The Literary Life Podcast Episode 55: 20 for 2020 Reading Challenge Check-In
Welcome to our 20 for 2020 Reading Challenge Check-In episode! Before we dig into the content, Angelina announces Thomas' next webinar coming up this summer, "The Fable: From Aesop to Brer Rabbit." Sign up at HouseofHumaneLetters.com to find out when registration opens!
After a brief discussion on the merits of reading fiction, our hosts begin listing what they have read in each category of the 20 for 2020 Reading Challenge so far. This episode is brimming over with book references, so be sure to scroll down to the book list any titles you might have missed!
Enter our 20 for 2020 Reading Challenge giveaway! Take a photo of your reading stack or your printed list with titles you are reading and post it to Instagram or Facebook with the tag #20for2020LitLife. We will announce our winners on the next episode of the podcast! We can't wait to see what you are reading for the challenge!
Commonplace Quotes:To know God therefore as He is, is to frame the most beautiful idea in all worlds. He delighteth in our happiness more than we, and is of all others the most lovely object.
Thomas TraherneAnd often my father would read us things that he loved, without a single word of 'explanation'. Of these the Ancient Mariner stands out beyond the rest. O happy living things! Why do people murder them by explanations?
M. V. HughesThe mere fact that a story is a work of fiction, however, does not prevent its having a deep and significant truth of its own. We find, then, that the distinction between true stories and works of pure imagination, though convenient, is not quite essential. For fiction may be just as true, in the higher sense of the word, as history, or travel or any other record of actual experience.
George Lyman Kittredge I Remember, I Rememberby Thomas Hood
I remember, I remember, The house where I was born, The little window where the sun Came peeping in at morn; He never came a wink too soon, Nor brought too long a day, But now, I often wish the night Had borne my breath away!
I remember, I remember, The roses, red and white, The vi'lets, and the lily-cups, Those flowers made of light! The lilacs where the robin built, And where my brother set The laburnum on his birthday,— The tree is living yet!
I remember, I remember, Where I was used to swing, And thought the air must rush as fresh To swallows on the wing; My spirit flew in feathers then, That is so heavy now, And summer pools could hardly cool The fever on my brow!
I remember, I remember, The fir trees dark and high; I used to think their slender tops Were close against the sky: It was a childish ignorance, But now 'tis little joy To know I'm farther off from heav'n Than when I was a boy.
Book List:Amazon affiliate links are used in this content.
A London Child of the Seventies by M. V. Hughes
Centuries of Meditations by Thomas Traherne
The Mother Tongue by George Lyman Kittredge
The Darkest Hour (film)
The Winter's Tale by Shakespeare
Two Gentlemen of Verona by Shakespeare
The Comedy of Errors by Shakespeare
Titus Andronicus by Shakespeare
The Taming of the Shrew by Shakespeare
MacBeth by Shakespeare
A Question of Proof by Nicholas Blake
Simon Serraille Mystery Series by Susan Hill
Ian Rutledge Mystery Series by Charles Todd
The Magic Apple Tree by Susan Hill
Howards End is on the Landing by Susan Hill
The Man in the Brown Suit by Agatha Christie
Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie
Black Wings Has My Angel by Elliot Chaze
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Treasures of the Snow by Patricia St. John
Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
Koshka's Tales: Stories from Russia by James Mayhew
Plainsong by Kent Haruf
Munich by Robert Harris
Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett
Taras Bulba by Nicolai Gogol
This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger
The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers
Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling
The Collected Stories of Caroline Gordon
Penhally by Caroline Gordon
The Life You Save May Be Your Own by Paul Elie
Jeremy Taylor by Hugh Williamson
Holy Living and Dying by Jeremy Taylor
Swinburne by Harold Nicolson
Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee
Romantic Outlaws by Charlotte Gordon
The Terrible Speed of Mercy by Jonathan Rogers
The Bark of the Bog Owl by Jonathan Rogers
The Path of Loneliness by Elisabeth Elliot
Reflections on the Psalms by C. S. Lewis
Anatomy of Criticism by Northrup Frye
Bandersnatch by Diana Pavlac Glyer
The Company They Keep by Diana Pavlac Glyer
The Personal Heresy by C. S. Lewis and E. M. Tillyard
The Elizabethan World Picture by E. M. Tillyard
The Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki
Ibn Fadlan and The Land of Darkness by Ibn Fadlan
The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea by Yukio Mishima
An Anthology of Invective and Abuse by Hugh Kingsmill
Penmarric by Susan Howatch
The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling)
The Faerie Queen by Edmund Spencer
The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
The Clouds by Aristophanes
Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury
Mystery and Manners by Flannery O'Connor
Love in the Void by Simone Weil
The Fine Art of Reading by David Cecil
Abigail by Magda Szabo
The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaula
The Turmoil (Growth Trilogy #1) by Booth Tarkington
The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge
To Bless The Space Between Us by John O'Donohue
The Word in the Wilderness by Malcolm Guite
Tenebrea by Geoffrey Hill
Along Came a Spider by James Patterson
Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
Stories of Anton Chekhov by Anton Chekhov
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
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