Richard W. shared a stream on October 25, 2021
Jan and her Soul Sisters Blanket

Strolling with an IV Pole

Estimated reading time: 0 minutes, 35 seconds

Jan was in the second week, and none of the possible adverse and frightening side effects had occurred. A crucial part of my daily CAR-T  visits was strolling the halls several times with her IV poles. We could only walk on her floor as she was in a closed ward. The distance was minimal, but the joy of being together was immeasurable.

Passing the nurse’s station, they would comment about how enjoyable it was to see two people so much in love.

Despite our love, cancer won.

Love never dies, and her spirit will always walk with me.

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Jan and Richard at YWCA Gala

CAR-T Treatment Memory

A year ago today, Jan was starting CAR-T treatment at the Cancer Institute of NJ. Concerned about not being on time, we stayed at a Marriott Courtyard near the hospital. Anticipating the hospitalization was anxiety-producing enough. Straying in a hotel during COVID helped but also added some anxiety. Both of us knew that CAR-T was […]
Richard W. Brown October 19, 2021

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Jan and her Soul Sisters Blanket
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The Shadow King: A Novel

Read: April 2022

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The Shadow King: A Novel

by Maaza Mengiste

The Shadow King: A Novel by Maaza Mengiste is a book happened to offer two often overlooked threads of history. The first is Mussolini’s 1935 invasion of Ethiopia. The second one I am most interested in is the women soldiers who were left out of the historical record. I highly recommend The Shadow King. It is a gorgeously crafted and unputdownable exploration of female power and what it means to be a woman at war.

Hirut and Aster come alive in Maaza Mengiste talented writing. Their struggles to be seen as equal in a society at war is engaging. Hirut’s plan to create a shadow kingpin the absence of Emperor Haile Selassie is one that turns defeat into victory.

Goodreads provides a good overview of the book.

With the threat of Mussolini’s army looming, recently orphaned Hirut struggles to adapt to her new life as a maid in Kidane and his wife Aster’s household. Kidane, an officer in Emperor Haile Selassie’s army, rushes to mobilize his most muscular men before the Italians invaded. His initial kindness to Hirut shifts into flinty cruelty when she resists his advances. Hirut finds herself tumbling into a new world of thefts and violations, betrayals, and overwhelming rage. Meanwhile, Mussolini’s technologically advanced army prepared for an easy victory. Hundreds of thousands of Italians―Jewish photographer Ettore among them―march on Ethiopia seeking adventure.

As the war begins in earnest, Hirut, Aster, and the other women long to do more than care for the wounded and bury the dead. When Emperor Haile Selassie goes into exile and Ethiopia quickly loses hope, Hirut offers a plan to maintain morale. She helps disguise a gentle peasant as the emperor and soon becomes his guard, inspiring other women to take arms against the Italians. But how could she have predicted her war as a prisoner of one of Italy’s most vicious officers, who would force her to pose before Ettore’s camera?

What follows is a gorgeously crafted and unputdownable exploration of female power, with Hirut as the fierce, original, and brilliant voice at its heart. In incandescent, lyrical prose, Maaza Mengiste breathes life into complicated characters on both sides of the battle line, shaping a heartrending, unforgettable exploration of what it means to be a woman at war.

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Midwives

Read: June 2022

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Midwives: A Novel

by Chris Bohjalian

Midwives by Chris Bohjalian is “a compulsively readable novel that explores questions of human responsibility that are as fundamental to our society now as they were when the book was first published.” Forty years after the book was published, it is just as relevant, if not more so. Indeed, the book’s topics are more relevant today with the current set of decisions by the Supreme Court.

After reading The Pull of the Stars and watching every season of Call the Midwives, this was the logical next book for me to read. It is also one that I know Jan read and liked. 

I highly recommend this book!

The Goodreads summary provides a concise overview. 

The time is 1981, and Sibyl Danforth has been a dedicated midwife in the rural community of Reddington, Vermont, for fifteen years. But one treacherous winter night, in a house isolated by icy roads and failed telephone lines, Sibyl takes desperate measures to save a baby’s life. She performs an emergency Caesarean section on its mother, who appears to have died in labor. But what if—as Sibyl’s assistant later charges—the patient wasn’t already dead, and it was Sibyl who inadvertently killed her?

As recounted by Sibyl’s precocious fourteen-year-old daughter, Connie, the ensuing trial bears the earmarks of a witch hunt except that all its participants are acting from the highest motives—and the defendant increasingly appears to be guilty. As Sibyl Danforth faces the antagonism of the law, the hostility of traditional doctors, and the accusations of her conscience, Midwives engages, moves, and transfixes us as only the best novels ever do. 

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The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

Read: May 2022

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The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

by V.E. Schwab

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab is a page-turner, and one of the rare books I have read that I wish had not ended. On the last page, I wanted the story of Addie to continue now that she had modified her deal with the dark side to save Henry Strauss. It was not that I wished Addie and Henry to reunite; it was to see how Addie’s life with Luc would continue. I recommend this book without any reservations!

Both Jan and I have always enjoyed books and movies about time travel. One of the first books I read after Jan died was The Time Travelers Wife, and now I am reading another book about time travel. If I could travel back in time, I would love to spend tens of thousands of days with her again.

But time travel is not possible. Or is it? Her spirit returns to me whenever I am paralyzed, encouraging me to dust myself off and keep going. Maybe one day we will travel together!

The Goodreads summary includes an overview.

France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets.

Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world.

But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore, and he remembers her name.

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A Seperation

Read: January 2022

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A Separation: A Novel

by Katie Kitamura

A Separation by Katie Kitamura is about a young woman who has agreed with her faithless husband: it’s time for them to separate. All I could think about from the opening page until I finished the book was how Jan and I, despite one messy period, never dealt with infidelity or separation. Our love was pure as the driven snow. The subject matter would typically not have interested me enough to read the book. However, it is written in a hypnotic manner that mesmerizes the reader into turning the next page.

I highly recommend this book.

Goodreads provides an overview.

As she begins her new life, she gets word that Christopher has gone missing in a remote region in the rugged south of Greece; she reluctantly agrees to look for him, still keeping their split to herself. As her search comes to a shocking breaking point, she discovers she understands less than she thought she did about her relationship and the man she used to love. In her heart, she’s not even sure if she wants to find him.  For the moment, it’s a private matter, a secret between the two of them.

Adrift in the wild landscape, she traces the disintegration of their relationship and discovers she understands less than she thought about the man she used to love.

A story of intimacy and infidelity, A Separation is about the gulf that divides us from the lives of others and the narratives we create for ourselves. As the narrator reflects upon her love for a man who may never have been what he appeared, Kitamura propels us into the experience of a woman on the brink of catastrophe. A Separation is a riveting stylistic masterpiece of absence and presence that will leave the reader astonished and transfixed.

In closing, I highly recommend this book.

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The Invisible Hour: A Novel

Read: August 2023

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The Invisible Hour: A Novel

by Alice Hoffman

Today I started reading The Invisible Hour by Alice Hoffman. It’s a story about love, heartbreak, self-discovery, and the magic of books. The Invisible Hour is the story of one woman’s dream. For a little while, it came true. Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote: “A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities.

Mia Jacob finds hope in the power of words on a brilliant June day. She reads The Scarlet Letter, a novel written almost two hundred years earlier, which mirrors her life. Mia and her mother, Ivy, live inside an oppressive cult in western Massachusetts called the Community, where contact with the outside world is forbidden, and books are considered evil. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s words perfectly capture the pain and loss that Mia carries inside her.

As Mia journeys through heartbreak and time, she breaks free from the rules of her Community. Along the way, she discovers the power of reading to transport and connect people, the fluidity of time, and the strength of love to overcome any obstacle.

As a young girl, Mia fell in love with a book. Now as a woman, she falls for a writer as she travels back in time. But what if Nathaniel Hawthorne never wrote “The Scarlet Letter”? What if Mia never found the book on the day she planned to end her life?

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 Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers' Guild

Read: January 2024

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The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild

by Mathias Énard

Today, I started reading “The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild” by Mathias Énard. The book has been translated into English by Frank Wynne. This novel is full of Mathias Énard‘s characteristic humor and extensive knowledge. It is a lively book where the boundaries between past and present are constantly blurred, set against a backdrop of excess reminiscent of Rabelais’ writing.

David Mazon, an anthropology student, moves from Paris to La Pierre-Saint-Christophe, a village in the marshlands of western France, to research his thesis on contemporary agrarian life. He is determined to understand the essence of the local culture and spends his time scurrying around on his moped to interview the residents.

David must be made aware of the extraordinary events in an ordinary location. This place, where wars and revolutions once occurred, is now a dancefloor for Death. When something dies, its soul is recycled by the Wheel of Life and thrown back into the world as a microbe, human, or wild animal – sometimes in the past and sometimes in the future. Once a year, Death and the living agree to a temporary truce, during which gravediggers indulge in a three-day feast filled with food, drink, and conversation.

Mathias Énard’s novel, The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild, is a riotous and exciting comic masterpiece that won the prestigious Prix Goncourt award. The novel is set in the French countryside and is filled with Énard’s characteristic wit and encyclopedic brilliance. Against a backdrop of excess, the story blurs the lines between past and present, creating a Rabelaisian world of chaos and humor.

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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