Today, I dove into Charlotte Wood‘s captivating novel, “Stone Yard Devotional.” I couldn’t resist picking it up after discovering a glowing review by Joumana Khatib. She expressed her fondness for the book in the New York Times Book Review Newsletter, saying, “I’m still so enamored of Charlotte Wood’s novel.” It’s impressive that this work was a finalist for the Booker Prize last year! I’m eager to read the book to determine if it is a “love story,” as Ms. Khatib believes.

Burnt out and needing a retreat, a middle-aged woman leaves Sydney to return to her childhood home, taking refuge in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of rural Australia. She does not believe in God and is unfamiliar with the concept of prayer, finding herself living this strange, reclusive existence almost by accident.

However, her secluded life is disrupted by three significant events. First, a terrible mouse plague marks a new battle against the growing infestation daily. Second, the skeletal remains of a sister who disappeared decades ago and was presumed murdered return. Finally, a troubling visitor brings her further into her past.

Meditative, moving, and finely observed, “Stone Yard Devotional” is a seminal novel from a writer of rare power. It explores the meaning of retreating from the world, forgiveness’s true nature, and grief‘s lasting effects on the human soul.

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Today, I dove into Sally Rooney‘s latest novel, “Intermezzo: A Novel,” which instantly captivated me. It’s a profoundly moving exploration of grief, love, and the intricacies of family life, with love at its heart. Reflecting on my journey through grief, I remember how Ms. Rooney‘s earlier work, “Beautiful World, Where Are You,” resonated with me during my second year of processing loss.

It beautifully highlighted love’s enduring nature and reminded me that, even in the depths of sorrow, love’s essence never truly fades. Intermezzo focuses on the fact that, aside from being brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.

Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties—successful, competent, and unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women—his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.

Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.

In this poignant interlude, we delve into the lives of two brothers grappling with their profound grief, accompanied by those who care for them. It’s a raw journey woven with threads of longing, heartbreak, and the flickering light of hope. Together, they navigate the uncharted territory of loss, uncovering how much the human spirit can withstand before it shatters.

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Today, I started reading Martha Beck‘s “The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self,” a book recommended by my friend Mark. I always appreciate receiving book recommendations from friends and readers of my blog. In her self-help book, Ms. Beck asserts, “Integrity is the cure for psychological suffering. Period.” This book will be invaluable during my early period of grief. I purchased the eBook from Bookshop and plan to do so.

Bestselling author, life coach, and sociologist Martha Beck explains why “integrity”—needed now more than ever in these tumultuous times—is the key to a meaningful and joyful life. As she writes,

This book, as you may have gleaned from the title, is all about integrity. But I don’t mean this in a moralizing sense. The word integrity has taken on a slightly prim, judgmental nuance in modern English, but the word comes from the Latin integer, meaning “intact.” To be in integrity is to be one thing, whole and undivided. When a plane is in integrity, all its millions of parts work together smoothly and cooperatively. If it loses integrity, it may stall, falter, or crash. There’s no judgment here. Just physics.

In The Way of Integrity, Beck presents a four-stage process that anyone can use to find integrity, a sense of purpose, emotional healing, and a life free of mental suffering. Many issues, such as people-pleasing, staying in stale relationships, and maintaining unhealthy habits, arise from a disconnection from what truly makes us feel complete.

Inspired by The Divine Comedy, Beck uses Dante’s classic hero’s journey as a framework to break down the process of attaining personal integrity into small, manageable steps. She shows how to read the internal signals that lead us toward our true path and recognize what we yearn for versus what our culture sells us.

With techniques tested on hundreds of her clients, Beck brings her expertise as a social scientist, life coach, and human being to help readers uncover what integrity looks like in their lives. She takes us on a spiritual adventure that will change the direction of our lives and bring us to a place of genuine happiness.

Other books I have read with a similar theme, which I also recommend, include Man’s Search for Meaning, Climbing the Second Mountain, and The Pursuit of Happiness.

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I began to read “The Great Divide: A Novel” by Cristina Henriquez today. The book stood out for its compassionate exploration of the lives of activists, fishmongers, laborers, journalists, neighbors, doctors, and soothsayers. It sheds light on individuals whose essential contributions history overlooks. The novel weaves these characters’ stories in a unique and compelling narrative structure.

Set against the backdrop of the yet-to-be-built Panama Canal, the book delves into the lives of various characters. Francisco, a local fisherman, resents the foreign powers vying for control of his homeland. His son, Omar, works in the excavation zone, seeking connection in a rapidly changing world.

Sixteen-year-old Ada Bunting, from Barbados, stows away in Panama to find work and fund her ailing sister’s surgery. When she encounters Omar, who collapsed after a grueling shift, she rushes to his aid, setting off a chain of events that will change their lives.

John Oswald, a scientist dedicated to eliminating malaria, is in Panama when his wife, Marian, falls ill. Witnessing Ada’s bravery and compassion, he hires her as a caregiver, setting off a tale of ambition, loyalty, and sacrifice.

I’ve just started reading The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante after finishing My Brilliant Friend. This book is among the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. I chose to read it after watching An Undoing, a documentary about healing from an abusive 20-year marriage using unstitching wedding garments, one stitch at a time.

The film was part of the first night of the International Women’s Film Festival in Cranford. Although, except for one brief moment, I have never been in the same situation as the woman in the short video or Olga, the protagonist in the novel, I choose this as my next book to read. Of course, Ferrante’s writing is known for rich character development and powerful prose.

The Days of Abandonment follows the gripping story of an Italian woman named Olga, whose husband suddenly leaves after fifteen years of marriage. With two young children to care for, Olga finds it increasingly difficult to maintain her previous lifestyle of keeping a spotless house, cooking creative meals, and controlling her temper. After encountering her husband with his much younger lover in public, she even resorts to physically assaulting him.

In a “raging, torrential voice,” according to The New York Times, Olga describes her journey from denial to devastating emptiness. Trapped within the four walls of their high-rise apartment, she confronts her ghosts, the potential loss of her identity, and the possibility that life may never return to normal.

I started reading Everything’s Fine by Cecilia Rabess today, a stunning debut introducing a talented new author. However, I found it easier to decide to read it after reading in the New York Times that some reviewers on Goodreads criticized the book’s premise without reading it. It’s unfair to criticize something after experiencing it first-hand.

On Jess’s first day at Goldman Sachs, she’s disappointed to learn that she’ll be working with Josh, a white conservative she used to argue with in college. Josh enjoys playing devil’s advocate and can be challenging to deal with.

But when Jess realizes she’s the only Black woman on the team and is being overlooked, Josh offers his support in imperfect but meaningful ways. As they develop an unlikely friendship with undeniable chemistry, it eventually becomes an electrifying romance that shocks them both.

Despite their differences, their attraction brings them together, and Jess starts to question whether happiness is more important than being right. However, as the cultural and political landscape shifts in 2016, Jess, who is just discovering herself, must decide what she’s willing to compromise for love and if everything is excellent. This poignant and sharp novel by Cecilia Rabess asks if they will and if they should.

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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The Bookstore Sisters: A Short Story by Alice Hoffman is a heartfelt short story about family, independence, and finding your place in the world. The overview should be enough to encourage everyone to read the book. I recommend this short story without any reservations. Ms. Hoffman has written a moving story that helped me to grapple with grief and reminded me that love is the highest and most important goal that humans can aspire.

Isabel Gibson has all but perfected the art of forgetting. She’s a New Yorker now, with nothing left to tie her to Brinkley’s Island, Maine. Her parents are gone, the family bookstore is all but bankrupt, and her sister, Sophie, will probably never speak to her again.

But when a mysterious letter arrives in her mailbox, Isabel feels drawn to the past. After years of fighting for her independence, she dreads the thought of going back to the island. What she finds there may forever alter her path—and change everything she thought she knew about her family, home, and herself.

Isabel sums up the power of love in this paragraph,

She was thinking about the way a fish loved a river, and a bird loved the sky, and a mother loved her daughters. She was remembering everything. How love could change a person, how it could cause you the greatest sorrow or shelter you from harm. There were moths hitting against the windowpanes. A night heron called in the marshland as if its heart were breaking.

I have always fantasized about working in or owning a small bookstore.

The Bookstore Sisters: A Short Story rekindled that dream and reminded me of the power of love.

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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Trust by Hernan Diaz is an elegant, multifaceted epic that recovers the voices buried under the myths that justify our foundational inequality; Trust is a literary triumph with a beating heart and urgent stakes. The novel is divided into four sections, each engaging and reminding us of the tremendous costs a fortune imposes on those who accumulate wealth. I highly recommend this novel as it is one of the best books I have ever read!

The first section is from Bonds, a successful novel about Benjamin and Helen Rask. Before finishing this section, I was so engrossed that I wanted their story to continue. The second is a memoir of Andrew Bevel, a successful fourth-generation financier, with notations on edits and corrections.

The third section is about Ida Partenza, an Italian-American novelist hired to flesh out Bevel’s memoir. The dynamics between her and Bevel, as well as her father and boyfriend, clarify the storyline and give it depth. Ms. Partenza seeks to find the truth, revealed in the fourth section, comprised of excerpts from Mildred’s diary. Suffice it to say; the admitted fact underscores the burdens of wealth and the antiquated views that limited women’s roles.

Trust is one of the NY Times’ top five fiction books of 2022. I have read four of them, Demon Copperhead, The Candy House, The Furrows, and Checkout 19. Trust was the fifth and the seventy-second book I have read this year. 

The Goodreads summary provides an overview.

Even though the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the brilliant daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of seemingly endless wealth. But the secrets around their affluence and grandeur incite gossip. At what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? Rumors about Benjamin’s financial maneuvers and Helen’s reclusiveness start to spread–all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end.

This is the mystery at the center of a successful 1938 novel, Bonds, which all of New York seems to have read. But it isn’t the only version.

Hernan Diaz’s Trust brilliantly puts the story of these characters into conversation with other accounts–and in tension with the life and perspective of a young woman bent on disentangling fact from fiction. Provocative and propulsive, Trust engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the reality-warping gravitational pull of money and how power often manipulates facts. The result is a novel that becomes more exhilarating and profound with each new layer and revelation.

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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The Hidden Habits of Genius: Beyond Talent, IQ, and Grit―Unlocking the Secrets of Greatness by Craig Wright, Ph.D., I got through my membership in One Day University.

Dr. Wright raises many important questions as he analyses fourteen (14) critical traits of genius. Professor Craig Wright, creator of Yale University’s famous “Genius Course,” explores what we can learn from brilliant minds that have changed the world.

What we often presume about a genius does not match reality. Among other interesting observations, Dr. Wright reminds the reader that Picasso could not pass a fourth-grade math test, and Steve Jobs’s high school GPA was 2.65. He questions why to teach children to behave and play by the rules when transformative geniuses do not.

Examining the lives of transformative individuals ranging from Charles Darwin and Marie Curie to Leonardo Da Vinci and Andy Warhol to Toni Morrison and Elon Musk, Wright identifies more than a dozen drivers of genius, characteristics and patterns of behavior common to great minds throughout history. He argues that genius is about more than intellect and work ethic and that the famed “eureka” moment is a Hollywood fiction. Brilliant insights that change the world are never sudden, but rather, they are the result of unique modes of thinking and lengthy gestation.

I found the book to be a fascinating read and raised more questions for future thought and reading. Professor Wright argues that the habits of mind that produce great thinking and discovery can be actively learned and cultivated. In the book, he explains how. He notes that reading the book will not make you a genius but can “make you more strategic, creative, and successful, and, ultimately, happier.

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