Jan and Richard Walking

New Month, New Challange

Estimated reading time: 0 minutes, 42 seconds

Celebrate JanMarch arrived not as a Lion but as another month without Jan.

Thursday will be ten months without the love of my life.

Fortunately, my Apple Watch sets exercise goals and challenges each month.

For example, my watch told me I had met my exercise goal for 100 days in a row. The actual number is 294 days as I had a Fitbit.

For March, the challenge is to walk 245.8 miles. To achieve that goal, I need to average 7.6 miles a day.

On my morning walk, I went 7.7 miles.

If only managing grief was as easy as exercise goals.

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Jan and Richard Walking
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Interpreter of Maladies

Read: June 2022

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Interpreter of Maladies

by Jhumpa Lahiri

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri is an incredible book. Each short story is a page-turner that I will re-read many times. As Ms. Lahiri writes, “The question of identity is always a difficult one, but especially so for those who are culturally displaced, as immigrants are, or those who grow up in two worlds simultaneously, as is the case for their children.”

Since 2000, Interpreter of Maladies has been on my reading list. For what is a writer, if not an interpreter of maladies? Perhaps, I waited until now so that I would have grief to help guide me thru this collection of short stories. I highly recommend Interpreter of Maladies.

The Goodreads summary provides a concise overview.

Navigating between the Indian traditions they’ve inherited and the baffling new world, the characters in Jhumpa Lahiri’s elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of culture and generations. In “A Temporary Matter,” published in The New Yorker, a young Indian-American couple faces the heartbreak of a stillborn birth. At the same time, their Boston neighborhood copes with a nightly blackout. In the title story, an interpreter guides an American family through the India of their ancestors and hears an astonishing confession. Lahiri writes with deft cultural insight reminiscent of Anita Desai and a nuanced depth that recalls Mavis Gallant.


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Dragony Rising: A Frank Nagler Novel

Read: September 2022

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Dragony Rising: A Frank Nagler Novel

Dragony Rising: A Frank Nagler Novel by Michael Stephen Daigle is the fifth and best Frank Nagler Novel.

Like many of us living in the Garden State, Detective Frank Nagler has seen his hometown of Ironton, NJ, undergo many changes over the past several years. Although I want to believe the level of scandal in Ironton is more fictional than typical. The author describes the scandals within the city’s government, the stench of its corruption embedded deep, rivaling the dank stagnant stench emanating from the old bog just outside town.

From the opening sentence, Dragony Rising was a page-turner. Every time I thought I could put the book down, it beckoned me to keep reading.

I highly recommend this book, especially if you like mysteries with a unique New Jersey focus. My only recommendation would be for the series to be named the Lauren Fox/Frank Nagler novels. Lauren is as much the brains of the operation as Frank.

I have read several Frank Nagler novels-A Game Called Dead, The Swamps of Jersey-and have been waiting for this one to be published.

The author’s summary provides a good overview.

Detective Frank Nagler is recalled from medical leave to lead an investigation into the bombing.

He finds a shadowy organization called The Dragony, whose roots go back to the early days of Ironton’s manufacturing and mining history, a history involving Nagler’s family in strange ways.

He also finds a decades-old conspiracy designed not just to enrich the Dragony leaders but to threaten the existence of Ironton itself.


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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People Collide: A Novel

Read: October 2023

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People Collide: A Novel

by Isle McElroy

Today, I started reading “People Collide” by Isle McElroy. The book is about a gender-bending, body-switching story that explores the themes of marriage, identity, and sex. “People Collide” is a profound exploration of ambition, sacrifice, desire, and loss. The book sheds a refreshing light on themes of love, sexuality, and the truth of who we are.

The protagonist, Eli, lives with his wife, Elizabeth, in a cramped apartment in Bulgaria. One day, Eli wakes up to find that he has switched bodies with Elizabeth, who has disappeared without a trace. The story follows Eli’s journey across Europe and America to find his missing wife while he learns to exist in her body.

As Eli comes closer to finding Elizabeth, he begins to question the effect of their metamorphosis on their relationship. He wonders how long he can keep up the illusion of living as someone else. Will their marriage wither away entirely in each other’s bodies? Or will this transformation be the key to making their marriage thrive?


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 Vegetarian: A Novel

Read: October 2024

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The Vegetarian: A Novel

by Han Kang

Today, I started reading The Vegetarian: A Novel by Han Kang, Winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature. The novel also won The International Booker Prize and is one of The New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. Celebrated by critics worldwide, The Vegetarian is a darkly allegorical, Kafka-esque tale of power, obsession, and one woman’s struggle to break free from the violence both without and within her.

Before the nightmares began, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary, controlled life. But the dreams—invasive images of blood and brutality—torture her, driving Yeong-hye to purge her mind and renounce eating meat altogether. It’s a small act of independence, but it interrupts her marriage and sets into motion an increasingly grotesque chain of events at home.

As her husband, her brother-in-law, and her sister each fight to reassert their control, Yeong-hye obsessively defends the choice that’s become sacred to her. Soon, their attempts turn desperate, subjecting first her mind and then her body to ever more intrusive and perverse violations, sending Yeong-hye spiraling into a dangerous, bizarre estrangement, not only from those closest to her but also from herself.


Han Kang was born in 1970 in South Korea. She is the author of The Vegetarian, which I have read, and winner of the International Booker Prize,  Human ActsThe White BookGreek Lessons, and We Do Not Part. In 2024, she received the Nobel Prize in Literature.



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Ahab's Wife: Or, The Star-gazer: A Novel

Read: August 2021

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Ahab’s Wife: Or, The Star-gazer

by Sena Jeter Naslund

Ahab’s Wife: Or, The Star-gazer by Sena Jeter Naslund is a book I could not put down once I finished the first chapter. “Captain Ahab was neither my first husband nor my last.” is one of the most-recognized first sentences in literature–along with “Call me Ishmael.”

Sena Jeter Naslund has created a transcendent heroine – Una Spenser – who is as memorable as Ahab. Una’s universe spans a time that begins to redefine both women and men.

After a spellbinding opening scene, the tale flashes back to Una’s childhood in Kentucky; her idyllic adolescence with her aunt and uncle’s family at a lighthouse near New Bedford; her adventures disguised as a cabin boy on a whaling ship; her first marriage to a fellow survivor who descends into violent madness; courtship and marriage to Ahab; life as mother and a rich captain’s wife in Nantucket; involvement with Frederick Douglass; and a man who is in Nantucket researching his novel about his adventures on her ex-husband’s ship.

Ahab’s Wife is a breathtaking, magnificent, and uplifting story of one woman’s spiritual journey, informed by the spirit of the greatest American novel, but taking it beyond tragedy to redemptive triumph.

Having read this book, I can easily understand why my wife loved the book and encouraged me to read it. Her life story was much like Una’s, an uplifting story of her spiritual journey and her quest to repair the world.

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The Little Prince

Read: May 2021

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The Little Prince

by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is often referred to as a children’s book. I read it as a child and later read it to my children. After Jan died, I picked it up again and read it more than once.

I have found quotes from the book very helpful during my grief journey. These are three that I often use in my writing and my conversations with friends and family.

The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched, they are felt with the heart.”

It is such a mysterious place, the land of tears.

You see, one loves the sunset when one is so sad.”

The first quote about beautiful things only felt in the heart summarizes how I knew Jan was the one for me within seconds of meeting her.

For those who have not read the book, this overview might help convince you to read it today!

The Little Prince describes his journey from planet to planet, each tiny world populated by a single adult. It’s a wonderfully inventive sequence that evokes the great fairy tales and monuments of postmodern whimsy. The author pokes similar fun at a business person, a geographer, and a lamplighter, all of whom signify some futile aspect of adult existence.

The Little Prince will be by my bedside as long as I live!

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