When We Cease to Understand the World
by

When We Cease to Understand the World

Estimated reading time: 0 minutes, 57 seconds

Today, I began reading When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut, translated by Adrian Nathan West. This book, listed on The New York Times 100 Best Books of the 21st Century, promises to be thought-provoking as it delves into the intricate connections between scientific and mathematical discovery, madness, and destruction.

In a world where scientific advancements often involve ethical dilemmas and societal implications, this book offers a unique perspective on the lives of scientists who have shaped our understanding of the world. Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg, and Erwin Schrödinger are some of the luminaries whose troubled lives Benjamín Labatut deeply explores in his fictional examination. Labatut shows how these scientists and thinkers grappled with profound questions of existence, experiencing strokes of unparalleled genius, alienating friends and lovers, and descending into isolation and insanity. Their discoveries, some of which significantly improved human life, while others led to chaos and unimaginable suffering, continue to shape our world.

With a breakneck pace and a wealth of disturbing detail, Labatut uses fiction’s imaginative resources to tell the stories of the scientists and mathematicians who expanded our notions of the possible.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund!

Donate Now!
Brooklyn Crime Novel: A Novel

Read: October 2023

Brooklyn Crime Novel: A Novel

by Jonathan Lethem

I recently recommended reading “Brooklyn Crime Novel: A Novel” by Jonathan Lethem. The story is set in 1970s Brooklyn, where a daily ritual occurs on the streets. This ritual involves exchanging money, surrendering belongings, and asserting power. Violence is promised everywhere and becomes a currency itself.

Regardless of race, the street is like a stage in the shadows for the children. In the background, other players hide, including parents, cops, renovators, landlords, those who write the headlines, histories, and laws, and those who award this neighborhood its name.

Although the rules seem apparent initially, in memory’s prism, the roles of criminals and victims may appear to trade places. The voices of the past rise and gather as if in harmony, then war with one another. A street may seem to crack open and reveal what lies behind its shimmering facade. None who lived through it are ever permitted to forget.

Jonathan Lethem has written this story with kaleidoscopic verve and delirious wit, making it a breathtaking tour de force by a writer at the top of his powers. He has crafted an epic interrogation of how we fashion stories to contain the uncontainable: our remorse at the world we’ve made. He is known as “one of America’s greatest storytellers” by the Washington Post.

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.

Subscribe

Contact Us

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.

×
Ripe: A Novel

Read: July 2023

Get this book

Ripe: A Novel by Sarah Rose Etter

by Sarah Rose Etter

I started reading “Ripe: A Novel” by Sarah Rose Etter today. This book has won awards and is highly praised by Roxane Gay for its uniqueness and brilliance. It tells the story of a woman in Silicon Valley who must choose how much she will sacrifice for success. Fans of “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” and “Her Body and Other Parties” will enjoy this surreal tale.

Cassie has worked at a Silicon Valley start-up for a year but feels stuck in a corporate nightmare. The long hours, toxic bosses, and unethical projects are taking a toll on her. She has a hard time reconciling the stark contrast between the abundance of wealth and the poverty and suffering that exist side by side in the city. Cassie observes Ivy League graduates complaining about snack options in a conference room overlooking unhoused people bathing in the bay. She’s witnessed start-up burnouts who throw themselves in front of commuter trains and men who light themselves on fire in the streets.

Even though Cassie is often by herself, she never feels entirely alone. Since she can remember, she has had a tiny black hole that is always with her. This black hole feeds off her feelings of sadness and worry, getting bigger or smaller depending on how much she struggles. While it watches her, it also waits patiently. Its powerful force keeps pulling Cassie closer as everything in her life seems to fall apart.

Cassie finds herself pregnant unexpectedly while dealing with her CEO’s illegal demands. She must weigh the benefits of Silicon Valley against the risks. Ripe follows the journey of one millennial woman through the absurdities of modern life, offering a sharp yet vulnerable, unsettling yet darkly comic commentary on our late-capitalist hellscape.

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.

Subscribe

Contact Us

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.

×
Corey Fah Does Social Mobility

Read: February 2024

Get this book

Corey Fah Does Social Mobility

by Isabel Waidner

Today, I began reading “Corey Fah Does Social Mobility: A Novel” by Isabel Waidner. The book is about Corey Fah, a writer whose novel has just won the Fictionalization of Social Evils prize. Despite this achievement, the trophy and funds with the award still need to be in reach. The novel celebrates radical queer survival and challenges false notions of success.

Corey, their partner Drew, and their pet spider, Bambi Pavok, embark on a quest to find an elusive trophy with neon-beige color and UFO-like qualities. This journey takes them back to their childhood in the forest and includes a stint on a reality TV show. While facing the horrors of wormholes and time loops, Corey discovers the difference between a prize and a gift in a complex way.

Following the Goldsmiths Prize–winning Sterling Karat Gold, Isabel Waidner’s bold and buoyant new novel is about coming into one’s own, the labor of love, the tendency of history to repeat itself, and what ensues when a large amount of cultural capital is suddenly deposited in a place it has never been before.

×
The Girl in His Shadow

Read: July 2022

Get this book

The Girl in His Shadow

by Audrey Blake

I completed the Big Library Read of 2022, The Girl in His Shadow, by Audrey Blake. I highly recommend it. The Girl in His Shadow is historical fiction about one woman who believed in scientific medicine before the world believed in her. Ms. Blake has a split personality— because she is the creative alter ego of writing duo Jaima Fixsen and Regina Sirois, two authors who met as finalists of a writing contest and have been writing together happily ever since.

The pen name – Audrey Blake – was in response to the publishers recommending a more straightforward author’s name. Regina’s daughter is named Audrey, and Jaima’s son is Blake.

I cannot praise this book enough. It was well written, and the characters, especially Nora Beady, jumped off the page. I recommend The Girl in His Shadow by Audrey Blake and encourage you to read the book and share your thoughts.

For more information and to start reading The Girl in His Shadow by Audrey Blake, visit: Big Library Read.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview.

Raised by the eccentric surgeon Dr. Horace Croft after losing her parents to a deadly pandemic, the orphan Nora Beady knows little about conventional life. While other young ladies were raised to busy themselves with needlework and watercolors, Nora was trained to perfect her suturing and anatomical illustrations of dissections.

Women face dire consequences if caught practicing medicine, but in Croft’s private clinic Nora is his most trusted–and secret–assistant. That is until the new surgical resident Dr. Daniel Gibson arrives. Dr. Gibson has no idea that Horace’s bright and quiet young ward is a surgeon more qualified and ingenuitive than even himself. In order to protect Dr. Croft and his practice from scandal and collapse Nora must learn to play a new and uncomfortable role–that of a proper young lady.

But pretense has its limits. Nora cannot turn away and ignore the suffering of patients even if it means giving Gibson the power to ruin everything she’s worked for. And when she makes a discovery that could change the field forever, Nora faces an impossible choice. Remain invisible and let the men around her take credit for her work, or let the world see her for what she is–even if it means being destroyed by her own legacy.

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

Subscribe

Contact Us

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.

×
The Lion's Den

Read: January 2023

Get this book

The Lion’s Den

by Anthony Marra

Today, I read The Lion’s Den by Anthony Marra. After a four and one-half Zoom meeting, I was looking for a book I could finish tonight, and the third book in the Inheritance, a collection of five stories about secrets, unspoken desires, and dangerous revelations between loved ones, seemed like the book to read. The Lion’s Den is the story of Michael, a son, his father’s transgressions in a tell-all were the ethical, righteous—and profitable—thing to do. What’s left but to slink back home for a humbling face-to-face with the man whose secrets he sold?

It was the perfect novel to read this evening. In the opening paragraph, when Michael’s father describes the automated customer service computer voice.” Siri’s dimwitted stepsister,” I knew I could enjoy this book.

Michael’s last-minute invitation to be the Ethics Symposium speaker at his parochial school was written in a way that was both bluntly honest and humorous.

Michael’s visits with his father to the lion’s den at the National Zoo were profoundly moving, and when the wheelchair was left there after his father’s death brought tears to my eyes.

I highly recommend The Lion’s Den, part of Inheritance, a collection of five stories about secrets, unspoken desires, and dangerous revelations between loved ones. Each Inheritance piece can be read or listened to in a single setting. By yourself, behind closed doors, or shared with someone you trust. This is the third one in the series I have read. The previous two were Everything My Mother Taught Me and Can You Feel This?

I have enjoyed all three and look forward to reading the final two.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

Exposing his father’s transgressions in a tell-all was the ethical, righteous—and profitable—thing to do. What’s left but to slink back home for a humbling face-to-face with the man whose secrets he sold?

He was a notorious government whistle-blower. Depending on whom you ask, he’s a treasonous felon, a folk hero, a validated patriot, or a national disgrace. To his son, Michael, he’s the father who threw his family into upheaval. Now, having moved back home at thirty-four, Michael is getting to know him as a man and getting nearer to understanding his motivations that have remained a mystery in this darkly humorous short story of sacrifice and betrayal by New York Times bestselling author Anthony Marra.

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.

Subscribe

Contact Us

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.

×
American Dirt

Read: September 2021

Get this book

American Dirt

by Jeanine Cummins

American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins is one of the best books I have read this year.

American Dirt is a “cross-genre novel that combines elements of a commercial thriller, literary fiction, suspense, and romance.” American Dirt refers to the land that is the United States of America and to the difficulty undocumented migrants face both before and after crossing the border.

According to SuperSummary,

Lydia Quixano Pérez, a bookstore owner in Acapulco, saves her son Luca from a massacre that wipes out their entire family at a quinceañera cookout. The perpetrators are three sicarios, killers for Los Jardineros, a violent local cartel. Javier Crespo Fuentes, Lydia’s close friend and the jefe of Los Jardineros, ordered the hit in retaliation for an exposé written by Lydia’s husband, a journalist named Sebastián Pérez Delgado. Javier’s murderous rage stems not from the article itself, but from the impact it has on his daughter, Marta, who commits suicide when she learns of her father’s true identity. Lydia and Luca spend the rest of the novel running from Javier’s men, encountering a diverse cast of migrants along the road to the US.

I read the book at the same time that Haitian migrants were being deported at the border. Ms. Cummins writes passionately about the plight of migrants and the difficulties they face as they seek a new life in the US. This book highlighted this to me in ways that I understood intellectually but not emotionally.

Ms. Cummins refers to a sign she saw in Spanish in Tijuana while she was researching this book:

También de este lado hay sueños.

On this side, too, there are dreams.

All of our ancestors were migrants, and they all had dreams of a better life. We need to find a better way to help those who now have goals find a home so that their hopes for a better future can come true.

Subscribe

Contact Us

×