Celestial Navigation

Celestial Navigation

by

Celestial Navigation

Estimated reading time: 0 minutes, 58 seconds

 

Celestial Navigation by Anne Tyler is a book I found on our bookshelf about a month after my wife passed away. The title and a mental note that my wife had recommended it made it an easy choice.

One of the main characters, thirty-eight-year-old Jeremy Pauling, had never left home. In the early stages of grief, I was nowhere near making a similar choice and remaining housebound. However, if I had been, this book would have caused me to reject that idea immediately.

After the death of his mother, he takes in Mary Tell and her daughter as boarders. The other boarders quickly realize that Jeremy is falling in love with Mary despite his fragility and inexperience with women.

To share more about the book would reveal details that might be spoilers.

For me, the book was a good read and one that reminded me that love is both beautiful and complicated. Although Jan and I shared passion was nothing like theirs, it was helpful to compare their love and ours when my loss seemed impossible.

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A Sovereign People: The Crises of the 1790s and the Birth of American Nationalism

Read: February 2019

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A Sovereign People: The Crises of the 1790s and the Birth of American Nationalism

by Carol Berkin

A Sovereign People: The Crises of the 1790s and the Birth of American Nationalism by Carol Berkin, Presidential Professor American Colonial and Revolutionary History; Women’s History Professor at Baruch College, focuses on four crises in the first decade. Most historians view these are part of the early partisan debates in America.

Professor Berkin takes a different perspective. She focuses on how the Whiskey Rebellion, the Genet Affair, the XYZ Affair, and the Alien and Sedition Acts helped build nationalism. Despite the partisan divisions, both sides could find solutions that helped America survive its first decade. The failure to resolve anyone of these could have doomed America to failure.

The Federalists – Washington, Hamilton, and Adams – were the leaders of that first decade and managed the successive crisis of sovereignty.

A Sovereign People is one of four books from my first One Day University class.

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Trouble the Saints

Read: January 2022

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Trouble the Saints

by Alaya Dawn Johnson

Trouble the Saints by Alaya Dawn Johnson is one of NPR’s Books We Love from 2020. The dangerous magic of The Night Circus meets the powerful historical exploration of The Underground Railroad in this timely and unsettling novel, set against the darkly glamorous backdrop of New York City at the dawn of WWII. Amidst the whir of city life, a girl from Harlem is drawn into the glittering underworld of Manhattan, where she’s hired to use her knives to strike fear amongst its most dangerous denizens.

The book is written in three sections with different protagonists and voices. Phyllis, or Pea as her friends call her, is a black assassin for a white mob boss narrates the first section of the book. Her saint’s hands are the ability to use knives to commit murder. She can also pass as white as Phyllis, but she is a black woman from Harlem as Pea. The section she narrates is difficult at first to follow as she attempts to deal with the consequences of her actions. Can the past ever be the past?

Dev, Indian and Phyllis’s lover, narrates the second section. He is an undercover cop who protects her and helps her free herself from the mob boss. This section is located in the Hudson Valley and highlights the tensions before the war between whites and non-whites.

The third protagonist, Tamara, narrates this section. The war separates Phyllis and Dev. Phyllis is pregnant, and Dev and Tamara’s love interest are serving in the military. This section brings together the threads and reminds us that the past is never the past.

As Goodreads summarizes the book,

But the ghosts from her past are always by her side—and history has appeared on her doorstep to threaten the people she loves most.

Can one woman ever sacrifice enough to save an entire community?

Trouble the Saints is a dazzling, daring novel—a magical love story, a compelling chronicle of interracial tension, and an altogether brilliant and deeply American saga.

I recommend this book and encourage all readers to read it to the end.

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The Human Stain: A Novel

Read: September 2024

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The Human Stain: A Novel

by Philip Roth

Today, I started reading The Human Stain: A Novel by Philip Roth. This book is considered a masterpiece and has earned its place among The New York Times’ 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. The story takes place in 1998, a significant year marked by a presidential impeachment that affected the entire nation. In a peaceful New England town, the respected classics professor Coleman Silk is forced into retirement due to false accusations of racism by his colleagues.

This accusation triggers a series of events that bring to light shocking revelations about Coleman, revelations that carry a profound societal significance. Coleman Silk harbors a secret, a secret that is not about his affair with Faunia Farley, a woman half his age with a troubled past, or the alleged racism that led to his downfall at the college where he was once a respected dean. It’s not even about misogyny, despite Professor Delphine Roux’s attempts to portray him as such. Coleman’s true secret, a secret he has guarded for fifty years from everyone in his life, including his wife, children, colleagues, and friends, is a defining aspect of his character and his relationships.

The Human Stain is a compelling portrayal of 1990s America, a time of clashing moralities and ideological divisions. Through public denunciations and rituals of purification, it delves into how the nation’s destiny and the ‘human stain’ that marks human nature shape the lives of postwar Americans. This potent and captivating novel is a fitting continuation of Philip Roth‘s earlier works, each set in a distinct historical period.

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The missing hours

Read: February 2022

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The Missing Hours

by Julia Dahl

The Missing Hours by Julia Dahl is a novel I chose to read as I was looking for something different from the recent books I have read, and a fellow reader recommended this one. The Missing Hours is a novel about obsession, privilege, and the explosive consequences of one violent act. Like a bomb exploding, the ripple effects of the novel’s primary event impact the victim and her family, friends, and the larger community.

A trigger warning to all readers, the violent act in the novel is a sexual assault that is filmed and shared. Claudia, the victim, has no memory initially of what happened. She had been drinking and wearing clothes that she liked to wear. None of her choices is an excuse for those who victimized her.

She cannot remember what happened until a friend receives the video.

Being wealthy and social media savvy, she is aware that reporting the assault before or after the video is released would only allow her to be re-victimized. Her choices and how she seeks to secure justice make this a book I enjoyed and highly recommended.

This is the Goodreads overview.

From a distance, Claudia Castro has it all: a famous family, a trust fund, thousands of Instagram followers, and a spot in NYU’s first-year class. But look closer, and things are messier: her parents are separating, she’s just been humiliated by a sleazy documentary, and her sister is about to have a baby with a man she barely knows.

Claudia starts the school year resolved to find a path toward something positive, maybe even meaningful – and then, one drunken night, everything changes. Reeling, her memory hazy, Claudia cuts herself off from her family, seeking solace in a new friendship. But when the rest of school comes back from spring break, Claudia is missing.

Suddenly, the whole city is trying to piece together the hours of that terrible night.

From the critically acclaimed author of Invisible City and Conviction, The Missing Hours is a novel about obsession, privilege, and the explosive consequences of one violent act.

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Salvage the Bones: A Novel

Read: September 2024

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Salvage the Bones: A Novel

by Jesmyn Ward

I’ve started reading “Salvage the Bones: A Novel” by Jesmyn Ward, a two-time National Book Award winner and author of “Sing, Unburied, Sing.” The book delivers a gritty yet tender story about family and poverty in the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina. Hurricane Helene’s devastation makes it the perfect time to read this book. The novel is among The New York Times’ 100 Best Books of the 21st Century.

The story is set in Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, where a hurricane is building over the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the city. Esch’s father is growing concerned, although he is often absent and a heavy drinker. Esch and her three brothers are stocking food, but there is little to save. Esch, who is fourteen, is pregnant and struggling to keep down the little food she gets. Her brother Skeetah is trying to care for his pit bull’s new litter, which is dying one by one. Meanwhile, brothers Randall and Junior struggle with family dynamics and lack parental guidance.

As the twelve days that make up the novel’s framework yield their dramatic conclusion, this unforgettable family – motherless children sacrificing for one another, protecting and nurturing where love is scarce – pulls itself up to face another day. The novel is a big-hearted story about familial love and community against all odds, offering a wrenching look at the lonesome, brutal, and restrictive realities of rural poverty. “Salvage the Bones” is a revelatory, honest, and poignant exploration of social issues, filled with poetry and emotional depth.

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Borscht Belt Boy: Recollections of a Hotel Brat

Read: January 2024

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Borscht Belt Boy

by Mark Kramer

I started reading Borscht Belt Boy: Recollections of a Hotel Brat by Mark Kramer today. The book is the story of a young man who grew up in the heyday of the Borscht Belt. The author sent me a copy when I shared my 2023 reading accomplishments. I found joy in reading his memoir as the author, and I are almost the same age.

The author, the son of a Catskills Mountain resort hotel owner, describes his experiences growing up when hotels, bungalow colonies, and sleep-away camps were booming. Learn about the characters that populated this world, from the kids who worked in the dining rooms, the handymen recruited from the Bowery, to the chefs and maitre d’s.

Enjoy the author’s humorous description of the different kinds of people who summered in the mountains. Read fascinating tales of entertainers, including Buddy Hackett and Lenny Bruce’s experiences at the family hotel. There is a brief history of Catskills’ institutions, how the influx of Jews changed the landscape, and how the resort trade influenced race, religion, and class.

This lighthearted memoir will return fond memories to those who visited the Borscht Belt in their youth and enlighten those not lucky enough to have shared this particular time and place in history.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Regarding 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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