Richard W. shared a stream on August 3, 2022
Wes, Nick and Nick

Wes is One Month Old Today!

Estimated reading time: 0 minutes, 58 seconds

Wes is One Month Old Today!Wes Jude Nucero is one month old today!

My second grandchild was born on July 3, 2022, and his middle name is in honor of Jan, the love of my life, Mike’s mom, and Wes’s grandmother.

It is also a nod to Jan’s love of music, especially The Beatles, and specifically to their song Hey Jude.

God, in her infinite and divine wisdom, had Wes Jude born fourteen months after Jan died. Wes Jude’s birth on that day is a true blessing for Jan, Jude, and our family.

Until Wes Jude’s birth, I had counted the months since Jan died. Now I measure the months since his birth.

It does not obscure the pain of losing Jan; instead, it reminds me of life’s miraculous beauty.

Our love will never die.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. All donations are tax-deductible.

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Wes I Love You!

Happy Birthday, Wes Jude Nucero!

Jude, the middle name, honors Jan, the love of my life, Mike's mom, and Wes's grandmother. It also shows her love of music, especially The Beatles and Hey Jude.

God, in her infinite and divine wisdom, had Wes Jude born fourteen months after Jan died. Wes Jude's birth on this day is a true blessing for Jan, Jude, and our family.

Richard W. Brown July 4, 2022

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Station Eleven: A Novel

Read: August 2024

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Station Eleven: A Novel

by Emily St. John Mandel

Station Eleven: A Novel by Emily St. John Mandel, one of The New York Times’ 100 Best Books of the Century, is set in the unsettling days of civilization’s collapse and tells the captivating story of a Hollywood star, his potential savior, and a nomadic group of actors traveling through the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region. They risk everything for art and humanity, reminding us of the enduring power of culture even in the most dire circumstances.

Kirsten Raymonde will never forget the night Arthur Leander, the famous Hollywood actor, had a heart attack on stage during a production of King Lear. That night, a devastating flu pandemic arrived in the city, and within weeks, civilization as we know it came to an end. Little did she know that this event would set events to shape the world’s future.

Twenty years later, Kirsten, a key figure in the story, traverses the settlements of the altered world with a small troupe of actors and musicians. They are The Traveling Symphony, a group that has made it their mission to keep the remnants of art and humanity alive. Their encounters, particularly in St. Deborah by the Water, with a violent prophet threatening their existence, form a crucial part of the narrative. The story’s unique structure, moving back and forth in time, vividly depicts life before and after the pandemic, and the strange twist of fate that connects them all will keep you on the edge of your seat.

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The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life

Read: May 2019

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The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life

by David Brooks

The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life by David Brooks is a book I often recommend. Mr. Brooks writes about the first mountain that most people climb. The book challenges the reader to “live for a cause greater than themselves.”

It is about “to be a success, make your mark, experience personal happiness.” Even when they reach the top of the mountain, most people find they are unhappy. The climb to the summit has become unsatisfying.

On the second mountain, life moves from self-centered to other-centered.” Life becomes interdependent, not independent; it becomes a life of commitment, not about us.

Mr. Brooks “explores the four commitments that define a life of meaning and purpose: to a spouse and family, to a vocation, to a philosophy or faith, and to a community.

We live in a society, Brooks argues, that celebrates freedom, that tells us to be true to ourselves, at the expense of surrendering to a cause, rooting ourselves in a neighborhood, binding ourselves to others by social solidarity and love. We have taken individualism to the extreme—and in the process we have torn the social fabric in a thousand different ways.

When I read The Second Mountain, it became clear that Jan and I never even attempted to climb the first mountain. We were constantly climbing the second mountain.

We had chosen to do work that repaired the world; we both had a faith community and lived in a community.

All we were missing as far as commitments when we met was each other. Our love for each other provided the missing link and allowed us to climb to the top of the second mountain.

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 Unfolding

Read: October 2022

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The Unfolding: A Novel

by A.M. Homes

The Unfolding by A.M. Homes is a darkly comic political parable braided with a Bildungsroman that takes us inside the heart of a divided country. The Unfolding is an alternative history that is terrifyingly prescient, profoundly tender, and devastatingly funny. Will this novel help me to understand how we became a nation that no longer shares the same definitions of truth, freedom, and democracy, much less a shared vision of the future?

Although I understand more clearly the crisis facing the US, I highly recommend this novel.

Ms. Homes has written a must-read book that compliments the January 6th Committee report and should make us all more vigilant.

The characters are so well defined that at the end of the novel, I wanted to continue to read about them, especially Meghan.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

The Big Guy loves his family, money, and country. Undone by the 2008 presidential election results, he taps a group of like-minded men to reclaim their version of the American Dream. As they build a scheme to disturb and disrupt, the Big Guy also faces turbulence within his family. His wife, Charlotte, grieves a life not lived, while his 18-year-old daughter, Meghan, realizes that her favorite subject–history–is not exactly what her father taught her.

In a story that is as much about the dynamics within a family as it is about the desire for those in power to remain in force, Homes presciently unpacks a dangerous rift in American identity, prompting a reconsideration of the definition of truth, freedom, and democracy–and exploring the explosive consequences of what happens when the exact words mean such different things to people living together under one roof.

In her first novel since the Women’s Prize award-winning May We Be Forgiven, A.M. Homes delivers us back to ourselves in this stunning alternative history that is both terrifyingly prescient, deeply tender, and devastatingly funny.

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.

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Dogs and Monsters: Stories

Read: October 2024

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Dogs and Monsters: Stories

by Mark Haddon

Today, I started reading Dogs and Monsters: Stories by Mark Haddon. The collection features eight captivating and imaginative stories that blend Greek myths with contemporary dystopian narratives. The stories explore themes of mortality, moral choices, and various forms of love, including romantic, familial, and self-love. Haddon’s clear-eyed vision is infused with deep empathy.

In addition, Haddon’s fluid prose showcases his remarkable powers of observation, both of the physical world and the inner workings of the human psyche. Greek myths have fascinated people for millennia with their timeless appeal and enduring lessons about fate, hubris, and life’s uncertainties. In Dogs and Monsters: Stories, Mark Haddon delves into the heart of these ancient fables and presents them in a fresh light. For instance, in one story, the dawn goddess Eos requests that Zeus grant her lover Tithonus eternal life but forgets to ask for eternal youth. In “The Quiet Limit of the World,” Haddon imagines Tithonus’s life as he ages over thousands of years, transforming this cautionary tale about tempting the gods into a spellbinding meditation on observing death from the outside. This tale ultimately explores how carnal love evolves into something more profound and poignant over time.

In “The Mother‘s Story,” Haddon reinterprets the myth of the Minotaur, born of the monstrous lust of King Minos’s wife, Pasiphaë. He turns it into a heartbreaking parable of a mother’s love for a damaged child and the more tangible monstrosities of patriarchy. In “D.O.G.Z.,” the story of Actaeon, who was transformed into a stag after glimpsing the naked goddess Diana and was subsequently torn apart by his hunting dogs, becomes a visceral metaphor for the continuum of human and animal behavior.

Other stories in Dogs and Monsters: Stories play with contemporary mythic tropes—such as genetic engineering, attempts to escape the future, and the cruelty of adolescent ostracism. These stories showcase how modern humans are subject to the same capriciousness that concerned the Greeks but in a fresh and intriguing light. Haddon‘s tales cover a wide range of themes, from the mythic to the domestic, from ancient Greece to the present day, and explore love alongside stories of cruelty. They take readers from battlefields to bed and breakfasts and from dogs in space to doors between worlds, all bound together by profound sympathy and an insight into how human beings think, feel, and act when pushed to their limits.

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Bluff: Poems

Read: December 2024

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Bluff: Poems

by Danez Smith

Today, I began reading Bluff: Poems by Danez Smith, which was selected as one of The New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2024. This collection emerged after two years of artistic silence, during which the world slowed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and Minneapolis became the epicenter of protests following the murder of George Floyd. In Bluff, Danez Smith powerfully reflects on their role and responsibilities as a poet and their connection to their hometown of the Twin Cities.

This book addresses the awakening from violence, guilt, shame, and critical pessimism to a sense of wonder, envisioning how we might strive for a new existence in a world that seems to be descending into desolate futures.

Smith infuses these poems with a startling urgency; their questions demand a new language, deep self-scrutiny, and virtuosic textual shapes. A series of ars poetica gives way to “anti-poetica” and “ars America,” implicating poetry in collusion with unchecked capitalism. A photographic collage builds across a sequence, illustrating the consequences of America’s acceptance of mass shootings. Additionally, a brilliant long poem—part map, part annotation, part visual argument—offers the history of Saint Paul’s vibrant Rondo neighborhood before and after officials decided to route an interstate directly through it.

Bluff is a manifesto of artistic resilience, even when time feels fleeting and the places we hold dear—both given and created—are in turmoil. In this powerful collection, Smith turns to honesty, hope, rage, and imagination to envision possible futures.

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Four Spirits

Read: July 2021

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Four Spirits

by Sena Jeter Naslund

Four Spirits by Sena Jeter Naslund is a book that I could not put down. It is a page-turner. The title is from the four girls killed at Sunday School in Birmingham. When that happened in 1963, I was only a few years older and the impact brought home to me that we lived in a broken world that required repair. Like Stella Silver in the novel, my life changed as a result of the bombing. 

As my reading list may indicate, I have always preferred non-fiction with a preference for history. Picking this novel up combined my prior reading habits with my desire to read books that my wife, Jan, recommended.

Weaving together the lives of blacks and whites, racists and civil rights advocates, and the events of peaceful protest and violent repression, Sena Jeter Naslund creates a tapestry of American social transformation at once intimate and epic.

In Birmingham, Alabama, twenty-year-old Stella Silver, an idealistic white college student, is sent reeling off her measured path by the events of 1963. Combining political activism with single parenting and night-school teaching, African American Christine Taylor discovers she must heal her own bruised heart to actualize meaningful social change. Inspired by the courage and commitment of the civil rights movement, the child Edmund Powers embodies hope for future change. In this novel of maturation and growth, Naslund makes vital the intersection of spiritual, political, and moral forces that have redefined America.

Stella’s idealism reminded me of how I became the person I am. Change is not easy but, it takes all of us to risk our lives to repair the world so, it works for all of us.

The book’s critical focus on the “intersection of spiritual, political, and moral forces that have redefined America” makes this a must-read. The redefinition has made America a better country but, we may be retreating from that ideal.

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