The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate ― Discoveries from A Secret World is a book I have wanted but had not had the time to read. In July of this year, when I was still in the early stages of my recovery journey, I talked to a friend of my wife’s (whom I now count as my friend) about our plans to plant a tree in Hanson Park.

As I talked about our plans, my friend suggested I read this book as it would help me understand the importance of trees. I will forever be grateful for her recommendation, as it made me read this book sooner than later.

To read that trees have a social network with more prominent, healthier trees concerned about the smaller, weaker ones. How is it that humans, a supposedly advanced species, have a social network that divides and weakens our community?

Are trees social beings? In The Hidden Life of Trees forester and author Peter Wohlleben convincingly makes the case that, yes, the forest is a social network. He draws on groundbreaking scientific discoveries to describe how trees are like human families: tree parents live together with their children, communicate with them, support them as they grow, share nutrients with those who are sick or struggling, and even warn each other of impending dangers. Wohlleben also shares his deep love of woods and forests, explaining the amazing processes of life, death, and regeneration he has observed in his woodland.

Having read this book, I am more sensitive to trees and have enjoyed my walks more than ever. In addition, when we plant Jan’s tree in Hanson Park, I will now have even more reasons to talk about the importance of trees to Jan, myself, and the community.

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Today I began reading “Study for Obedience” by Sarah Bernstein. With a robust and lyrical voice, Bernstein thoughtfully examines themes of complicity, power, displacement, and inheritance. “Study for Obedience” is a finely-tuned and unsettling novel that establishes Bernstein as one of the most exciting voices of her generation.

A woman moves to her forebears’ remote northern home to be a housekeeper for her brother, whose wife left him. After arriving, strange events occur bovine hysteria, a ewe’s death, a dog’s phantom pregnancy, and potato blight. Suspicion towards newcomers seems directed at her, and she feels threatened. The hostility grows, and she fears what might happen.

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 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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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.

Summer: A Novel by Ali Smith is a fascinating book about the times in which we live.

In the present, Sacha knows the world’s in trouble. Her brother Robert just is trouble. Their mother and father are having trouble. Meanwhile the world’s in meltdown – and the real meltdown hasn’t even started yet.

In the past, a lovely summer. A different brother and sister know they’re living on borrowed time.

This is a story about people on the brink of change.

They’re family, but they think they’re strangers.

So: where does family begin? And what do people who think they’ve got nothing in common have in common?

Summer.

Because of the two different periods and the multiple characters, I had some difficulty following the plot until about halfway to the end. Suddenly it all fit together and made sense.

The book revealed information about the internments during World War II in England that I had not fully comprehended.

Sacha’s focus on the environmental degradation augmented by the COVID pandemic provided an emotional undertow in the book.

I now must begin to read the other three novels in this Seasonal Quartet.

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Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney, a writer recommended to me, but I have always kept them on the to-read list, not the current reading. Does a beautiful word exist? Is it possible to live in a beautiful world despite the loss of the love of my life? Perhaps reading  Beautiful World, Where Are You, will help me in my grief journey.

Ms. Rooney’s book was a page-turner, and I highly recommend it.

One of the quotes from the book echoed my dream of a beautiful world.

“When I try to picture for myself what a happy life might look like, the picture hasn’t changed very much since I was a child – a house with flowers and trees around it, and a river nearby, and a room full of books, and someone there to love me, that’s all. Just to make a home there, and to care for my parents when they grow older. Never to move, never to board a plane again, just to live quietly and then be buried in the earth.” ― Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

It also helped remind me how unique and memorable the love that Jan and I shared was. We could quickly fall into a life lived separately as friends, or we might not have ever fallen in love and married.

As Sally Rooney in Beautiful World, Where Are You, wrote:

“If God wanted me to give you up, he wouldn’t have made me who I am.”

The Goodreads summary provides an overview.

Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a warehouse, and asks him if he’d like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend, Eileen, is getting over a breakup and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood. Alice, Felix, Eileen, and Simon are still young—but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, and they break apart. They have sex, they worry about sex, and they worry about their friendships and the world they live in. Are they standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something? Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?

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Today, I recommended reading “Remarkably Bright Creatures” by Shelby Van Pelt. It’s a charming, witty, and compulsively readable exploration of friendship, reckoning, and hope. The novel traces the unlikely connection of a widow with a giant Pacific octopus, making it perfect for fans of “A Man Called Ove.” Shelby Van Pelt’s debut novel is a gentle reminder that sometimes, looking at the past can help uncover a future that once felt impossible.

The story follows Tova Sullivan, who works the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium after her husband dies. Tova has been coping with loss since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago.

While at the aquarium, Tova becomes acquainted with Marcellus, a grumpy giant Pacific octopus who refuses to cooperate with his human captors. However, Marcellus forms a remarkable friendship with Tova and helps her uncover the truth about her son’s disappearance.

As a detective, Marcellus uses his invertebrate body to deduce what happened when Tova’s son disappeared. Together, they embark on a journey to unearth the truth before it’s too late.

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 blog.