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Read: January 2022

Man’s Search for Meaning

by Viktor E. Frankl

I remember reading portions of Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl at different times, but I never finished the book. However, recently, eight and a half months after the passing of Jan, the book came up for discussion 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.” Frankl experienced that when he was in the concentration camps.

I have replaced the loss of meaning and purpose with a series of activities:

Planning to Celebrate Jan Day on her birthday this year;
Writing my random thoughts on Jan, love, grief, life, and all things considered;
Reading more than ever, including my Goodreads 2022 Reading Challange; and
Walking more than I probably should.

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 differently.

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 focusing on my search for meaning, as life will 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 and human 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.

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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Read: March 2023

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Birnam Wood: A Novel

by Eleanor Catton

Birnam Wood: A Novel by Eleanor Catton is a gripping psychological thriller from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Luminaries. Birnam Wood is Shakespearean in its wit, drama, and immersion in character. A brilliantly constructed consideration of intentions, actions, and consequences is an unflinching examination of the human impulse to ensure our survival. I highly recommend this novel.

The review in The New Yorker and a personal recommendation made this novel my next read.

At first, the conflict between the guerrilla gardening group and a wealthy American billionaire seemed like a story that had been told too many times. However, Ms. Catton has created a page-turner that is a must-read during our current climate emergency and the growing income gap. Although the end is foretold, it may surprise the reader while confirming the conviction that we must find an alternate way forward.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

Five years ago, Mira Bunting founded a guerrilla gardening group: Birnam Wood. An undeclared, unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic gathering of friends, this activist collective plants crops wherever no one will notice: on the sides of roads, in forgotten parks, and in neglected backyards. For years, the group has struggled to break even. Then Mira stumbles on an answer, a way to finally set the group up for the long term: a landslide has closed the Korowai Pass, cutting off the town of Thorndike. A natural disaster has created an opportunity, a sizable farm seemingly abandoned.

But Mira is not the only one interested in Thorndike. Robert Lemoine, the enigmatic American billionaire, has snatched it up to build his end-times bunker–or so he tells Mira when he catches her on the property. Intrigued by Mira, Birnam Wood, and their entrepreneurial spirit, he suggests they work this land. But can they trust him? And, as their ideals and ideologies are tested, can they trust each other?

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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Read: December 2022

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The Candy House: A Novel

by Jennifer Egan

The Candy House: A Novel by Jennifer Egan focuses on a new technology that allows you access to every memory you’ve ever had and to share your memories in exchange for access to the memories of others—it has seduced multitudes. According to the NYTimes, “this is minimalist maximalism. As a widow, I live in a world of memories, but I would not want them shared as they are in The Candy House. “It’s as if Egan compressed a big 19th-century novel onto a flash drive.”

Of course, I am not able to access my unconscious memories. Albeit in an amateur way, I write down some of my memories as they remind me of the power of the love that Jan and I shared. For example, the essay when I met Jan rekindles the memory and attempts to tell the story the way it happened, not how some would like it to be remembered.

The Candy House is one of the NYTimes’ top five fiction books of 2022. I have read two of them, The Furrows and Checkout 19. Initially, I was overwhelmed by the multitude of characters and was confused. By the novel’s middle, their interconnectedness helped me understand its real meaning. In the end, Egan delivers a fierce and exhilarating testament to the tenacity and transcendence of human longing for authentic connection, love, family, privacy, and redemption. As a widow, authenticity Is what I need to heal.

The Candy House is the seventieth (70) book I have read this year.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview.

It’s 2010. Staggeringly successful and brilliant tech entrepreneur Bix Bouton is desperate for a new idea. He’s forty, with four kids, and restless when he stumbles into a conversation with mostly Columbia professors, one of whom is experimenting with downloading or “externalizing” memory. Within a decade, Bix’s new technology, Own Your Unconscious—that allows you access to every memory you’ve ever had and to share every memory in exchange for access to the memories of others—has seduced multitudes. But not everyone.

In spellbinding linked narratives, Egan spins out the consequences of Own Your Unconscious through the lives of multiple characters whose paths intersect over several decades. Egan introduces these characters in an astonishing array of styles—from omniscient to first person plural to a duet of voices, an epistolary chapter, and a chapter of tweets. In the world of Egan’s spectacular imagination, there are “counters” who track and exploit desires and “eluders,” who understand the price of taking a bite of the Candy House.

Intellectually dazzling and extraordinarily moving, The Candy House is a bold, brilliant imagining of a world that is moments away. With a focus on social media, gaming, and alternate worlds, you can almost experience moving among dimensions in a role-playing game. Egan delivers a fierce and exhilarating testament to the tenacity and transcendence of human longing for real connection, love, family, privacy and redemption.

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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Read: August 2023

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Study for Obedience

by Sarah Bernstein

Today I began reading “Study for Obedience” by Sarah Bernstein. With a robust and lyrical voice, Bernstein thoughtfully examines themes of complicity, power, displacement, and inheritance. “Study for Obedience” is a finely-tuned and unsettling novel that establishes Bernstein as one of the most exciting voices of her generation.

A woman moves to her forebears’ remote northern home to be a housekeeper for her brother, whose wife left him. After arriving, strange events occur bovine hysteria, a ewe’s death, a dog’s phantom pregnancy, and potato blight. Suspicion towards newcomers seems directed at her, and she feels threatened. The hostility grows, and she fears what might happen.

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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Read: January 2022

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Apples Never Fall

by Liane Moriarty

Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty is a novel that looks at marriage, siblings, and how the people we love the most can hurt us the deepest. The Delaney family love one another dearly—it’s just that sometimes they want to murder each other.

If your mother was missing, would you tell the police? Even if the most obvious suspect was your father? The four grown Delaney siblings face this dilemma.

This book is a page-turner. With all of the characters having issues unrelated to their mission mother, they have a life with many mysteries and rivalries. I sometimes wanted to know more about their lives instead of the missing mum.

Although I will not reveal the conclusion, it is clear how a missing parent could appear to be the crime of the century.

According to Goodreads,

The Delaneys are fixtures in their community. The parents, Stan and Joy, are the envy of all of their friends. They’re killers on the tennis court, and off it, their chemistry is palpable. But after fifty years of marriage, they’ve finally sold their famed tennis academy and are ready to start what should be the golden years of their lives. So why are Stan and Joy so miserable?

The four Delaney children―Amy, Logan, Troy, and Brooke―were tennis stars in their own right, yet as their father will tell you, none of them had what it took to go all the way. But that’s okay, now that they’re all successful grown-ups. In addition, there is the beautiful possibility of grandchildren on the horizon.

One night a stranger named Savannah knocks on Stan and Joy’s door, bleeding after a fight with her boyfriend. The Delaneys are more than happy to give her the small kindness she sorely needs. If only that were all, she wanted.

Later, when Joy goes missing and Savannah is nowhere to be found, the police question the one person who remains: Stan. But for someone who claims to be innocent, he, like many spouses, seems to have a lot to hide. Two of the Delaney children think their father is innocent. Two are not so sure―but as the two sides square off against each other in perhaps their most important match ever, all of the Delaneys will start to reexamine their shared family history in a very new light.

I recommend this book.

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Read: January 2024

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Welcome Home, Stranger: A Novel

by Kate Christensen

Today, I began reading “Welcome Home, Stranger: A Novel” by Kate Christensen. The book tells the story of a woman in her fifties who returns home to Maine after her mother’s passing. The novel explores themes of grief, love, growing older, and family complexities. It raises the question: Can you ever honestly go back home?

Rachel is an environmental journalist living in Washington, DC. She has been estranged from her working-class family in New England for many years. Having gone through a divorce and being childless in her middle age, Rachel is a truly independent spirit who has experienced a lot of pain. She feels like her life is falling apart and is struggling to cope with big and small challenges. However, her life takes a different turn when she gets a call to return home for her mother’s funeral.

Then, everything falls apart.

Rachel is surrounded by a cast of characters who are sometimes comical, sometimes heartbreakingly earnest. Her sister is an arriviste, her brother-in-law is an alcoholic, and the love of her life has recently married her sister’s best friend. Rachel must face her past and come to terms with the sorrow she has long buried. She must also confront the ghost of her mother, who, for better or worse, made her the woman she is today.

Lively, witty, and painfully familiar, this sophisticated and emotionally resonant novel from the author of The Great Man holds a mirror up to modern life as it considers the way some of us must carry on now.

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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Read: June 2023

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I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home

by Lorrie Moore

Today, I started reading Lorrie Moore‘s latest novel; I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home. It’s her first book since A Gate at the Stairs, and it’s a bold and contemplative exploration of love, death, passion, and grief. Moore examines what it means to be haunted by the past in terms of history and the human heart.

The story follows a teacher who visits his dying brother in the Bronx. A mysterious journal from the 19th century is stolen from a boarding house. There’s also a therapy clown and an assassin, who is presumed dead but may not be.

Moore’s unique wordplay, wry humor, and wisdom make for an enchanting read. She presents us with a magic box of surprises, exploring themes of love, rebirth, and the pull toward life. This novel is a poetic and imaginative portrait of lovers and siblings that questions the stories we’ve been told and whether they’re true.

With I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home, Moore takes us on a journey to a windswept, tragic, and comic landscape. It’s unmistakably her world and a journey you won’t forget.

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.

Kindness Repairs the World

Man's Search for Meaning

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