The Literary Life Podcast

Welcome to this episode of The Literary Life Podcast, in which our hosts discuss George Eliot's book Silas Marner, chapters 10-15. Thomas kicks off the discussion by highlighting the character of Dolly Winthrop. Angelina talks about Silas Marner opening himself to grace in these chapters. She also points out the way that Eliot uses Godfrey's character to point out our own potential lack of moral courage. Cindy points out the problem of addiction for Molly in causing her to neglect her own baby. Angelina also talks about the Rumpelstiltskin parallels and other fairy tale elements in the book thus far. Don’t forget to head over to HouseofHumaneLetters.com to find out all about the exciting line-up for our next Literary Life Online Conference, happening April 7-10, 2021 with special guest speaker Wes Callihan. Commonplace Quotes: Idleness is a disease which must be combated; but I would not advise a rigid adherence to a particular plan of study. I myself have never persisted in any plan for two days together. A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good. A young man should read five hours in a day, and so may acquire a great deal of knowledge. Samuel Johnson Philosophy, like medicine, has a great number of drugs, and precious few genuine remedies. Nicolas Chamfort The feudal ownership of land did bring dignity, whereas the modern ownership of moveables is reducing us again to a nomadic horde. We are reverting to the civilization of luggage, and historians of the future will note how the middle classes accreted possessions without taking root in the earth, and may find in this the secret of their imaginative poverty. E. M. Forster On My First Daughter by Ben Johnson Here lies, to each her parents’ Ruth, Mary, the daughter of their youth; Yet all heaven’s gifts being heaven’s due, It makes the father less to rue. At six months’ end she parted hence With safety of her innocence; Whose soul heaven’s queen, whose name she bears, In comfort of her mother’s tears, Hath placed amongst her virgin-train: Where, while that severed doth remain, This grave partakes the fleshly birth; Which cover lightly, gentle earth! Book List: The Year of Our Lord, 1943 by Alan Jacobs The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell Complete Maxims and Thoughts by Nicolas Chamfort Howard’s End by E. M. Forster The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot The History of the Devil by Daniel Defoe Sir Roger de Coverley by Joseph Addison Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray Middlemarch by George Eliot The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë Support The Literary Life: Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the “Friends and Fellows Community” on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support! Connect with Us: You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at https://cindyrollins.net, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy’s own Patreon page also! Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let’s get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

On today’s episode of The Literary Life podcast, Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins and Thomas Banks continue their discussion of George Eliot’s Silas Marner, covering chapters 4-9. They talk about the problems facing the Cass family and their tense relationships, examine George Eliot’s treatment of Silas Marner’s victim-hood, reflect on the changing times of the Victorian period, and Thomas breaks out his “Cheers” accent. Don’t forget to check out Angelina and Thomas’ upcoming classes at HouseofHumaneLetters.com and Cindy’s Discipleship for Moms on Patreon. Commonplace Quotes: Perhaps the first thing that he can learn from the artist is that the only way of “mastering” one’s material is to abandon the whole conception of mastery and to co-operate with it in love: whosoever will be a lord of life, let him be its servant. Dorothy Sayers You said that we owe literature almost everything we are and what we have been. If books disappear, history will disappear, and human beings will also disappear. I am sure you are right. Books are not only the arbitrary sum of our dreams, and our memory. They also give us the model of transcendence. Some people think of reading only as a kind of escape: an escape from the “real” everyday world to an imaginary world, the world of books. Books are much more. They are way of being more fully human. Susan Sontag Just because a man is going to be hanged tomorrow it does not necessarily follow that he has anything interesting to say about it. Desmond MacCarthy Cradlesong by William Blake Sleep, sleep, beauty bright, Dreaming in the joys of night; Sleep, sleep; in thy sleep Little sorrows sit and weep. Sweet babe, in thy face Soft desires I can trace, Secret joys and secret smiles, Little pretty infant wiles. As thy softest limbs I feel Smiles as of the morning steal O’er thy cheek, and o’er thy breast Where thy little heart doth rest. O the cunning wiles that creep In thy little heart asleep! When thy little heart doth wake, Then the dreadful night shall break. Book List: The Mind of the Maker by Dorothy L. Sayers Criticism by Desmond MacCarthy Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry The Aeneid by Virgil Emma by Jane Austen   Support The Literary Life: Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the “Friends and Fellows Community” on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support! Connect with Us: You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at https://cindyrollins.net, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy’s own Patreon page also! Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let’s get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

This week on The Literary Life podcast, Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins and Thomas Banks dig into George Eliot’s Silas Marner. Today’s discussion gives us an introduction to George Eliot and covers the first three chapters of the book. Thomas shares a little historical context for the setting of Silas Marner and how that affects the interpretation of this book. Angelina points out the ways in which Eliot uses some fairy tale and otherworldly elements to explore moral ideas. Don’t forget to check out Angelina and Thomas’ upcoming classes at HouseofHumaneLetters.com and Cindy’s Discipleship for Moms on Patreon. Commonplace Quotes: A poem can be like two hands that lift you up and put you down in a new place. You look back with astonishment and find that because you have read a few lines on a printed page or listened for a couple of minutes to a voice speaking, you have arrived at somewhere quite different. Elizabeth Goudge Wheresoe’er I turn my view, All is strange, yet nothing new; Endless labour all along, Endless labour to be wrong… Samuel Johnson These fellow mortals, every one, must be accepted as they are. You can neither straighten their noses, nor brighten their wits, nor rectify their dispositions; and it is these people amongst whom your life is passed, that it is needful you should tolerate, pity and love. George Eliot Adlestrop by Edward Thomas Yes. I remember Adlestrop— The name, because one afternoon Of heat the express-train drew up there Unwontedly. It was late June. The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat. No one left and no one came On the bare platform. What I saw Was Adlestrop—only the name And willows, willow-herb, and grass, And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry, No whit less still and lonely fair Than the high cloudlets in the sky. And for that minute a blackbird sang Close by, and round him, mistier, Farther and farther, all the birds Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire. Book List: Towers in the Mist by Elizabeth Goudge The Dean’s Watch by Elizabeth Goudge Adam Bede by George Eliot The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot Middlemarch by George Eliot Romola by George Eliot Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë Selected Essays, Poems and Other Writings by George Eliot Silly Novels by Lady Novelists by George Eliot Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy Support The Literary Life: Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the “Friends and Fellows Community” on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support! Connect with Us: You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at https://cindyrollins.net, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy’s own Patreon page also! Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let’s get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

This week on The Literary Life podcast, we are excited to bring some special guests in to speak to the literary life of the educator Charlotte Mason. Along with Angelina, Thomas and Cindy, we also have Donna-Jean Breckenridge and Karen Glass of the AmblesideOnline Advisory. They start off by sharing some biographical information about who Charlotte Mason was and her background. Karen also talks about how and why Mason developed her practices and philosophy and her educational foundation, the PNEU. Donna-Jean mentions the interesting ephemera belonging to Charlotte Mason housed at the Armitt Museum in Ambleside. Finally, the talk turns to how widely Miss Mason read and how important books were to her throughout her whole life. Join us next week for the beginning episode of our series on George Eliot's Silas Marner, covering chapters 1-3. Before you go, don’t forget that registration is opening soon at The House of Humane Letters for the spring. You can also check out Cindy’s Discipleship Group for Moms on Patreon.com. Commonplace Quotes: Sorrow is knowledge: they who know the most Must mourn the deepest o’er the fatal truth, The Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life. Lord Byron, from “Manfred” God is a mystery and not a fellow conspirator. J. B. Priestley There seems good reason to believe that the limit to human intelligence arises largely from the limit to human interests. Charlotte Mason He was fortified by illimitable reading, by a present sense of a thousand possibilities that had been brought to pass, of a thousand things so wisely said that wise action was a necessary outcome. Charlotte Mason The thing is to keep your eye upon words and wait to feel their force and beauty, and when words are so fit that no other words can be put in their places, so few that none can be left out without spoiling the sense, and so fresh and musical that they delight you, then you may be sure that you are reading literature, whether in prose or poetry. Charlotte Mason The Village Schoolmaster by Oliver Goldsmith Beside yon straggling fence that skirts the way, With blossomed furze unprofitably gay, There, in his noisy mansion, skilled to rule, The village master taught his little school; A man severe he was, and stern to view; I knew him well, and every truant knew: Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace The day’s disasters in his morning face; Full well they laughed, with counterfeited glee, At all his jokes, for many a joke had he; Full well the busy whisper, circling round, Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned; Yet he was kind, or, if severe in aught, The love he bore to learning was in fault. The village all declared how much he knew — ‘Twas certain he could write, and cipher too; Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage, And e’en the story ran that he could gauge; In arguing, too, the parson owned his skill, For, e’en though vanquished, he could argue still, While words of learned length and thundering sound Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around; And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew That one small head could carry all he knew. Book List: In Vital Harmony by Karen Glass Know and Tell by Karen Glass Consider This by Karen Glass Literature and Western Man by J. B. Priestley Towards a Philosophy of Education by Charlotte Mason The Golden Thread by Norman McLeod Scientific Dialogues by Jeremiah Joyce Jacob Behmen by Alexander Whyte The Cloud of Witness The Hidden Life of the Soul by Jean Nicolas Grou Anne of Geierstein: Maiden of the Mist by Sir Walter Scott The Savior of the World by Charlotte Mason Formation of Character by Charlotte Mason The History of Pendennis by William Thackeray The Egoist by George Meredith Hard Times by Charles Dickens David Copperfield by Charles Dickens Bleak House by Charles Dickens Joan and Peter by H. G. Wells Adam Bede by George Eliot Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy Areopagitica by John Milton Support The Literary Life: Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the “Friends and Fellows Community” on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support! Connect with Us: You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at https://cindyrollins.net, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy’s own Patreon page also! Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let’s get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB  

Today’s book discussion on The Literary Life podcast centers around the book 84, Charing Cross Road. Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins and Thomas Banks share their first experiences reading this book of letters between Helene Hanff and Frank Doel. Cindy talks about her deep identification with Helene the first time she read 84, Charing Cross Road and how much she dreamed of going to England. Angelina and Thomas talk about the characteristics of Helene as a reader and as a person seeking self-education. Come back again next week for a special guest episode look at the literary life of Charlotte Mason! After that, we dig into George Eliot’s Silas Marner. Commonplace Quotes: Our Japanese soldiers who came back from overseas were a pitiful sight. They looked thin, weak, and exhausted. And some of them were invalids, drained of color and borne on stretchers. But among the returning soldiers there was one company of cheerful men. They were always singing, even difficult pieces in several parts and they sang very well. When they disembarked at Yokosuka the people who came to greet them were astonished. Everyone asked if they had received extra rations, since they seemed so happy. These men had had no extra rations, but had practiced choral singing throughout the Burma campaign. Their captain, a young musician fresh from music school, had enthusiastically taught his soldiers how to sing. It was singing that kept up their morale through boredom or hardship and that bound them together in friendship and discipline during the long war years. Without it, they would never have come home in remarkable high spirits. Michio Takeyama  Men are apt to prefer a prosperous error before an afflicted truth. Jeremy Taylor Secondhand booksellers are the most friendly and most eccentric of all the characters I have known. If I had not been a writer, theirs would have been the profession I would most happily have chosen. Graham Greene Reading in Wartime by Edwin Muir Boswell by my bed, Tolstoy on my table; Thought the world has bled For four and a half years, And wives’ and mothers’ tears Collected would be able To water a little field Untouched by anger and blood, A penitential yield Somewhere in the world; Though in each latitude Armies like forest fall, The iniquitous and the good Head over heels hurled, And confusion over all: Boswell’s turbulent friend And his deafening verbal strife, Ivan Ilych’s death Tell me more about life, The meaning and the end Of our familiar breath, Both being personal, Than all the carnage can, Retrieve the shape of man, Lost and anonymous, Tell me wherever I look That not one soul can die Of this or any clan Who is not one of us And has a personal tie Perhaps to someone now Searching an ancient book, Folk-tale or country song In many and many a tongue, To find the original face, The individual soul, The eye, the lip, the brow For ever gone from their place, And gather an image whole. Book List: 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff The Harp of Burma by Michio Takeyama  Holy Living by Jeremy Taylor The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street by Helene Hanff The Narnian by Alan Jacobs The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell P. G. Wodehouse A Modest Proposal by Jonathon Swift Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathon Swift Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen The Dubliners by James Joyce The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals by Lord Byron Selected Letters by Jane Austen Few Eggs and No Oranges by Vere Hodgson Support The Literary Life: Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the “Friends and Fellows Community” on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support! Connect with Us: You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at https://cindyrollins.net, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy’s own Patreon page also! Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let’s get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

Today on The Literary Life Podcast, Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins and Thomas Banks discuss the importance of reading old books. They begin the conversation by addressing head on the idea that old books are irrelevant. They touch on the fact that when we use the phrase “old books” we mean not just any piece of literature from the past, but those which have stood the test of time. Don’t forget to check out our brand new podcast, which has its very own feed, The Well Read Poem. The House of Humane Letters spring classes are opening for registration, so head over there to check out what is coming up! Commonplace Quotes: So, when his Folly opens The unnecessary hells, A Servant when He Reigneth Throws the blame on some one else. Rudyard Kipling I am informed by philologists that the “rise to power” of these two words, “problem” and “solution” as the dominating terms of public debate, is an affair of the last two centuries, and especially of the nineteenth, having synchronised, so they say, with a parallel “rise to power” of the word “happiness”—for reasons which doubtless exist and would be interesting to discover. Like “happiness”, our two terms “problem” and “solution” are not to be found in the Bible—a point which gives to that wonderful literature a singular charm and cogency. . . . On the whole, the influence of these words is malign, and becomes increasingly so. They have deluded poor men with Messianic expectations . . . which are fatal to steadfast persistence in good workmanship and to well-doing in general. . . . Let the valiant citizen never be ashamed to confess that he has no “solution of the social problem” to offer to his fellow-men. Let him offer them rather the service of his skill, his vigilance, his fortitude and his probity. For the matter in question is not, primarily, a “problem”, nor the answer to it a “solution”. L. P. Jacks, Stevenson Lectures Most of all, perhaps, we need intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present, to remind us that the basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods and that much which seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion. A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village; the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age. C. S. Lewis To Walter de la Mare by T. S. Elliot The children who explored the brook and found A desert island with a sandy cove (A hiding place, but very dangerous ground, For here the water buffalo may rove, The kinkajou, the mungabey, abound In the dark jungle of a mango grove, And shadowy lemurs glide from tree to tree – The guardians of some long-lost treasure-trove) Recount their exploits at the nursery tea And when the lamps are lit and curtains drawn Demand some poetry, please. Whose shall it be, At not quite time for bed?… Or when the lawn Is pressed by unseen feet, and ghosts return Gently at twilight, gently go at dawn, The sad intangible who grieve and yearn; When the familiar is suddenly strange Or the well known is what we yet have to learn, And two worlds meet, and intersect, and change; When cats are maddened in the moonlight dance, Dogs cower, flitter bats, and owls range At witches’ sabbath of the maiden aunts; When the nocturnal traveller can arouse No sleeper by his call; or when by chance An empty face peers from an empty house; By whom, and by what means, was this designed? The whispered incantation which allows Free passage to the phantoms of the mind? By you; by those deceptive cadences Wherewith the common measure is refined; By conscious art practised with natural ease; By the delicate, invisible web you wove – The inexplicable mystery of sound. Book List: The Mind of the Maker by Dorothy L. Sayers The Weight of Glory by C. S. Lewis The Giver by Lois Lowry The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer Support The Literary Life: Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the “Friends and Fellows Community” on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support! Connect with Us: You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at https://cindyrollins.net, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy’s own Patreon page also! Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let’s get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

This week on The Literary Life podcast, our hosts explore the popular Agatha Christie mystery novel, Death on the Nile. This discussion will contain spoilers, so if you haven’t read or listened to the book yet, stop this episode! But before we get to the book chat, we want to announce that our brand new The Well Read Poem podcast is now live! Also, head over to HouseofHumaneLetters.com to check out the Winter Webinar Series and Kelly Cumbee’s class on King Lear. Angelina, Cindy and Thomas begin the book discussion with a comparison of the authors known as the “Queens of Crime.” They also talk about the form of detective novels and how Christie in particular plays with the form to keep readers on their toes. Thomas notes the similarities between Death on the Nile with Henry James’ novel The Wings of the Dove. In addition to covering the plot of the story, our hosts walk us through the ways in which Christie writes in order to keep us guessing. If you haven’t heard it before, please go and listen to Episode 3: The Importance of the Detective Novel. Commonplace Quotes: The sacrifices of friendship were beautiful in her eyes as long as she was not asked to make them. Saki (pen name of H. H. Munro) Pious worshipers, whether or mortal or immortal artists, do their deities little honor by treating their incarnations as something too sacred for rough handling. They only succeed in betraying a fear lest the structure should prove flimsy or false. Dorothy Sayers “Once I went professionally to an archæological expedition–and I learnt something there. In the course of an excavation, when something comes up out of the ground, everything is cleared away very carefully all around it. You take away the loose earth, and you scrape here and there with a knife until finally your object is there, all alone, ready to be drawn and photographed with no extraneous matter confusing it. That is what I have been seeking to do–clear away the extraneous matter so that we can see the truth–the naked shining truth.” Hercule Poirot, Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie When We First Met by Robert Bridges When first we met, we did not guess That Love would prove so hard a master; Of more than common friendliness When first we met we did not guess. Who could foretell the sore distress, This irretrievable disaster, When first we met? -- We did not guess That Love would prove so hard a master. Book List: Beasts and Super-Beasts by Saki (H. H. Munro) The Toys of Peace by Saki The Mind of the Maker by Dorothy Sayers Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie Agatha Christie Ngaio Marsh Margery Allingham Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers The Wings of the Dove by Henry James Leave It to Psmith by P. G. Wodehouse Tim Powers Support The Literary Life: Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the “Friends and Fellows Community” on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support! Connect with Us: You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at https://cindyrollins.net, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy’s own Patreon page also! Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let’s get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

This week on The Literary Life podcast, we are excited to delve into the literary life of the mysterious Mr. Banks! But before we get started, we do want to let you know that we have posted the reading schedule for January-March, and you can view it on our Upcoming Events page. Also, Blue Sky Daisies Publishing is running a fun contest for kids involving our new Commonplace Books, so you will want to head over to their website and check that out! Finally, be looking out for The Well Read Poem podcast coming to a podcast app near you on January 18, 2021! Cindy begins the interview asking Thomas about his family background and the influence of his parents on his own reading life. He shares about many of the books he loved in childhood and how that shaped his tastes in literature. He also talks about how he approached school learning as opposed to his personal reading. Angelina asks Thomas to tell about how he fell in love with poetry and how he ended up going to college even though that was not his original goal. He also shares more about his reading as an adult, as well as his habit of commonplacing quotations. Commonplace Quotes: …but I was glad to sing again too; it had been a greater loss that I realized in that particular wintering which saw the waning of my voice. It wasn’t about the vanity of being able to trill out a fine song; it was about the joy of singing for its own sake. Katherine Ma Michael explains to Adam in the last book of Milton’s Paradise Lost, that tyranny exists in human society because every individual in such a society is a tyrant within himself, or at least is if he conforms acceptably to his social surroundings. Northrup Frye The Gods that are wiser than Learning But kinder than Life have made sure No mortal may boast in the morning That even will find him secure.   from “A Rector’s Memory” by Rudyard Kipling Time, Real and Imaginary by Samuel Taylor Coleridge On the wide level of a mountain’s head, (I knew not where, but ’twas some faery place) Their pinions, ostrich-like, for sails out-spread, Two lovely children run an endless race, A sister and a brother ! This far outstripp’d the other ; Yet ever runs she with reverted face, And looks and listens for the boy behind : For he, alas! is blind! O’er rough and smooth with even step he passed, And knows not whether he be first or last. Book List: Wintering by Katherine May The Double Vision by Northrup Frye Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carol Beatrix Potter books Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling Oxford Book of Children’s Verse Praeterita by John Ruskin The Golden Treasury of Myths and Legends The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun by J. R. R. Tolkien Surprised by Joy by C. S. Lewis The Saga of the Volsungs by Anonymous The Adventures of Tintin by Herge Encyclopedia Brown by Donald J. Sobol The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson Rifles for Watie by Harold Keith Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott Julius Caesar by Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Shakespeare The Complete Poems of John Keats Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy Hardy the Novelist by David Cecil The James Bond Dossier by Kingsley Amis The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea by Mishima 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff The Double by Fyodor Dostoevsky Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev Support The Literary Life: Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the “Friends and Fellows Community” on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support! Connect with Us: You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at https://cindyrollins.net, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy’s own Patreon page also! Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let’s get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

This week on The Literary Life podcast, we are bringing you our year end review of our own reading lives. Angelina kicks off the conversation by asking Thomas and Cindy how they would describe their reading lives this year. They talk about their favorites and highlights in books this year, as well as a few books that fell flat for them in 2020. They share about some authors they had not read before that they enjoyed this year. Finally, they tell us how they did with their own 20 for 2020 Reading Challenge lists. Don’t forget to check out the upcoming reading challenge for next year, the Literary Life 19 Books for 2021 challenge! If you missed it, you will want to go back and listen to the previous episode full of ideas for each challenge category. Also, there is still time to order Literary Life Commonplace Books before the new year and begin recording your plans, progress, and favorite quotations! Commonplace Quotes: Our fathers find their graves in our short memories and sadly tell us how we may be buried in our survivors. Thomas Browne “But, my, my! We don’t learn easy!” he chuckled mournfully. “Not to learn how to live till we’re about ready to die, it certainly seems to me dang tough!”. . . “But, papa,” she said, to console him, “don’t you think maybe there isn’t such a thing as a ‘finish’, after all! You say perhaps we don’t learn to live till we die, but maybe that’s how it is after we die, too–just learning some more, the way we do here, and maybe through trouble again, even after that.” Booth Tarkington Charlotte Mason says that books are one way that we grow, not for ourselves, but beyond ourselves. Where does she suggest we start? Here’s her list of suitable “Instructors of Conscience”: 1.Poetry, preferably spending time with one poet 2. Shakespeare’s plays 3. Novels, with characters who “become our mentors or our warnings” 4. Ever-delightful essayists 5. History, including ancient history 6. Philosophy, to allow reason to work upon knowledge 7. Theology, including the Bible 8. The things of nature 9. Science, so that “we no longer conduct ourselves in this world of wonders like a gaping rustic at a fair” (p. 101) 10. Art, approached “with the modest intention to pay a debt…” 11. Sociology and Self-Knowledge Our aim is not to become know-it-alls, but rather to gain a sense of the Ought in all this, why we owe it to God and to the world to become people who observe carefully and think clearly, “with gentle, large, and humble thoughts.” And the ultimate result is not graduation, but gratitude, to the One who created “the beauty, glory, and fitness above our heads and about our feet and surrounding us on every side!” Anne White Ring Out, Wild Bells by Alfred Lord Tennyson Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, The flying cloud, the frosty light; The year is dying in the night; Ring out, wild bells, and let him die. Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow: The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true. Ring out the grief that saps the mind, For those that here we see no more, Ring out the feud of rich and poor, Ring in redress to all mankind. Ring out a slowly dying cause, And ancient forms of party strife; Ring in the nobler modes of life, With sweeter manners, purer laws. Ring out the want, the care the sin, The faithless coldness of the times; Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes, But ring the fuller minstrel in. Ring out false pride in place and blood, The civic slander and the spite; Ring in the love of truth and right, Ring in the common love of good. Ring out old shapes of foul disease, Ring out the narrowing lust of gold; Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in the thousand years of peace. Ring in the valiant man and free, The larger heart, the kindlier hand; Ring out the darkness of the land, Ring in the Christ that is to be. Book List: (Amazon affiliate links) Urn Burial by Thomas Browne Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington Honest, Simple Souls: An Advent Meditation with Charlotte Mason by Anne White Black Wings Has My Angel by Elliott Chaze Cover Her Face by P. D. James Margery Allingham Ngaio Marsh Towards Zero by Agatha Christie Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie Range by David Epstein The Company They Keep by Diana Pavlac Glyer Poet’s Corner ed. by John Lithgow The Year of Our Lord 1943 by Alan Jacobs The Narnian by Alan Jacobs Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin Taras Bulba by Nikolai Gogol The Stricken Deer by Lord David Cecil Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy When Books Went to War by Molly Guptill Manning 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff Stephen Fry’s Greek Myths series The Centre of Hilarity by Michael Mason The Blue Castle by L. M. Montgomery Tenebrae by Geoffrey Hill The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne Circe by Madeline Miller G. R. Stirling Taylor William Morris by Alfred Noyes The Devil Takes a Holiday by Alfred Noyes The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amos Terry Pratchett The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea by Yukio Mishima Saving the Appearances by Owen Barfield David Copperfield by Charles Dickens Four Quartets by T. S. Elliot Good Things Out of Nazareth by Flannery O’Connor Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones Support The Literary Life: Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the “Friends and Fellows Community” on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support! Connect with Us: You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at https://cindyrollins.net, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy’s own Patreon page also! Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let’s get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

Today on the podcast, your hosts Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins and Thomas Banks take a deep dive into the Literary Life 19 Books for 2021 challenge! This episode is full of ideas and book suggestions to help inspire your #LitLife192021 reading, so be sure to scroll down in your podcast app to view the comprehensive book link list! They not only give reasons behind each category and suggests for the adult reading challenge, but many titles for the kids’ version of the challenge, as well! Also, don’t forget that our Literary Life Commonplace Books are now available to order via Amazon! These high quality journals are perfect for recording what you are reading, as well as all your favorite quotes, and we have both adult and children’s versions. Our publisher, Blue Sky Daisies, is providing us with a fun giveaway, so head over to their Facebook page, our Facebook group, or our Instagram to find the social media image to share and find all the details! Cindy’s List of Literature of Honor for Boys Cindy’s List of Books for Fortitude linked at The Redeemed Reader Commonplace Quotes: In anything that can be called art, there is a quality of redemption. Raymond Chandler The right teacher would have his pupil easy to please, but ill to satisfy; ready to enjoy, unready to embrace; keen to discover beauty, slow to say, “Here I will dwell.” George MacDonald It is difficult for a moneylender to grow old gracefully David Mathew Christ’s Nativity by Henry Vaughan Awake, glad heart! get up and sing! It is the birth-day of thy King. Awake! awake! The Sun doth shake Light from his locks, and all the way Breathing perfumes, doth spice the day. Awake, awake! hark how th’ wood rings; Winds whisper, and the busy springs A concert make; Awake! awake! Man is their high-priest, and should rise To offer up the sacrifice. I would I were some bird, or star, Flutt’ring in woods, or lifted far Above this inn And road of sin! Then either star or bird should be Shining or singing still to thee. I would I had in my best part Fit rooms for thee! or that my heart Were so clean as Thy manger was! But I am all filth, and obscene; Yet, if thou wilt, thou canst make clean. Sweet Jesu! will then. Let no more This leper haunt and soil thy door! Cure him, ease him, O release him! And let once more, by mystic birth, The Lord of life be born in earth. Book List: The Simple Art of Murder by Raymond Chandler A Dish of Orts by George MacDonald The Great Tudors ed. by Katharine Garvin The Oxford Book of English Verse ed. by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch The Classic Hundred Poems ed. by William Harmon The Top 500 Poems ed. by William Harmon Letters to An American Lady by C. S. Lewis Selected Letters of Jane Austen ed. by Vivien Jones Lord Chesterfield’s Letters ed. by David Roberts The Habit of Being by Flannery O’Connor The Iliad by Homer The Odyssey by Homer D’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths by Ingri and Edgar D’Aulaire Mythology by Edith Hamilton Metamorphoses by Ovid Heroes by Stephen Fry Mythos by Stephen Fry From Dawn to Decadence by Jacques Barzun The Educated Imagination by Northrup Frye Silas Marner by George Eliot The Warden by Anthony Trollope Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope David Copperfield by Charles Dickens Hard Times by Charles Dickens Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell The White Company by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Leaf by Niggle by J. R. R. Tolkien The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad The Shooting Party by Anton Chekov Kristen Lavrensdatter Trilogy by Sigrid Undset The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell Milton by Rose Macaulay Chaucer by G. K. Chesterton Churchill by Paul Johnson Napoleon by Paul Johnson The Enchanted Places by Christopher Milne Joseph Pearce The Narnian by Alan Jacobs Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn The Awakening by Kate Chopin My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok The Chosen by Chaim Potok The Natural by Bernard Malamud The Brothers K by David James Duncan Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman The Imitation of Christ by Thomas Á Kempis Edmund Burke Journey into Fear by Eric Ambler Doomsday Book by Connie Willis Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays by William Hazlitt The Lays of Ancient Rome by Thomas Macaulay Imaginary Conversations by Walter Savage Landor Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg P. G. Wodehouse Gerald Durrell A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson How the Heather Looks by Joan Bodger The Long Walk by Slavomir Rawicz Paul Thoreau Travels with a Donkey by Robert Louis Stevenson The Lawless Roads by Graham Greene The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell What I Saw in America by G. K. Chesterton The History of the Second Boer War by Winston Churchill The Heroes by Charles Kingsley A Wonder Book by Nathaniel Hawthorne Tanglewood Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne The Children of Odin Padraic Colum Diane Stanley Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling Men of Iron by Howard Pyle The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson Kate Douglas Wiggin E. B. White Betsy-Tacy Treasury by Maud Hart Lovelace All-of-a-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee Opal Wheeler American Tall Tales by Adrian Stoutenberg Black Ships Before Troy by Rosemary Sutcliff The Children’s Homer by Padraic Colum The Golden Fleece by Padraic Colum The Tale of Troy by Roger Lancelyn Green Tales from the Odyssey by Mary Pope Osborne Encyclopedia Brown series by Donald J. Sobol Boxcar Children series by Gertrude Chandler Warner Detectives in Togas by Henry Winterfield The Adventures of Tin-tin by Hergé The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle The Adventures of Robin Hood by Roger Lancelyn Green King Arthur Trilogy by Rosemary Sutcliff Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare by E. Nesbit Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb Support The Literary Life: Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the “Friends and Fellows Community” on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support! Connect with Us: You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at https://cindyrollins.net, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy’s own Patreon page also! Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let’s get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB