Richard W. Brown March 23, 2024
Twenty-two GSFF Films in Cranford

Twenty-two GSFF Films in Cranford

Estimated reading time: 0 minutes, 45 seconds

Today, I am attending the Garden State Film Festival at the Cranford Theatre, where I plan to spend the entire day watching 22 short independent films filmed and produced in NJ. In between films, I take short breaks to recharge and stretch my legs.

One of the first films I watched was a music video titled “Camryn James—Born To Be Someone.” The lively tune instantly caught my attention. The music video encouraged us to be ourselves and love ourselves. It reminded us that love knows no bounds and that we are all part of one big family.

The music video’s message was clear – our only hope of salvation lies in love, and we can attain it only through love. Overall, it was an excellent start to the festival, and I am excited to see what other films are in store for me throughout the day.

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Our Salvation is Through Love!

Estimated reading time: 0 minutes, 45 seconds
Our Salvation is Through Love, and in Love!

Our Salvation is Through Love!

During most of my grief journey, I have had the benefit of friendships that have helped me manage the perilous waters after a devasting loss. As C.S. Lewis wrote in "The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume II" (2004), "Friendship is the greatest of worldly goods." I will always be grateful for my friends, some who have been with me for years and others whom I have met recently who helped me in the darkest hours of my life.As I approach thirty-one months since my wife died, I have learned to love again and be loved. I never thought I could be loved again or have the strength to love someone. No doorbusters could be as valuable as friends or the ability to love again. Love serves as my salvation and a means of attaining humanity's redemption. Love transcends ourselves and connects with others on a deeper level, leading to a more compassionate and harmonious world.

Richard W. Brown November 24, 2023

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Twenty-two GSFF Films in Cranford
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Blue Skies: A Novel

Read: August 2023

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Blue Skies: A Novel

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.

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Flight: A Novel

Read: January 2023

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Flight: A Novel

by Lynn Steger Strong

Flight: A Novel by Lynn Steger Strong is a novel about family, ambition, precarity, art, and desire, forming a decisive next step from a brilliant chronicler of our time. The book has been on my to-read list for a few months. A New Yorker Best Books of 2022, it seemed like a good start on my 2023 Goodreads Reading challenge. Flight is the first book I read in 2023. Last year I read seventy-four books, and each helped me with my grief journey.

I recommend this novel as it is a page-turner highlighting the difficulty families experience after a loss. As a culture, we are experiencing declining social connections, including within families. Flight is an excellent effort to define the crisis.

Although several possible resolutions to the conflict became clear by the middle of the novel, Ms. Strong told the story so that until the end, it was unclear how or if it would be resolved. In addition, enough unresolved issues remained so that.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

It’s December twenty-second and siblings Henry, Kate, and Martin have converged with their spouses on Henry’s house in upstate New York. This is the first Christmas the siblings are without their mother, the first not at their mother’s Florida house. Over the course of the next three days, old resentments and instabilities arise as the siblings, with a gaggle of children afoot, attempt to perform familiar rituals, while also trying to decide what to do with their mother’s house, their sole inheritance. As tensions rise, the whole group is forced to come together unexpectedly when a local mother and daughter need help.

With the urgency and artfulness that cemented her previous novel Want as “a defining novel of our age” (Vulture), Strong once again turns her attention to the structural and systemic failings that are haunting Americans, but also to the ways in which family, friends, and strangers can support each other through the gaps

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 Outrun: A Memoir

Read: October 2022

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The Outrun: A Memoir

by Amy Liptrot

The Outrun: A Memoir by Amy Liptrot is about her return to Orkney after more than a decade; she visits the Outrun on the sheep farm where she grew up. Approaching the land that was once home, memories of her childhood merge with the recent events that have set her on this journey. My current grief journey is not like Amy Liptrot‘s, but I learned from her struggles as we all need the support of family and friends.

Amy’s long walks, detailed description of bird watching, and life on a small island were very moving. I might have moved from one apartment to the adjacent one, but I learned from Amy’s journey and feel more confident facing life’s uncertainties.

I highly recommend this memoir.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

Amy was shaped by the cycle of the seasons, birth and death on the farm, and her father’s mental illness, which was as much a part of her childhood as the wild, carefree existence on Orkney. But as she grew up, she longed to leave this remote life. She moved to London and found herself in a hedonistic cycle. Unable to control her drinking, alcohol gradually took over. Now thirty, she finds herself washed up back home on Orkney, standing unstable at the cliff edge, trying to come to terms with what happened to her in London.

Spending early mornings swimming in the bracingly cold sea, the days tracking Orkney’s wildlife—puffins nesting on sea stacks, arctic terns swooping close enough to feel their wings—and nights searching the sky for the Merry Dancers, Amy slowly makes the journey toward recovery from addiction.

The Outrun is a beautiful, inspiring book about living on the edge, about the pull between island and city, and about the ability of the sea, the land, the wind, and the moon to restore life and renew hope.

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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Three Days in June

Read: February 2025

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Three Days in June

by Anne Tyler

Today, I dove into the enchanting world of “Three Days in June” by Anne Tyler, a novel that promises to become an instant classic. It beautifully captures the experience of a socially awkward mother-of-the-bride as she navigates the whirlwind of emotions before and after her daughter’s wedding. After shuffling through the frosty morning air on my walk, wrapping myself in the warmth of Tyler‘s words about three sun-soaked days in June felt like the perfect escape. What a delightful contrast!

Gail Baines is having a bad day. First, she loses her job—or quits, depending on whom you ask. Tomorrow, her daughter, Debbie, is getting married, and she hasn’t even been invited to the spa day organized by the groom’s mother. Then, Gail’s ex-husband, Max, arrives unannounced on her doorstep, carrying a cat, without a place to stay or even a suit.

However, the crisis occurs when Debbie shares a secret she has just learned about her husband-to-be with her parents. This will not only throw the wedding into question but also stir up Gail and Max’s past.

Told with deep sensitivity and a tart sense of humor and full of the joys and heartbreaks of love, marriage, and family life, “Three Days in June” is a triumph and shows the perennially bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer at the height of her powers.

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Seascraper

Read: November 2025

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Seascraper: A Novel

by Benjamin Wood

Haunting, timeless, and stunningly atmospheric, Seascraper by Benjamin Wood explores the story of a young man whose quiet existence is dramatically altered in just one day. His circumstances confine him, yet he yearns for a sense of fulfillment that extends far beyond the world he knows. The novel has been longlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize.

Twenty-year-old Thomas Flett lives a slow, deliberate life with his mother in Longferry, Northern England, working his grandpa’s trade as a shanker. He rises early to take his horse and cart to the drizzly shore to scrape for shrimp, and spends the afternoon selling his wares, trying to wash away the salt and sea-scum, pining for his neighbor, Joan Wyeth, and playing songs on his guitar. At heart, he is a folk musician, but this remains a private dream.

Then a mysterious American arrives in town and enlists Thomas’s help in finding a perfect location for his next movie. Though skeptical at first, Thomas learns to trust the stranger, Edgar, and, shaken from the drudgery of his days by the promise of Hollywood glamour, begins to see a different future for himself. But how much of what Edgar claims is true, and how far can his inspiration carry Thomas?

Benjamin Wood was born in 1981 and grew up in Merseyside. Seascraper is his fifth novel. His previous works were shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, the Commonwealth Book Prize, the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, the RSL Encore Award, the CWA Gold Dagger Award, and the European Union Prize for Literature. In 2014, he won France’s Prix du Roman Fnac.

He is a senior lecturer in creative writing at King’s College, London, and lives in Surrey with his wife and sons.

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The Bookstore Sisters: A Short Story

Read: October 2022

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The Bookstore Sisters: A Short Story

by Alice Hoffman

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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