Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney, a writer recommended to me, but I have always kept them on the to-read list, not the current reading. Does a beautiful word exist? Is it possible to live in a beautiful world despite the loss of the love of my life? Perhaps reading  Beautiful World, Where Are You, will help me in my grief journey.

Ms. Rooney’s book was a page-turner, and I highly recommend it.

One of the quotes from the book echoed my dream of a beautiful world.

“When I try to picture for myself what a happy life might look like, the picture hasn’t changed very much since I was a child – a house with flowers and trees around it, and a river nearby, and a room full of books, and someone there to love me, that’s all. Just to make a home there, and to care for my parents when they grow older. Never to move, never to board a plane again, just to live quietly and then be buried in the earth.” ― Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

It also helped remind me how unique and memorable the love that Jan and I shared was. We could quickly fall into a life lived separately as friends, or we might not have ever fallen in love and married.

As Sally Rooney in Beautiful World, Where Are You, wrote:

“If God wanted me to give you up, he wouldn’t have made me who I am.”

The Goodreads summary provides an overview.

Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a warehouse, and asks him if he’d like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend, Eileen, is getting over a breakup and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood. Alice, Felix, Eileen, and Simon are still young—but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, and they break apart. They have sex, they worry about sex, and they worry about their friendships and the world they live in. Are they standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something? Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?

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“The Director” by Daniel Kehlmann, translated by Ross Benjamin, is a thought-provoking novel inspired by the life of film director G.W. Pabst. Pabst fled to Hollywood to escape the Nazis but later returned to Germany to produce propaganda films for the German Reich. The novel is a New York Times Top 10 Book of the Year, an NYPL Best Book of the Year, and a notable book by the Washington Post.

An artist’s life, a pact with the devil, and the dangerous illusions of the silver screen.

G.W. Pabst, one of cinema’s greatest directors of the 20th century, was filming in France when the Nazis seized power. To escape the horrors of the new and unrecognizable Germany, he fled to Hollywood. But now, under the blinding California sun, the world-famous director suddenly looks like a nobody. Not even Greta Garbo, the Hollywood actress whom he made famous, can help him.

When he learns that his elderly mother is ill, he finds himself back in his homeland of Austria, now called Ostmark. Pabst, his wife, and his young son are suddenly confronted with the barbaric nature of the regime. So, when Joseph Goebbels—the minister of propaganda in Berlin—sees the potential for using the European film icon for his directorial genius and makes big promises to Pabst and his family, Pabst must consider Goebbels’s thinly veiled order. While Pabst still believes that he will be able to resist these advances, that he will not submit to any dictatorship other than art, he has already taken the first steps into a hopeless entanglement.

Kehlmann’s latest oeuvre explores the complicated relationships and distinctions between art and power, beauty and barbarism, cog and conspirator.

Daniel Kehlmann was born in Munich in 1975. His novels and plays have won numerous prizes, including the Candide Prize, the Doderer Prize, the Kleist Prize, the Welt Literature Prize, and the Thomas Mann Prize. His novel Tyll, shortlisted for the 2020 International Booker Prize, and Measuring the World have been translated into more than forty languages and are among the biggest successes in post-war German literature. He currently lives in Berlin and New York.

Ross Benjamin is the translator of numerous works of German-language literature, including Franz Kafka’s Diaries, Clemens J. Setz’s Indigo, Joseph Roth’s Job, Kevin Vennemann’s Close to Jedenew, Friedrich Hölderlin’s Hyperion, and Daniel Kehlmann’s Tyll and You Should Have Left. The recipient of a 2015 Guggenheim Fellowship, Benjamin was also awarded the 2010 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize for his rendering of Michael Maar’s Speak, Nabokov. His translation of Tyll was shortlisted for the 2020 International Booker Prize.

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!

Today, I embarked on a transformative journey with Rabbi Shai Held’s book, “Judaism Is About Love.” Rav Uri‘s mention of this book during this year’s Yom Kippur service at Temple Sha’arey Shalom sparked a profound connection to the Divine, as echoed in my writings “Love Can Conquer Even Death” and “High Holiday Meditation Cleanses My Soul.” Rabbi Held’s book, which focuses on love, meaning, purpose, and faith, has guided my quest to become the best version of myself.

“Judaism Is About Love” is a beacon of understanding, offering a profound and groundbreaking perspective on Jewish life. It challenges a long-standing misinterpretation that has shaped the Western narrative: Christianity is the religion of love, while Judaism is the religion of law. Rabbi Shai Held, a leading Jewish thinker in America, passionately argues for correcting this misconception. He asserts that love is not just a part of Judaism but a fundamental aspect, thus reclaiming the heart of the Jewish tradition.

With a unique blend of intellectual rigor, respect for tradition, and a vibrant Judaism, Held’s aim is clear: to reclaim Judaism in its authentic form. He illustrates that love is the foundation of the true Jewish faith, influencing our unique perspectives on injustice, protest, grace, family life, responsibilities toward neighbors and enemies, and chosenness.

“Judaism Is About Love” is a work of ambition and revelation. It serves as a beacon, illuminating the true essence of Judaism. More than just a book, it is an act of restoration from within, reclaiming the authentic form of Judaism.

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!

Victory City: A Novel by Salman Rushdie is an epic tale of a woman who breathes a fantastical empire into existence, only to be consumed by it over the centuries from the transcendent imagination of Booker Prize-winning, internationally bestselling author Salman Rushdie. It is well written and was a page-turner from page one to the end. I highly recommend this novel and encourage everyone to read it.

Brilliantly styled as a translation of an ancient epic, this is a saga of love, adventure, and myth that is a testament to storytelling’s power. After witnessing her mother’s death, the grief-stricken Pampa Kampana becomes a vessel for the goddess Parvati, who begins to speak out of the girl’s mouth. I was hooked when Pampa Kampana provided the seeds that created Victory City out of thin air.

David Remnick’s interview with Salman Rushdie in The New Yorker provided background I would have missed.

“The first kings of Vijayanagara announced, quite seriously, that they were descended from the moon,” Rushdie said. “So when these kings, Harihara and Bukka, announce that they’re members of the lunar dynasty, they’re associating themselves with those great heroes. It’s like saying, ‘I’ve descended from the same family as Achilles.’ Or Agamemnon. And so I thought, Well, if you could say that, I can say anything.”

Above all, the book is buoyed by the character of Pampa Kampana, who, Rushdie says, “just showed up in my head” and gave him his story, his sense of direction. Rushdie’s pleasure in writing the novel was in “world building” and, at the same time, writing about a character building that world: “It’s me doing it, but it’s also her doing it.” The pleasure is infectious. “Victory City” is an immensely enjoyable novel. It is also an affirmation. At the end, with the great city in ruins, what is left is not the storyteller but her words:

I, Pampa Kampana, am the author of this book.
I have lived to see an empire rise and fall.
How are they remembered now, these kings, these queens?
They exist now only in words . . .
I myself am nothing now. All that remains is this city of words.
Words are the only victors.

The Goodreads summary provides a brief overview,

In the wake of an insignificant battle between two long-forgotten kingdoms in fourteenth-century southern India, a nine-year-old girl has a divine encounter that will change the course of history. After witnessing her mother’s death, the grief-stricken Pampa Kampana becomes a vessel for the goddess Parvati, who begins to speak out of the girl’s mouth. Granting her powers beyond Pampa Kampana’s comprehension, the goddess tells her that she will be instrumental in the rise of a great city called Bisnaga–literally victory city–the wonder of the world.

Over the next two hundred and fifty years, Pampa Kampana’s life becomes deeply interwoven with Bisnaga’s, from its literal sowing out of a bag of magic seeds to its tragic ruination in the most human of ways: the hubris of those in power. Whispering Bisnaga and its citizens into existence, Pampa Kampana attempts to make good on Parvati’s task: giving women equal agency in a patriarchal world. But all stories have a way of getting away from their creator, and Bisnaga is no exception. As years pass, rulers come and go, battles are won and lost, and allegiances shift, the very fabric of Bisnaga becomes an ever more complex tapestry–with Pampa Kampana at its center.

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 recently received a book from my family that combines two interests: walking and reading. The book, “In Praise of Walking” by Shane O’Mara, celebrates the joys, health benefits, and mechanics of walking. It emphasizes the importance of getting out of our chairs and discovering a happier, healthier, more creative self.

One of the most important insights I gained from this book is that walking can lead to mind wandering, focusing on autobiographical memory rather than the immediate environment. This realization helped me accept and appreciate Jan’s love and move forward with her passion.

The book also explores the significance of walking to our human identity. Walking upright has given us many advantages, including the freedom of our hands and minds. Walking has enabled us to spread worldwide and has many benefits for our bodies and minds, such as protecting and repairing organs, aiding digestion, and sharpening our thinking.

Overall, “In Praise of Walking” inspires us to start walking again and recognize its many benefits to our lives and societies.

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.

“Buckeye: A Novel” by Patrick Ryan takes readers on a captivating journey through a single town, where the lives of two families intertwine amidst a life-altering secret. With its sweeping narrative and intimate moments, the story delves deeply into the human experience, offering rich insights and a warmth that resonates with anyone seeking love, goodness, and yearning for connection.

In Bonhomie, Ohio, a stolen moment of passion, sparked in the exuberant aftermath of the Allied victory in Europe, binds Cal Jenkins, a man wounded not in war but by his inability to serve in it, to Margaret Salt, a woman trying to obscure her past. Cal’s wife, Becky, possesses a spiritual gift: she is a seer who can conjure the dead, helping families reconnect with those they’ve lost. Margaret’s husband, Felix, is serving on a Navy cargo ship, out of harm’s way—until a telegram suggests that the unthinkable might have happened.

Later, as the country reconstructs in the postwar boom, a secret grows in Bonhomie—but nothing stays buried forever in a small town. Against the backdrop of some of the most transformative decades in modern America, the consequences of that long-ago encounter ripple through the next generation of both families, compelling them to reexamine who they thought they were and what the future might hold.

Patrick Ryan is the author of the story collections The Dream Life of Astronauts and Send Me. The Dream Life of Astronauts was named one of the Best Books of the Year by the St. Louis Times-Dispatch, Literary Hub, Refinery29, and Electric Literature, and it was also longlisted for The Story Prize.

His work has been featured in The Best American Short Stories and the anthology Tales of Two Cities, among other publications. Ryan is the former associate editor of Granta and currently serves as the editor-in-chief of One Story. He resides in New York City.

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!