Today, I started reading "The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers' Guild" by Mathias Énard. The book has been translated into English by Frank Wynne. This novel is full of Mathias Énard's characteristic humor and extensive knowledge. It is a lively book where the boundaries between past and present are constantly blurred, set against a backdrop of excess reminiscent of Rabelais' writing.
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by Mathias Énard
Today, I started reading “The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild” by Mathias Énard. The book has been translated into English by Frank Wynne. This novel is full of Mathias Énard‘s characteristic humor and extensive knowledge. It is a lively book where the boundaries between past and present are constantly blurred, set against a backdrop of excess reminiscent of Rabelais’ writing.
David Mazon, an anthropology student, moves from Paris to La Pierre-Saint-Christophe, a village in the marshlands of western France, to research his thesis on contemporary agrarian life. He is determined to understand the essence of the local culture and spends his time scurrying around on his moped to interview the residents.
David must be made aware of the extraordinary events in an ordinary location. This place, where wars and revolutions once occurred, is now a dancefloor for Death. When something dies, its soul is recycled by the Wheel of Life and thrown back into the world as a microbe, human, or wild animal – sometimes in the past and sometimes in the future. Once a year, Death and the living agree to a temporary truce, during which gravediggers indulge in a three-day feast filled with food, drink, and conversation.
Mathias Énard’s novel, The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild, is a riotous and exciting comic masterpiece that won the prestigious Prix Goncourt award. The novel is set in the French countryside and is filled with Énard’s characteristic wit and encyclopedic brilliance. Against a backdrop of excess, the story blurs the lines between past and present, creating a Rabelaisian world of chaos and humor.
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.
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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by Brian Goldstone
Today, I delved into There Is No Place for Us by Brian Goldstone, a poignant exploration of America’s escalating homelessness crisis. Goldstone’s examination of the issue’s scale, root causes, and consequences is a wake-up call, passionately arguing that housing must be recognized as a fundamental human right. His compelling narrative demands our immediate attention and action.
The phrase “the working homeless” serves as a stark reminder of the urgency of America’s homelessness crisis. In a country where hard work and determination are expected to lead to success, it is scandalous that individuals with full-time jobs struggle to maintain stable housing. Rising rents, low wages, and insufficient tenant rights have contributed to this alarming trend. Families are facing homelessness not due to a failing economy but because of a thriving one.
In his compelling and thoroughly researched book, Brian Goldstone explores the lives of five families in Atlanta. Maurice and Natalia attempt to rebuild their lives in the country’s “Black Mecca” after being priced out of Washington, D.C. Kara aspires to become an entrepreneur while working at a public hospital. Britt has secured a much-coveted housing voucher. Michelle is studying to become a social worker. Celeste works tirelessly at her warehouse job while battling ovarian cancer. Each of these individuals strives to provide a decent life for their children. Yet, one by one, they find themselves among the nation’s working homeless, demonstrating their resilience and the system’s failures.
Through intimate, novelistic portrayals, Goldstone exposes the human cost of this crisis, following parents and their children as they sleep in cars or squalid extended-stay hotel rooms, then head to their jobs and schools the next day. These are the nation’s hidden homeless—people often omitted from official statistics—showing that overflowing shelters and street encampments represent only the most visible aspects of a much larger problem.
Brian Goldstone is a journalist whose long-form reporting and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, The New Republic, The California Sunday Magazine, and Jacobin, among other publications. He has a PhD in anthropology from Duke University and was a Mellon Research Fellow at Columbia University. In 2021, he was a National Fellow at New America. He lives in Atlanta with his family.
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by Hannah Stowe
I recently started reading a book called “Move Like Water: My Story of the Sea” by Hannah Stowe. It’s a captivating book that immerses you in a world of water, whales, storms, and starlight, allowing you to experience what it’s like to sail for weeks and live life to a new rhythm.
Hannah Stowe, a marine biologist and sailor in her mid-twenties, grew up on the Pembrokeshire coast of Wales, where she fell asleep to the sound of the lighthouse beam. Drawing upon her experiences sailing tens of thousands of miles in various seas, including the North Sea, North Atlantic, Mediterranean, Celtic Sea, and the Caribbean, she explores the human connection to the wild waters. Stowe ponders why she and others are drawn to life at sea and what we can learn from the water around us.
Stowe intertwines her narrative and illustrations with stories of six keystone marine creatures: the fire crow, sperm whale, wandering albatross, humpback whale, shearwater, and barnacle. Through these stories, she invites readers to fall in love with the sea and its inhabitants and to discover the majesty, wonder, and fragility of the underwater world.
If you enjoy the works of Rachel Carson and Annie Dillard, then “Move Like Water: My Story of the Sea” is a must-read. It’s an inspiring and heartfelt tribute to the sea, a testimony to pursuing and achieving a dream, and an unforgettable introduction to a talented new nature writer.
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.
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.
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.
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.
by Kristin Hannah
I started reading “The Women: A Novel” by Kristin Hannah today. This book is written by the same author who wrote “The Nightingale” and “The Four Winds.” “The Women” is a story set in a difficult time, depicting a woman’s coming-of-age journey and an epic tale of a divided nation. It highlights that women can be heroes, too.
When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie” McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation to her. She was raised in Southern California’s sun-drenched, idyllic world and was sheltered by her conservative parents. She has always prided herself on doing the right thing. However, in 1965, the world is changing, and Frankie suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she decides to join the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path.
Frankie, who is as inexperienced as the young men sent to fight in Vietnam, is struggling to cope with the chaos and destruction of war. Every day is a life-or-death gamble that can be filled with hope, betrayal, and shattered friendships. In this brutal reality, she encounters and becomes one of the lucky, the brave, the broken, and the lost.
War is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The actual battle awaits when they return home to a divided and changing America, met by angry protesters and a nation wanting to forget Vietnam.
“The Women” is a novel that tells the story of a woman who goes to war. Still, its purpose is to bring attention to all the women who have put themselves in danger for their country and whose sacrifice and dedication have often been overlooked. The book is about solid friendships and patriotism, and it portrays a brave and idealistic heroine whose courage in times of war will become a defining moment in history.
by T. C. Boyle
I started reading Blue Skies: A Novel by T. C. Boyle today. The book is an eco-thriller with comedic elements. It explores the relationships between humans and their habitats in a world where natural disasters frequently occur, where “the only truism seems to be that things always get worse.”
Denied a dog, a baby, and even a faithful fiancé, Cat suddenly craves a snake: a glistening, writhing creature that can be worn like “jewelry, living jewelry” to match her black jeans. But when the budding social media star promptly loses the young “Burmie” she buys from a local pet store, she inadvertently sets a chain of increasingly dire and outrageous events threatening her survival.
Blue Skies follows the tradition of T. C. Boyle’s finest novels, combining high-octane plotting with biting wit and intelligent social commentary. Here Boyle, one of the most inventive voices in contemporary fiction, transports us to water-logged and heat-ravaged coastal America, where Cat and her hapless, nature-loving family—including her eco-warrior parents, Ottilie and Frank; her brother, Cooper, an entomologist; and her frat-boy-turned-husband, Todd—are struggling to adapt to the “new normal,” in which once-in-a-lifetime natural disasters happen once a week and drinking seems to be the only way to cope.
But there’s more than meets the eye to this compulsive family drama. Lurking beneath the bland façade of twenty-first-century Californians and Floridians attempting to preserve normalcy in the face of violent weather perturbations is a caricature of materialist American society that doubles as a prophetic warning about our planet’s future. Blue Skies deftly explores the often volatile relationships between humans and their habitats, from pet bees and cricket-dependent diets to massive species die-offs and pummeling hurricanes, in which “the only truism seems to be that things always get worse.
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.
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.
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.
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.
