. It is time to transition from hands-on work to providing leadership in a different way.
Will this be enough to give my life meaning?
Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life, and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life, he can only respond by being responsible.
I must continue to focus on my search for meaning, as life will inevitably change over time.
My grief journey has taught me that love never dies,
For the first time in my life, I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth – that Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry, thought, and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.
My path forward is to keep Jan’s love alive and continue to share it with others.
I recommend this book without reservation.
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by Sharon Brous
Sharon Brous, a prominent American rabbi, argues in The Amen Effect: Ancient Wisdom to Heal Our Hearts and Mend Our Broken World that the essential spiritual work of our time—though instinctual and often countercultural—focuses on connecting through celebration, sorrow, and solidarity. We must support one another in times of joy and pain, embracing vulnerability and possibility, nurturing relationships with shared purposes, and creating communities centered on care.
From one of our country’s most prominent rabbis comes this inspiring book about the power of community, based on one of her most impactful sermons. What will it take to mend our broken hearts and rebuild our society in a time of loneliness, isolation, social rupture, and alienation?
Brous contends that honoring our most basic human instinct—the yearning for authentic connection—is the way to reawaken our shared humanity and begin the healing process. This kind of sacred presence is captured by the word amen, a powerful ancient idea that we affirm the fullness of one another’s experience by demonstrating, in body and word: “I see you. You are not alone.”
An acclaimed preacher and storyteller, Brous pairs heart-driven anecdotes from her experience building and pastoring to a leading-edge faith community over the past two decades with ancient Jewish wisdom and contemporary science. The result is a clarion call: the sense of belonging engendered by our genuine presence is both a social and biological need, as well as a moral and spiritual necessity.
With original insights and practical tools, The Amen Effect translates foundational ideas into simple practices that connect us to our better angels, offering a blueprint for a more meaningful life and a more connected and caring world.
As she writes in the preface, after listing the joys and pains of life, weddings, births, and death,
It’s in these times that I feel the weight of the work, the privilege of being alive, the blessing of being so close to such raw beauty and pain. It’s there that I have learned the power of saying ‘Amen‘ to one another’s grief and joy, sorrow and celebration with our very presence. Of bearing witness to profound suffering and protesting injustice with our very presence. Of comforting and consoling, surviving and thriving with our very presence. What I’ve learned, during the years, is the meaning of sacred companionship. I have seen, in ways subtle and pronounced, a longing to connect with others who can help hold the pain, a need to share what we’ve learned in the trenches, and a desire to give, even when we ourselves have barely caught our breath. And I have seen how knowing that we’re not alone can both heighten our joy and help us endure unimaginable hardship.
Click here to read about my experience listening to Rabbi Brous at the Kol Tzedek Speakers Series at Temple Emanu-El in Westfield.
Sharon Brous is the senior and founding rabbi of IKAR, a leading-edge Jewish community based in Los Angeles, and the author of The Amen Effect: Ancient Wisdom to Heal Our Hearts and Mend Our Broken World, a national bestseller.
In 2013, Brous blessed President Obama and Vice President Biden at the Inaugural National Prayer Service, and in 2021, returned to bless President Biden and Vice President Harris and then led the White House Passover Seder 2021 and the Hanukkah candle lighting with the Vice President and Second Gentleman in 2023. She was ranked as the number one most influential Rabbi in America by Newsweek/The Daily Beast. She has also been recognized by The Forward and the Jerusalem Post as one of the most influential Jews alive today. Her work has appeared in prominent publications, including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post. Additionally, her TED talk, “Reclaiming Religion,” has been viewed by over 1.5 million people.
Brous is part of the inaugural cohort of Auburn Seminary’s Senior Fellows program, which brings together top faith leaders working on the frontlines for justice. She sits on the faculty of REBOOT and serves on the International Council of the New Israel Fund, as well as the national steering committee for the Poor People’s Campaign.
A Columbia University graduate (holding both undergraduate and M.A. degrees in Human Rights), she was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary and resides in Los Angeles with her husband and children.
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It was a great day,,, I still remember that day, very emotional
Hugo, it was a great day to remember Jan. Having you and Ana with me helped me get through that difficult day. I’m glad you can join me for the Mitzvah Day cleanup on March 30, 2025.