Richard W. Brown March 11, 2022
Jan and Rich

Jan’s Love Helps Me Every Day!

Estimated reading time: 0 minutes, 50 seconds

Celebrate JanFor most of my life, I have suffered from insomnia. Since Jan died ten months ago, it has only become worse.

Every morning, I wake up and think about going back to bed for a nanosecond.

But then I hear Jan’s words of wisdom reminding me to embrace the day.

I walk, read, and write about Jan’s love and why it will never die in my journal.

I never regret not going back to bed. My walks energize me and make the rest of my day manageable.

Jan’s love will never die; it continues to help me every day!

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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A Love Story from the End of the World

Read: January 2026

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A Love Story from the End of the World

by Juhea Kim

Juhea Kim, the acclaimed author of Beasts of a Little Land and City of Night Birds, presents an exquisite collection of stories that explores the delicate balance between humans and the natural world. With the clear-eyed reverence of Richard Powers and the sparkling sincerity of George Saunders, her first story collection, A Love Story from the End of the World, offers a breathtaking view of our fractured world—and our broken hearts. Through its passionate narrative, the collection serves as a poignant reminder that, as humans, we are nothing without nature.

Spanning multiple locales and time periods, and rendered in fine detail and vivid color, this transportive collection illustrates what it means to live as human inhabitants of our singular, miraculous planet.

Lyrical, at times hilarious, and always heartfelt, each of these ten stories reflects individual choices in the face of “man-made” apocalypses. In a near-future Seoul, where air pollution has become so severe that a translucent biodome has covered the city, a civil engineer responsible for its upkeep considers an arranged marriage. A painter, disenchanted with New York City, travels to the South of France and becomes romantically involved with an entrepreneur who claims to have invented a new color. Meanwhile, on an island where the Indian and Pacific Oceans converge, and where foreign countries have dumped their waste, causing a landfill mountain to form, a local boy facing daily hardships gains internet fame for his K-pop-inspired dances.

Juhea Kim is the author of the novel Beasts of a Little Land, which was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the winner of the Yasnaya Polyana Literary Award, Russia’s most significant annual award in literature. It has been translated into many languages and is for television. She is also the author of City of Night Birds, which was a Reese’s Book Club pick.

A graduate of Princeton University, her writing has been published in Granta, the Times Literary Supplement, the Independent, Zyzzyva, Guernica<, and other outlets. She is an advocate for wildlife conservation, animal rights, and education and aid in Africa. Born in Korea and raised in Portland, Oregon, Kim now lives in London.

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 that I’ve personally vetted to ensure quality and enjoyment. Additionally, by supporting these selections, you’ll help me continue to provide you with more personalized recommendations. I earn a small commission from your purchase, which allows me to buy and share even more books with you. Your support truly makes a difference!

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The Compound

Read: July 2025

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The Compound: A Novel

by Aisling Rawle

Addictive and prescient, The Compound by Aisling Rawle, is an explosive debut from a prominent new voice in fiction. This gripping novel, set in a remote desert compound, will linger in your mind long after the game ends. It’s a story of survival, competition, and the human spirit, making it a must-read for any fiction enthusiast. Lily—a bored, beautiful twenty-something—wakes up on The Compound, alongside nineteen other contestants competing on a massively popular reality show.

For Lily to emerge victorious, she must outlast her housemates and stay in The Compound the longest. Her journey is filled with challenges, from competing for luxury rewards like champagne and lipstick to securing communal necessities for their new home, including food, appliances, and even a front door.

Aisling Rawle was born in 1998 and raised in County Leitrim in the West of Ireland. She now lives in Dublin. The Compound is her first book.

When you purchase a book through one of my links, I earn a small commission that helps support my passion for reading. This contribution allows me to buy even more books to share with you, creating an incredible cycle of discovering great reads together! Your support truly makes a difference!

Enjoy a limited-time offer of 20% off your next book purchase at Bookshop.org!

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These Summer Storms

Read: July 2025

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These Summer Storms

by Sarah MacLean

These Summer Storms by Sarah MacLean is a poignant and thoughtful story about the transformative power of grief, love, and family—the novel delves into past secrets, present truths, and futures shaped by wild summer storms. Alice Storm has not been welcome at her family’s magnificent private island off the Rhode Island coast for five years—not since she was cast out and built her life apart from the Storm name, its influence, and untold billions.

However, the shocking death of her larger-than-life father changes everything. Alice plans to keep a low profile, pay her final respects (as complicated as they are), and leave as soon as the funeral concludes. Unfortunately, her father had other plans. The eccentric and manipulative patriarch left his family a final challenge—an inheritance game designed to disrupt their lives. The rules are straightforward: spend one week on the island, complete their assigned tasks, and receive the inheritance.

Spending an entire week on Storm Island presents challenges for Alice. The old house is chaotic in every corner: her older sister’s secret love affair, her brother displays unwavering arrogance, and her younger sister is constantly analyzing the “vibes.” All of this is under the stern, watchful gaze of Jack Dean, her father’s intriguing and too-handsome second-in-command. It will take a miracle for Alice to escape unscathed.

Sarah MacLean is the author of sixteen New York Times bestselling novels, translated into more than twenty-five languages. She co-hosts the weekly romance novel podcast Fated Mates and is a prominent voice in the romance genre. A product of Rhode Island summers and New England storms, MacLean now lives with her family in New York City.

When you purchase a book through one of my links, I earn a small commission that helps support my passion for reading. This contribution allows me to buy even more books to share with you, creating an incredible cycle of discovering great reads together! Your support truly makes a difference!

Enjoy a limited-time offer of 20% off your next book purchase at Bookshop.org!

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A Line in the Sand- A Novel

Read: June 2023

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A Line in the Sand: A Novel

by Kevin Powers

Today I started reading A Line in the Sand: A Novel by Kevin Powers. Listed as one of the books to read this week by The New York Times, which described it as “a stunning novel. Kevin Powers provides what any discerning reader desires the most — complex and flawed characters, precise use of language, succinct description, and believable dialogue.”

One early morning on a Norfolk beach in Virginia, a dead body is discovered by a man taking his daily swim—Arman Bajalan, formerly an interpreter in Iraq. After narrowly surviving an assassination attempt that killed his wife and child, Arman has been given lonely sanctuary in the US as a maintenance worker at the Sea Breeze Motel. Now, convinced that the body is connected to his past, he knows he is still unsafe.

Seasoned detective Catherine Wheel and her newly minted partner have little to go on beyond a bus ticket in the dead man’s pocket. It leads them to Sally Ewell, a local journalist as grief-stricken as Arman is by the Iraq War, investigating a corporation on the cusp of landing a multi-billion-dollar government defense contract.

As victims mount around Arman, taking the team down wrong turns and towards startling evidence, they find themselves in a race committed to unraveling the truth and keeping Arman alive—even if it costs them everything.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.

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The Vaster Wilds: A Novel

Read: September 2023

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The Vaster Wilds: A Novel

by Lauren Grof

Today, I started reading The Vaster Wilds: A Novel by Lauren Groff, a three-time National Book Award finalist. It is a taut and electrifying novel about a servant girl who escapes from a colonial settlement in the wilderness. One spirited girl alone in nature, trying to survive.

She carries nothing with her but her wits, a few possessions, and the spark of god that burns hot within her. What she finds in this terra incognita is beyond the limits of her imagination and will bend her belief in everything that her civilization has taught her.

Lauren Groff’s new novel is a thrilling adventure story and a penetrating fable about trying to find a new way of living in a world succumbing to the churn of colonialism. The Vaster Wilds is a work of raw and prophetic power that tells the story of America in miniature, through one girl at a hinge point in history, to ask how—and if—we can adapt quickly enough to save ourselves.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.

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God Shot

Read: December 2021

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God Shot by Chelsea Bieker

by Chelsea Bieker

God Shot by Chelsea Bieker, one of NPR’s Books We Love from 2020, is about the town of Peaches, California, where drought has settled in for the long term. The area of the Central Valley where fourteen-year-old Lacey May and her alcoholic mother live was once an agricultural paradise. Now it’s an environmental disaster, a place of cracked earth and barren raisin farms.

In their desperation, residents have turned to a cult leader named Pastor Vern for guidance. Everybody is praying for survival through secret “assignments” to bring the rain.

God Shot is an enjoyable read. However, I first found it challenging to accept Pastor Vern’s assignments, especially to Lacey May and her fellow teenage girls. Would people believe in a cult leader and get “assignments” that involve women fully accepting male domination in the twenty-first century? When I had doubts, I would wake up, listen to the news, or read the papers and discover that it is plausible and does happen in our world.

After being god-shot, Lacey May becomes one day at a time feminist as she has to rely on herself and other women who do not accept Pastor Vern’s divine leadership. Slowly but surely, she and her friends find a miracle to help them escape not only the environmental disaster caused by the drought but the moral depravity of Pastor Vern.

Goodreads provides this overview of the God Shot.

Lacey has no reason to doubt the pastor. But then her life explodes in a single unimaginable act of abandonment: her mother, exiled from the community for her sins, leaves Lacey and runs off with a man she barely knows. Abandoned and distraught, Lacey May moves in with her widowed grandma, Cherry, who is more concerned with her taxidermy mouse collection than her own granddaughter. As Lacey May endures the increasingly appalling acts of men who want to write all the rules and begins to uncover the full extent of Pastor Vern’s shocking plan to bring fertility back to the land, she decides she must go on a quest to find her mother no matter what it takes. With her only guidance coming from the romance novels she reads and the unlikely companionship of the women who knew her mother, she must find her own way through unthinkable circumstances.

Possessed of an unstoppable plot and a brilliantly soulful voice, Godshot is a book of grit, humor, and heart, a debut novel about female friendship and resilience, mother loss and motherhood, and seeking salvation in unexpected places. It introduces a writer who gives Flannery O’Connor’s Gothic parables a Californian twist and who emerges with a miracle that is all her own.

I recommend this novel without reservations!

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