Episode 256: Our Literary Lives of 2024

Summary

The Literary Life Podcast – Episode 256: Our Literary Lives of 2024

Hosts: Angelina Stanford, Thomas Banks
Guest: Cindy Rollins
Release Date: December 24, 2024

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Introduction and Welcome

In the festive season episode of The Literary Life Podcast, hosts Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks warmly welcome back longtime listener and lifelong reader, Cindy Rollins. After a sabbatical dedicated to family and personal projects, Cindy rejoins the conversation to delve into the literary journeys of 2024.

Guest Update: Cindy's Activities [02:16 - 04:14]

Cindy shares her enriching year spent with her expanding family. Expecting twins by the end of the year, she has been actively involved in nurturing her grandchildren's literary interests. Cindy highlights her passion for integrating classic literature into family life, mentioning moments like teaching her grandchildren Christina Rossetti’s poem “What Can I Give Him, Poor as I Am.”

Christmas Promotions and Podcast Adjustments [04:14 - 15:59]

The hosts discuss their ongoing projects and special holiday offerings:

• Cindy’s Initiatives: Launching a third Patreon tier offering narration clubs via Zoom for different age groups, fostering a supportive environment for young readers to share and develop their narration skills.

  Cindy Rollins [05:09]: “Having someone else to narrate to rather than just a parent holds them accountable and enriches their reading experience.”

• Angelina & Thomas’s Offerings: Promotional discounts on House of Humane Letters’ offerings, including fairy tale classes, Harry Potter explorations, and Shakespeare webinars until December 31st. They tease upcoming live sessions, such as Thomas’s exploration of Darth Vader’s tragedy in their related classes.

• Podcast Content Shift: Acknowledging the hectic holiday season, the hosts emphasize a lighter, more relaxed episode format to accommodate listeners' busy schedules, avoiding the heavy literary dives of previous December episodes.

Sharing Commonplace Quotes [10:40 - 16:00]

The trio shares meaningful quotes that have influenced their literary reflections:

• Thomas Banks [10:40]: Reflects on Charles de Gaulle’s humorous take on French cheese varieties, underscoring the subtle divisions within a country.

• Cindy Rollins [12:03]: Highlights Russ Ramsey’s insightful exploration of the sublime, stating, “This response of pain joined to passion, this holy discontent joined to astonishment is the power of the sublime.”

• Angelina Stanford [15:59]: Presents a poignant excerpt from Jason Baxter’s Why Literature Still Matters, emphasizing literature’s role in enriching the soul:
  “When we read with a sense of urgency... we hunger to eat what Dante called the bread of angels.”

Summarizing Our Literary Lives of 2024 [17:32 - 31:29]

Each participant offers a personal overview of their reading habits and significant literary engagements throughout the year:

• Cindy Rollins: Focused on biographical works and classics, she revisited Tolstoy’s War and Peace with her grandchildren, fostering a shared literary experience.

  Cindy Rollins [03:03]: “I just want to wake up every morning with Pierre and Natasha and the little children and just live their lives with them.”

• Thomas Banks: Engaged in extensive rereading, particularly of Victorian Britain and Latin classics, finding comfort in familiar narratives amidst global chaos.

• Angelina Stanford: Shifted from a high-volume reading goal to a more mindful approach, reducing information overload by intermittently stepping away from audiobooks to reconnect with deep, meaningful reading experiences.

Highlights of 2024 Reading [31:30 - 43:32]

The conversation moves to notable books and enriching reads each have encountered:

• Thomas Banks:

  • Victorian Britain by Esme Wingfield Stratford: Delving into the intricacies of Victorian society.
  • Queen Victoria (unnamed author): A favorable take on the monarch’s life.
  • Classical literature: Rereading Ovid’s Poems in Exile and Horace’s odes.

• Cindy Rollins:

  • The Spirit of Early Christian Thought by Robert L. Wilkin: An expansive overview of church history.
  • The Life of the World by Alexander Schumann: A transformative read recommended for its profound impact.
  • My India by Jim Corbett: A long-held favorite finally explored, enriching her narrative classes with vivid storytelling.
  • Non-fiction gems like Prisoners of Geography and Remaking the World, 1776 by Rebecca Frazier.

• Angelina Stanford:

  • Deep dives into the Harry Potter series and literary alchemy using Mircea Eliade’s works.
  • Dorothy Sayers’ mysteries, notably Murder Must Advertise, praising their enduring quality.
  • Classic plays like Molière’s Tartuffe and modern critiques such as Howard Zinn’s works.

Lowlights of 2024 Reading [43:12 - 55:00]

Not all literary ventures were triumphs, as the hosts candidly discuss books that didn’t resonate:

• Thomas Banks:

  • A contemporary Christian living book (unnamed) that failed to inspire.
  • A critical monograph on Jane Austen, which presented Austen’s works as fundamentally flawed.

• Angelina Stanford:

  • The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë: Initially captivating, the latter part became overly didactic, detracting from its earlier suspense and engagement.

• Cindy Rollins:

  • My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante: Despite its popularity, Cindy found it disappointing.
  • Louise Penny’s Armand Gamache series: Despite enjoying the TV adaptation, the novels didn’t hold her interest.

Reflections on Technology and Attention [55:04 - 68:38]

A profound discussion emerges around the impact of modern technology on focus and mental health, spurred by their readings of Stolen Focus by Johann Hari and Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt:

• Cindy Rollins:
  [59:16] “If you were a bad guy, what would you do to steal this powerful tool that everybody has – their attention.”

• Angelina Stanford: Explores how pervasive device usage has disrupted attention spans and interpersonal relationships. She emphasizes the importance of detoxing from digital distractions to reclaim genuine human connection and focus.

  [60:48] “When you give a child all this digital access, when their brain is still forming, the phone will shape their brain.”

• Thomas Banks: Shares insights on historical figures’ disciplined reading habits, contrasting them with today’s digital-induced scattered attention, advocating for a return to deliberate and focused literary engagement.

Plans for 2025 Reading [70:13 - 81:55]

Looking ahead, the hosts outline their literary aspirations for the upcoming year:

• Angelina Stanford:

  • Tackling more Dickens novels, including Bleak House and Pickwick Papers.
  • Exploring Shakespeare’s works, guided by Patreon member votes.
  • Continuing research on literary alchemy and alchemical texts.

• Thomas Banks:

  • Diving deeper into Victorian literature and completing a new monograph.
  • Exploring essays by Northrup Frye and engaging with classic works like Vanity Fair by William Thackeray.

• Cindy Rollins:

  • Completing The Warden and embarking on Moby Dick as a significant literary challenge.
  • Experimenting with reading strategies to overcome intimidation towards lengthy classics.

Closing Thoughts

As the episode draws to a close, the hosts encourage listeners to engage with their literary communities through Patreon and their respective websites. They express gratitude towards Cindy for her insightful contributions and reflect on the collective journey of maintaining a vibrant literary life amidst modern distractions.

Notable Quote from Thomas Banks [85:31]:
“There is no frigate like a book by Emily Dickinson. There is no frigate like a book to take us lands away... How frugal is the chariot that bears the human soul.”

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Recommendations from Episode 256:

• Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart by Russ Ramsey
• Why Literature Still Matters by Jason Baxter
• Stolen Focus by Johann Hari
• Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
• My India by Jim Corbett
• Armand Gamache series by Louise Penny
• The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë
• Bleak House by Charles Dickens
• Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
• Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy Sayers
• Tartuffe by Molière

Upcoming Projects:

• New narration clubs for young readers through Cindy’s Patreon.
• Why Literature Still Matters pre-orders via Cassiodorus Press.
• 2025 reading schedules and best-of episodes slated for early next year.

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Stay Connected:

• Cindy Rollins: morningtimeformoms.com
• Angelina & Thomas: HouseOfHumaneLetters.com
• Patreon: patreon.com/theliterarylife
• Facebook Group: Engage with fellow listeners and participate in discussions.

Happy Reading and Merry Christmas from The Literary Life Podcast!

Transcript

[Angelina Stanford]

This is not just another book chat podcast. Lifelong reader Cindy Rollins joins teachers Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks for an ongoing conversation about the skill and art of reading. Well, explore the lost intellectual tradition and discover how to fully enter into the great works of literature. Learn what books mean while delighting in the sheer joy of imagination. Each week we will rescue story from the ivory tower and bring it to your couch, your kitchen, and your commute. The literary life is for everyone because in the words of Stratford Caldecott, to be enchanted by story is to be granted a deeper insight into reality. Join us for an ever unfolding discussion of how stories will save the world. This is the Literary Life Podcast. Welcome back to the Literary Story Life Podcast. I'm Angelina Stanford, and today, not only do I have my partner in crime and in life, the mysterious Mr. Banks.

[Thomas Banks]

I was gonna say I'm just that guy Angelina hangs out with.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay, that guy. The guy we discovered in the last podcast series is not the ideal husband.

[Thomas Banks]

I actually have been referred to in the comments as that guy.

[Angelina Stanford]

Wow.

[Thomas Banks]

You get referred to by name all the time. But I have been referred to simply in our reviews as that guy.

[Angelina Stanford]

That guy. All right, well, if you were that guy. The other. The other person here today is that girl we have back. We've dragged her away from her sabbatical. I can see her Christmas tree in the background now. She's. She's probably wrapping presents as we record this. We've brought her back, guys. We know you've missed her. Welcome back to the show, Cindy Rollins.

[Cindy Rollins]

Well, thank you. For a minute, I thought I was Marlo Thomas, but that girl. Nobody knows why I just said that.

[Angelina Stanford]

But I got it. I'm old. I got it. Those of us who watch rerun tv, we get the. The. The. The reference there.

[Thomas Banks]

I'm just nodding here like I know what any of this means.

[Angelina Stanford]

Exactly. Thank you.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, my ignorance reveals itself.

[Cindy Rollins]

Ask your mom.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's right, Exactly. Fire off a text right now. Cindy, welcome back. You've been so missed. As you've been on your sabbatical, you're still on the opening of the show. So sometimes I think people listening to the opening are probably, like, listening to the episode saying, did they kill the third host? Where has she been?

[Cindy Rollins]

That's the new murder. I'm actually at home writing a murder mystery about how y'all killed me.

[Angelina Stanford]

Only murders on the podcast.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yes.

[Angelina Stanford]

How have you been? Cindy, tell our listeners about what you've been up to this last year.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah, I've just been multiplying my grandchildren. That's been basically what I've been doing.

[Angelina Stanford]

And no. And you're expecting twins here. Like, actually by the time this airs, they probably will have been born.

[Cindy Rollins]

Hopefully. Well, maybe not. We hope not. Maybe like let, let's get through Christmas and then we'll go into the chaos of tw twins.

[Angelina Stanford]

But let's, let's. I love that. Let's go through when it's more convenient to have twins before the beginning of.

[Cindy Rollins]

The year so you get the tax write off. But after Christmas.

[Angelina Stanford]

So December 31st, that is when you're hoping the twins are born.

[Cindy Rollins]

That would be my goal. But their mom, I think would just not care about anything right now. But let's just have these twins.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh my gosh. I bet. Bless her heart. You just got back from there.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah, I just was helping out with the little guys, their two toddlers that they also have.

[Angelina Stanford]

So in addition to traveling, you do like Thomas and I are just always like how to. You go everywhere. Your kids, you have such a big family. They live literally all over the world. Not just the state, you know, the country, but all over the world. You're always traveling to see your grandkids. You're such like a devoted hands on grandmother.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah. I just feel like I want to be a part of their lives as long as I can. And I had so much fun with Avery and Reagan. We, we learned Christina Rossetti's poem, what Can I Give Him, Poor as I am. They were so cute. I wish I'd it on video, but they get very self conscious, you know, when you pull the video out and of course, and I hate that we always pull the videos out of everything on the. On the what that they do. So.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, I'm always so impressed. You're always like messaging me, like driving to yet another state for this Grandmother's day program or the ballet or the tap dance. You're. You're very hands on. But in addition to that. Okay, so you've been being a good grandmother. You have been very busy though, with your podcast, the New Mason Jar and you actually. So if this is airing on Christmas Eve, you will have just finished your Advent class and you got your Patreon. You've got a lot going on.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah, the Advent class went really well and I enjoyed it myself, which always means it's going to go better. It's not like, oh, I got to do this because I'm trying to make some money, but really I want to do this because I love it and I think that everybody has been enjoying it. Then I Have decided to add a level to my Patreon in January. So I'm adding a third level. It'll be a little more expensive. You'll get everything you get with the first and the second level. But I'm also going to be running narration clubs for. We'll have two Zoom meetings a month for that. One for 5th, 6th, and 7th, and one for 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, and up, where kids can just come and read their narrations to each other, really. And me, so that they have a chance to have someone to hear the narrations they're doing. So I really am so committed to this idea of narration clubs that I wanted to do something in that realm that was not expensive for families.

[Angelina Stanford]

No. That's amazing. I love this idea. And you're right. That's very, very common feedback we get on. So Thomas's. Mr. Banks's Plutarch class includes a narration component and that we get feedback all the time that says something like this. I'm so glad my child has someone else to narrate to than me. Right. Having that other person, that accountability. It's not even necessarily that they need to be in a class. Just having another person other than mom holding them accountable and talking to them, it goes a long way.

[Cindy Rollins]

Well, it's just like when you write a book, you. You write a book and then someone reads it, and then you read your book with fresh eyes because you're thinking, well, how is this person seeing it? So I think with the narration, it's the same way you write a narration, but you learn a lot when someone else reads it. And that just. That alone, even without feedback, is helpful to the writer.

[Angelina Stanford]

Absolutely. I love that. That's going to be. That's going to be very popular. You're going to end up with way more than you can handle, I bet. So you keep a close eye on the gate there. They're gonna come. They come running through and you have a sale. So this Christmas Eve, but. So you. It's not too late to get Cindy's Christmas sale on your website, morningtime for moms.com.

[Cindy Rollins]

No, you can go. I think I put it till January 6th. I just.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, you went all the way to Epiphany.

[Cindy Rollins]

Look at you. Yeah, I think I might have only done it till January, New Year's Eve.

[Angelina Stanford]

But y'all hold Cindy to this. She said epiphany. I'll hold her to it.

[Cindy Rollins]

I'll go run over and change the date.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, we've got. We've got our Christmas sale going on. At House of Humane Letters as well. And you can get 20 off of all the things you've had your eyes on all year. And that is going to go through December 31st. Because as a retired homeschool mom myself, I know all about how you get money for Christmas. And I used to always be so sad that I could I never got the Christmas sales because I got the money afterwards. So I thought, no, I'm making a sale. I'm going to make sure you can use your Christmas money to get those purchases. So all the things, the fairy tale class, the Harry Potter class, the all the webinars, Shakespeare on and on. Go and peruse over there. And we will link down below in the show notes a document that one of our Patreons Marcina made, which is like a little spreadsheet where you can figure out what do I already own, what's available, what would I like to buy? Actually in this coming year we're doing a complete overhaul of the website. So we're hoping to make a lot of these features much more user user friendly. Yeah, so that's going on there. And we've got at least webinar his follow up to last year's how to Read Star wars as a Medieval Romance. This year he's going to be looking at the prequels and talking about the tragedy of Darth Vader. And that's going to be really cool. This has turned out to be a really cool holiday tradition. It was so much fun last year watching whole families around the camera, around the, around the monitor just enjoying themselves. It was so fun. Ali did a fantastic job. Of course, Ali's got a, a screenwriting degree from UNC Chapel Hill and, and just knows so much about film and is going to bring so much interesting stuff. He's actually been working with, you'll be impressed about this, Mr. Banks. He's been working very closely with our own Dr. Ann Phillips. She's been giving him books on Greek tragedy and they've been talking about all that stuff. So I'm expect good thing. So that's December 30th live or later. You can go and check that out at our website, HouseOfHumane Letters.com well, as I said, this is airing on Christmas Eve so we hope you guys are listening to this while you're wrapping presents and getting all the last minute items taken care of. So we thought it would be pretty fun to have a nice laid back episode like today where we just chat about our reading because I think the first few years we did this Podcast. We made the mistake of, like, picking some long, heavy book in December, and we realized so fast it was a terrible idea because people are so busy, so stressed. So now we try to keep. Keep the topics a little more light. So get, get your notebooks. Open your Amazon cart. We're going to give you a lot of titles today to get you excited about, but first we're going to start with our commonplace quotes. Mr. Manx, you got something short and pithy for us, rather.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes. This one is actually from a collection of interviews by the French general and president Charles de Gaulle. It's a rhetorical question which I found funny. He asks, how can you govern a country that has 246 varieties of cheese? Being president of France is hard. Never let anyone tell you otherwise.

[Angelina Stanford]

The real things that divide a country, like what's your favorite cheese? Exactly. Exactly. All right, Cindy, I. I'm guessing you had a hard time picking just one like you. It's you. You have been on the podcast a couple times this year. So this is not the first. It's not like it's been a year since we heard for you, but I'm sure you have a lot of commonplace quotes to choose from right now. What. What could you possibly pick?

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah, I picked one that I. From a book I just finished, and it wasn't what I thought. I. I really like this passage. It's from a book by Russ Ramsey called Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart. And Russ Ramsey wrote another book called Rembrandt is in the Wind, and then he's a pastor and he writes about art and Christianity and he just really has this great perspective. And this book, I thought Van Gogh has a Broken Heart is even better than Rembrandt Is in the Wind. And he starts his opening chapter, or his chapter on Van Gogh is so heart wrenching and beautiful that I hope that, you know, I think people would really benefit and. And love that chapter. But here is what he says about, you know, in we have what. What is it? The Abolition of Man where CS Lewis talks about the sublime. And it's so confusing when he's talking about it because you're constantly grasping for what does he. What's the difference in beauty, in the sublime? And. And why can't something be pretty? And. But I think Russ nails it here, so I want to read this quote. He says, in other words, we are pained that we cannot describe or even comprehend the wonder we're beholding. And we're aware that this is because there is something in us that is unable to. To behold the glory in full. Yet at the same time we are overwhelmed because there is also something in us that suspects we were made to exist in such splendor. This response of pain joined to passion, this holy discontent joined to astonishment is the power of the sublime. And that really rang true with me.

[Thomas Banks]

That was very well done.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, very good.

[Thomas Banks]

I'm gonna have to buy this book now.

[Angelina Stanford]

I have his first book, but haven't. Haven't read it yet and. Okay, well, let me. Is it too late for me to order that for you right now?

[Thomas Banks]

Nope, nope, put it in. Never stare a gift book in the mouth.

[Angelina Stanford]

I'll get Cindy's affiliate link later. All right. Well, my commonplace quote if you've been following along on the podcast through the last series we did on Oscar Wilde's Ideal Husband, I have been reading quotes from Jason Baxter's brand new book, why Literature Still Matters that we at House of Humane Letters is extremely proud to be the publisher of in our new publishing wings, Cassiodorus Press. And since this is airing on Christmas Eve, the the you should have received your pre order. I mean, if you have it, it's the post office fault. The post office is extremely unreliable right now. But they the pre orders will have all shipped and you should have it in your hands. And if you haven't, if you hear this quote, you're like, oh my gosh, I have to get this book. You can go to cassiodorespress.com and order it. It's exciting to be able to say order instead of pre order now. So it's out and it's really beautiful and we're so proud of this book. But this is a quote from the last chapter and I love this. And so for us, literature is not a pastime. We're not readers because we like books. Of course, we might sometimes simply read for entertainment, as Elliot relaxed by reading detective novels and Lewis relaxed by reading sci fi. And my high school daughter relaxes by picking up her siblings fantastical tales, but inspired by the vision I have articulated here. When we read with a sense of urgency, we are not reading primarily for entertainment. Rather, we are engaged in a deep reading in which we find our hearts quickened, our spirits moved, and our souls enlarged. Those who are haunted by joy would never describe their pursuit of the eternal in prayer, in liturgy, in love, in literature, in music and painting as entertainment. Rather, we hunger to eat what Dante called the bread of angels. And yes, while we're at it, we might look a little mad eye, as Wilbur put it if we're found reading introductions to medieval literature on the beach, we read to close the gap between the beauty out there and in here. And when we have experiences like this, especially if we have them often and we start to get good at them, then we do, of course, begin to enjoy our reading.

[Cindy Rollins]

Ah, beautiful.

[Angelina Stanford]

Now, Cindy, you read an advanced copy of this book?

[Cindy Rollins]

I did. And actually, if you go over to the new Mason Jar, our episode with Jason Baxter should be out already. So we had a great conversation, dawn and I, with him. I read the book. I sent it to Dawn. I loved it. The first chapter I adored. I was. I knew it was going to be a good book, but I sort of thought maybe it was going to be a good, hard book to read, that I was going to, you know, have to really put struggle to get through it because, you know, he's a brilliant man. And I thought, you know, I'm not up to it, but it wasn't like that at all. He is a brilliant man, and I'm not up to it, but he writes so well that it's like he's holding my hand and pulling me up. And I thought it was just a wonderful, wonderful book. I enjoyed every minute of reading it, and I'm so excited about it.

[Angelina Stanford]

So that means so much to us. And I agree it's extremely accessible. I just. I mean, honestly, I could just listen to this man talk forever and ever. Everything out of his mouth is just poetry. He's the same way in his classes, off the cuff. In fact, I think as good as he is on paper, he's even better off the cuff. Like when he's just answering a student's question. And he formulated. And I'm always like, wow, that was just so well articulated.

[Cindy Rollins]

He did that on the podcast. We threw a couple, you know, curveballs at him, and he. He hit him out of the park.

[Angelina Stanford]

He texted me afterwards, too, and said I had a really good podcast interview with Cindy. So he was excited, too.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah, it was fun. We enjoyed it a lot. We could have gone on forever, but obviously we keep our podcast a little bit shorter, so we didn't just. We. It was. It went, you know, I think it went maybe a full hour, but normally we don't go quite that long.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, I. I appreciate you making. Making the room for him, and I'm really, really glad you like the book. I'm very proud of it. So, again, that's why Literature still matters by Dr. Jason Baxter. And you can order that [e-mail] all right. Well, this is the episode. This is why you've turned in. Right. This is an episode about our literary lives of 2024, where we're going to try to recap what our reading lives have been, talk about some of the highlights of our reading, maybe talk about some new authors we've discovered or some old authors we've rediscovered. All that. All that fun. But I thought we could first start off, by each of us maybe kind of summarizing your year. Like, what did. What did. Cindy, what did your year look like of reading? Was it different than it usually is? Was it the same?

[Cindy Rollins]

I think it was different. I decided not to put a lot of pressure on myself this year. I decided to just. If I reach my goal of 100 books, good. I didn't want to let my. The goal of reading 100 books keep me from reading really long books. So I just kind of took all the pressure off, and I'm actually going to hit my goal. I realize I. I'll get to put Jason's book in my Goodreads thing as soon as it appears on there. And I started out the book, reading a lot of biographies the year I read the two Elizabeth Elliot biographies at the beginning of the year, and they were just. They just gave me so much food for thought. So in the. In the realm of, what is it? What is a life like, and what does a life mean, and what does God do and how does he work in our lives, whether we are succeeding or failing? Like, how is God still apparent? And. And all of that. So after that, I read several other biographies and enjoyed doing that, and I'll probably read some more. I really, really love reading biographies. And I. You. You kind of have to set apart time for that. And then I spent the whole year, the whole year reading War and Peace again, which was so much fun. I can't believe what a great book that is. And I just never want it to end, you know, I just want to wake up every morning with Pierre and Natasha and the little children and just live their lives with them. But even is in Russia.

[Angelina Stanford]

Did you end up reading it with a grandchild? Remember one of your grandchildren wanted to read War and Peace with you?

[Cindy Rollins]

Yes, that's Savannah. She start. We. We tease Savannah. If she ever listens to this, we tease her. She has started more books than she has finished, fewer than most people, and she started more. She always wants to start a new book, and that's her now. I'm always like, if you finish this book, I'll buy you another book. But I'm not going to buy you a new one until you finish this one.

[Angelina Stanford]

How old? She was really young when she decided.

[Cindy Rollins]

She was like, 10 or something when she did that. I did have a grandchild, my grandson, Tim. He's my oldest. He's 16 now. When he was 13 or 14, he read War and Peace, but he's a kid who's teaching himself Russian and. And actually succeeding at it. Wow. So he loves language. Yeah. He. He really has just taken that under his wing, and he. He loves the Russian soldiers. And that's where he said, cece, how come it took you so long to read War and Peace? And I was like, well, I didn't like the war parts as much as you like them.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes, me, too. That was. That was the tough. The war. The peace parts were fine. The war parts. That was rough. That was rough. Well, Mr. Banks, how would you categorize your year? Did you. You told me earlier you did have a kind of a different year as well. Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

So I was just going through my commonplace books from this last year, and I realized that probably two thirds or so, or maybe even more than that, of the books that I completed this year were ones I had read before. So this was a year of rereading, but I didn't read much that was new to me. I don't know. I was taking. Maybe with, I don't know, all the unpredictability and chaos of the modern world, I was taking refuge in familiar things. No, I think that's, like, subconsciously. I mean, without.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay. You're gonna love this, Cindy. Okay. It's a chaotic time. War, economics, politics, all the things. Right. Should I say this? We can cut it out if you don't. Like. He. He started tucking himself into bed at night with the Chronicles of Narnia.

[Cindy Rollins]

Oh, no.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. Early in the year, I reread a couple of those. I read.

[Angelina Stanford]

You read the Magician's Nephew?

[Thomas Banks]

I read the Magician's Nephew and Voyage of the. Yes, in the Last Battle.

[Angelina Stanford]

And the Last Battle.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. Yeah. And, yeah, I really liked it. I had not read any of those in probably 10 years, at least.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's right. So let. Let this be, you know, on the record here for you guys who think he reads nothing but esoteric stuff, and he does. He also reads his French and Latin every morning and reads lots and lots of. Lots of books that are. That are dusty old books. But, no, I was. It made me so happy when you pulled out the Chronicles and Narnia.

[Thomas Banks]

Like, Cindy, I also read a number of Biographies this year. Let me see. I read another biography of Napoleon. I've read several of him now. This was a very admiring one, and it's kind of interesting. He's a very divisive person, and there are books which demonize him. There are books which lionize him. There are books that make him sound like kind of a God among men. Yeah. So anyway, so I read an almost kind of disturbingly favorable biography of Napoleon. I read a biography, actually a very good book by Isaiah Berlin, the English political philosopher, about Karl Marx, his life and revolutionary activities. I learned, amongst other things, that Karl Marx was. He was actually a poet as a young man. He wrote a lot of poetry, which you don't think about Karl Marx doing, but he wrote a lot of poetry about the destruction of the world and. Because sort of apocalyptic, violent visions and things like that.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, no wonder you had to read the Chronicles of Narnia.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, it was kind of a salve, right? Yeah. A palate cleanser, but yes. Yeah. So, yeah, Karl Marx. I've had reason to get more interested in him, I guess.

[Angelina Stanford]

Do you want to say the title of the Napoleon biography before everyone messages us to find out what it is?

[Thomas Banks]

It was Napoleon, and the author was. Oh, gosh, sorry. The author has a really long name. It's a. It's a French author. And I'm blanking on it right now.

[Angelina Stanford]

So. My year in reading was also very, very different. Look, all three of us had just different years. And one of the things I always hope to do on this podcast is to highlight lots of different read and to give the idea, you know, to get it across, that the reading life is a living thing. It looks different for different times and different people. It's not like. It's not this hard checklist, you know, of boxes and ones and zeros, but it's. It's alive. And so it should look different at different seasons. And you shouldn't always be comparing yourself to some standard of, you know, how many books should I have read? Or something like that. So my year was also very different. For the first year in a really long time, I don't know how many books I read because I deliberately did not keep track. And we talked about this on an episode that Cindy was on for that aired over the summer called what to do when the Literary Life Feels Overwhelming, which was a great episode, and I highly recommend that you guys check that episode out. But I talked about how. So for the last. I don't know how many years now, because Cindy was my goal. I had Been reading triple. Triple digits of books, over a hundred. And part of how. Well, I did notice right away that one of the things happened when I made that my goal was that I was not as quick to pick up very long books, just like you were saying, right? Like picking up War and Peace or picking up a Dickens. You're like, you know, I could knock out four small ones. So that was one thing that happened. And another thing that happened was, I think in January, it was like my brain was just overloaded. I have talked in the podcast before about being ADHD and the need to listen to audiobooks at a faster speed. That is still true for me. But the mistake I was making was going through the book twice as fast meant that I was going through twice as many books in a day. And I really felt like my brain had just reached its limit and that I was pushing. I was trying to push my brain each day beyond what it could actually absorb. And I started to feel restless. I started to feel like I wasn't really into the books. It was almost like the audiobooks were just becoming background noise. I wasn't. I wasn't following them. It was just too much. And so I thought, you know what? I'm gonna take a break. I'm just gonna take a break. So I stopped listening to audiobooks. I started listening to more music. And I thought, let me just deliberately slow everything down. Let me not write down what books I'm reading. And I started listening to. Well, I started. So I read Stolen Focus, and I read Anxious Generation two books I do highly recommend for different reasons and with different caveats and Grains of Salt. But both of them were talking about what is happening in this digital age of information. I was also listening to. Well, I read Deep Work by Cal Newport and his book Slow Productivity and Digital Minimalism. And I was also listening to his podcast a lot. And I was also listening. I'm telling you what it is because I didn't mention him by name over the summer. And I got so many emails, and I was like, I don't. I haven't been writing down what I've been reading on purpose. So I don't know what exactly what they were. So forgive me, but I was also listening to these, like, women's health podcasts about aging. And all of a sudden, like, all these different books and things I was reading all came together with the same message, which was, the brain has a finite ability to absorb information. And that in the information super age. I think one of the podcasts I listened to made the point of we can basically absorb one newspaper's worth of information a day. And because of the digital age, we are doing something like 14 dump truck of information. Like, it was just an astronomical amount. And just like your brain simply cannot absorb this. And we're hurting ourselves, pushing ourselves past our natural human limits. And I just thought, boy, that just rings true on so many levels about the way that we approach everything. I mean, one of the health podcasts was even talking about how pushing that much information into your mind every day will actually raise your cortisol levels and burn out your hormones. Like, it was just physical effects anyway. All of this just sort of came at once at me in a bunch of different directions. And I thought, I'm just going to slow everything down. I feel like I've reached the point of burnout. Let me just slow down. So actually, I think in the month of January, I may not have read any books or listened to any audiobooks. I think I was listening to some podcasts and some music and just like, trying to walk. That was a big Cal Newport thing. Like, can you go for a walk outside without your AirPods on? So I started doing that kind of stuff. Just started to slow myself down. And sure enough, I felt my brain bounce back. It didn't take that long before that restless, overwhelmed feeling left. When I say I didn't read any books, I was still reading for the podcast, I was still reading for my classes. But, you know, I wasn't doing that thing where as soon as I got up, I put on an audiobook and I'm just, you know, going all day long absorbing information. So I did bounce back, and I feel like I learned a lot. And I. I picked up my reading journal a few times during the year. So if you look at it, it's like, what happened to her? So I'm. I was. I would sporadically write down a couple titles and then I would dis from it again. And it kind of felt like a relief to just not be paying attention, not counting how many books and not. And not paying attention. And so I was able to get back to a place where I started listening to audiobooks again and enjoying. And I still need to listen to them at a higher speed. But what I did was I limited how much time I was listening per day instead of just having it all times, like, okay, well, I'm done listening to my book. In fact, I started to learn what were the cues that my body and my brain were giving me, that I had reached the point where I couldn't listen anymore. And so I would stop and just not have them on or put on music or something else. So that was, that was really, really helpful. And when I was thinking about what I was going to say on today's episode, I thought different. People are going to interpret what I'm saying differently because if you're the mom who's struggling to read five books in a year, you probably don't need to hear from me. Don't make a list. Don't make a goal. Don't push yourself. You might be in a different season where you really do actually need to push yourself, but you also could be in a situation where you're like, I've killed myself. I'm burnt out. And you might need to scale back a little bit. And it's really just about knowing who we are and who our limits are. So that was, that was my year. That was my year. Some sporadic reading. I also did a lot of rereading when I went through the list. I was surprised that when I started feeling good about books again, I think I, I think I went back to some, to some old comfort reads and, and, and hit some of those. So, yeah, that's, that's what mine looked like. I still, I mean, I'm sure I still read a lot of books, but I deliberately didn't write them down. I just, I just took that, that burden off of me. So that was, you know, I feel, I feel good about that. So how about highlights? How about highlights? What stood out for you?

[Thomas Banks]

Let me see. I read, or I should say, actually, this was, I think, mostly a new book to me. I read a three volume history of Victorian Britain by Esme Wingfield Stratford, who is a favorite historian of mine and I think too little known. I learned a lot in that one about, oh, how servants were hired and things like that. What kind of wages they might expect, which doesn't sound terribly interesting, I know, but I like learning about that kind of thing. Let me see. I read a book about Queen Victoria and it actually was a pretty admiring one, which is not something that all of Queen Victoria's biographers have done. Sheesh. I reread a number of Latin classics. I reread Ovid's Poems in Exile and most of Horace's odes for my daily Latin reading. And yeah, I always enjoy returning to those. Should I talk about lowlights as well?

[Angelina Stanford]

Let's do highlights first.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay, let's do highlights first.

[Angelina Stanford]

We'll come back to lowlights. All right. Cindy, how about some highlights for you of the Year.

[Cindy Rollins]

Okay, well, first off, I. I read two really good books in the Christian books, sort of like a history of Christianity kind of. The one was called the Spirit of Early Christian Thought Seeking the Face of God by Robert L. Wilkin. I don't even know how I found this book, but I adored this book. It went through church history and just a very broad way. And I felt like I learned so much during. In that book, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. That was the beginning of the year. And then I ended the year on a book that our pastor recommended. Pastor? My pastor John. He recommended for the Life of the World. And I'm not going to be able to say the guy's name, but maybe.

[Angelina Stanford]

Tom can say Alexander Schumann.

[Cindy Rollins]

There you go, Shimon. All right. Well, that book I've already read twice, so the pastor mentioned it. I got my car to come home. I downloaded it to audio. By the time.

[Angelina Stanford]

I was so excited.

[Cindy Rollins]

I know. By the time I finished the Getting Home, I knew I had to underline it. So I got it on Kindle, and I've now bought two copies for two of my sons for Christmas. Hopefully they already know that by now or they'll know tomorrow morning. They're not likely to find out on this podcast at this moment. So. So that book was transformational for me. I really just loved it. Came together with a lot of other things. So I just. Those were like, the spiritual highlights of my year. I like to read devotional material, and I wouldn't say either one of those was devotional, but they worked on me kind of in a devotional way. So those were one highlight. Then I had, you know, I read across a wide range of. I read a book. So I had this book called My India, and it was in a dust cover and I'd had it. It's by Jim Corbett. It. For some reason, I always wanted to read that book. It was a book we bought at a used book sale maybe 30 years ago, and I carried it with me everywhere we went, and I always left it in the living room. So it has been in my living room drawer, different drawers, off and on for 30 years. And I'd be like, I'm going to read that book. I'm going to read that book. Well, this year I picked it up to read it, and I loved it. It was about a man who actually is very, very well known among African and Indians, Indian people who lived in India in, like, the war period, like the World War I, World War II eras. And he had such an exciting life, and he was a Hunter and he hunted tigers and lions. And I was able to use this book in my narration classes. Was just reading passages to the kids and having them narrate. They were so vivid. So anyway, I ended up loving that book. I thought there was a reason I carried this book around for years and years. It was, you know, it did have my name on it and I enjoyed it. Then I read, I read some really good historical books. Like I read Prisoners of the World. I think that's the name of it. Where prisoners of geography, 10 maps that tell you everything you need to know about global politics. That was an excellent read. I read some other kind of history books like Remaking the world, how 1776 created the post Christian West. I thought that was another.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, that sounds fascinating.

[Thomas Banks]

That sounds like a book I would read. Yeah.

[Cindy Rollins]

And I'm writing all these down that you recommended. I think the last time we talked on the podcast the the British History by and it was Is it Antonia.

[Angelina Stanford]

That wrote Rebecca Frazier?

[Cindy Rollins]

Britain by Rebecca Frazier.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's a great, I'm so glad you liked it. I read that years ago and I remembered that the introduction said it's a British book. And it said all British school children know H e Marshall's Our Island Story. And this is like the grown up version of that. And I thought this sounds amazing. And I, I did, I loved it. It's also on audio now, but I, back in the day, I, I, I read it in hardback and that might, that might be an audiobook I listened to in 2025.

[Cindy Rollins]

It's well worth it. I forget who does the narration, but it was easy to read.

[Angelina Stanford]

All right, so it got a thumbs up from Cindy, but yeah, I would think, I mean, I just enjoyed it. It's a narrative history. It really is like our island story for grown ups, right?

[Cindy Rollins]

It really is, yeah. Very enjoyable, just enjoyable to read. What about you? What are your high moments? Do you remember anything?

[Angelina Stanford]

You didn't remember any of them, so. Yeah, exactly. I, I, so I, I spent a large portion of the year deep diving into Harry Potter for this podcast series and then for the class. But I'm always happy when I'm deep diving and so that was fun and I learned a whole bunch about literary alchemy which led to me just deep diving into all of Murcia Eliade's books. So that was, that's a lot of fun. I' working on that. I've actually got some. Our fellows are now reading Mirsha Eliota. We've added him to our list of authors because turns out, yeah. That he and Northrup Fry were good friends and pen pals for years. And we have found that. So those of you who are like, where do I start with Northrop Frye? We've actually found that Murcia Eliade is a lot easier to understand. And he's not talking about literature in particular, but the framework he gives. You definitely see how Fry was applying that to literature. So I would rep. I would recommend the Sacred and the Profane as a good.

[Thomas Banks]

That's kind of considered his magnum opus.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, he thought the Myth of Eternal Return was his Magnus opus, but. Oh, okay.

[Cindy Rollins]

But.

[Angelina Stanford]

But, yeah, we're reading. In the Fellowship. We're reading the Sacred and the Profane right now. And so, yeah, it's not. It's not a long book, and it's. And it's pretty accessible. So I enjoyed. I enjoyed all of that. A lot of fruit came out of that research and is going to continue to come out of research with some webinars we've got coming up in 2025. I also, again, I don't remember everything I read, but I. I know that I read in preparation to do Murder Must Advertise. I reread the Dorothy Sayers novels, and those are not on audio, so I read those, and every time I turn back to those books, I'm like, why do I not read these books all the time? They're just so good. They're so good. And I was really delighted this year that you read and enjoyed Sayers. That was. That was.

[Thomas Banks]

I mean, I. As. As frequent listeners. Listeners will know I don't read a whole lot of murder mysteries. I've kind of scraped the top of the barrel. But, yeah, Dorothy Sayers, actually, that side of. That entire side of her writing is fairly new to me. I've now read two of her murder mysteries and enjoyed both of them very much.

[Angelina Stanford]

I feel like that's a huge. A huge, huge, huge victory. Your mother was so happy I got.

[Thomas Banks]

You to read Moliere this year.

[Angelina Stanford]

You did? And I did enjoy that. The Tartuffe by Moliere. I enjoyed that a lot. I enjoyed doing Howard Zinn on the podcast. You. That was a lot of fun.

[Thomas Banks]

That was actually one of the first books you and I had really talked.

[Angelina Stanford]

About was Howard Zinn on our first date. Yes.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, we had. We had been talking about EM Forster and. Yeah, that's. That is. That wasn't the first book of his. I read. I think I. That was probably the third or fourth novel of his, but I remember that that one. When I first read it, I thought. I thought to myself that this is the book I wish I had started with.

[Angelina Stanford]

I also read last Spring with the fellows that Hideous strength. And a conference talk will be coming out of that, my life conference talk, because I ended up doing a deep dive on the concerns that he had really behind the book and that a lot of this was poking at particular professors in Cambridge and language theories and theories of literature. And so a lot of fruit will come out of that. I listened to a bunch of lectures, too, this year, and so when we did Agnes Gray by Anne Bronte on the podcast, when we finished that, I read the Tenant of Wildfell hall by Anne Bronte, the first half of which I thought was just fantastic. I couldn't stop raving about it like it was a thriller. A total page turn I was flying through. It was so fun. And then it hit a wall of preachiness that I have just never been able to recover from. You listen to me.

[Thomas Banks]

Pastor's daughter and herself, man.

[Angelina Stanford]

I don't want to spoil the end, but, like, the. Have you read it, Cindy?

[Cindy Rollins]

No, as a matter of fact, I was thinking of reading it before the end of the year.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay, I will not spoil it, but I would love to know what you thought. So the. I would say the first I read Agnes Gray. Yeah, well, this is a little bit different because this was, like, very exciting and a thriller and, you know, this mysterious woman and her story's kind of unfolding, and it was very exciting. And I kept pausing to tell Mr. Banks, you know, this would make such a great movie. Somebody should make a movie out about this. I like it felt so. And I. And again, I'm not the person who's always like, I bought an old book. It felt so contemporary, but really, it felt so contemporary, like, it was shocking. This didn't feel like a Victorian novel at all. And then you get to the last fourth of the book, and it became very Victorian and very preachy and very didactic. And all of a sudden, characters are giving long speeches about suffering and repent. Like, it just. It was like, sounds like an editor.

[Cindy Rollins]

Got a hold of the writer and said, well, we think you need to bring out your points a little more.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right. It was. It was like she had put her own study guide at the end of the book, and it was just. It just turned into a long series of sermons. And I was, like, just crushed. Like, what happened to this book? It was. It was so. It was so good. It was so good. Other than that. And.

[Cindy Rollins]

But my Mom. So my. Years ago, my mom asked for the. The DVDs. Not. Not DVDs. VCR, cassette for that. There was a miniseries, a BBC, I'm assuming. And I bought that for. For Christmas, but I'd never watched it. And I don't. The Tenant of Wildfellow Hall. And I don't know who's in it or anything.

[Angelina Stanford]

See, that would be. This would be a rare example of if I made a movie and I would change the end. Yeah, I would be like, this was such a good story. Just. We just need to fix it now. The next thing I'm gonna say though, and I'm very curious if Cindy's gonna respond here, watch. Watch me be all proud of myself. Cindy's gonna be like, Angelina. I've been reading that guy for 20 years. They're so behind the curve. So you might be okay. But now I discovered some. A new to me author. And he was referenced just as an aside in another book.

[Cindy Rollins]

Book.

[Angelina Stanford]

And then I was like, who is this? I'm gonna look this up. I'm so fascinated. So I had never heard of him. He is a Japanese author who writes Golden Age detective novels.

[Cindy Rollins]

No.

[Angelina Stanford]

Don't know.

[Cindy Rollins]

Okay.

[Angelina Stanford]

And so I. I ordered the first one. I'll tell you what it is. I ordered the first one. Loved it so much, I started reading the second one. They're like, I've just been working my way through the series. I also bought a copy of this for some money for Christmas, who hopefully will have gotten it by the time this airs. So the author is Stishi Yokomizu. And the first book that I read of his is called the Hanjin Murders. And it's considered to be the single best locked room mystery ever written. You have heard of it?

[Cindy Rollins]

I've heard of it. I have not read it.

[Angelina Stanford]

Sishi Yokomizu. I'll spell it. S E I S H I Y O K O M I Z O. Sishi Yokomizo. They are fantastic. So many references to. They're set in the 1930s in Japan. The first one is. And the second one is. Goes immediately to after the war. So many references to English Golden Age detective novelists. I love the detective in here, but also really rich with Japanese stuff. Like the second book I read was all about Japanese haiku. And then that was like the whole key to unraveling the thing. Anyway, they're very smart, very fun, and I. I really, really, really enjoyed it. So that was a new to me thing that I. That. That I found and enjoyed.

[Thomas Banks]

I wanted to run A couple of murder mystery names by the two of you. Because you two know this stuff much better than I do. But I will be obscure. Okay. I will be impressed if you know this. Have you heard of two brothers, both of them writers named Anthony and Peter Schaeffer? Does that ring a bell?

[Cindy Rollins]

It does not.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay, so they're better known as playwrights.

[Angelina Stanford]

Anthony Schaeffer wrote Peter Schaeffer from Amadeus.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, Peter Schaeffer who wrote Amadeus. Anthony Schaeffer wrote Sleuth. You know Sleuth?

[Cindy Rollins]

Oh, yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

They were twins. They also. I found out they co wrote mysteries together in the 1950s and 60s, the most famous of which is called How Doth the Little Crocodile.

[Angelina Stanford]

Like the Lewis Carroll poem.

[Cindy Rollins]

What?

[Angelina Stanford]

I need this anyway, Carol, too. What?

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. So I guess that they're well regarded as mystery writers as well as playwrights.

[Angelina Stanford]

Wow.

[Thomas Banks]

I have not known this about them, though.

[Cindy Rollins]

Big time here. I feel.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay, I'll also admit.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

I didn't know that they were twins. And I ran this by my brother and he told me. How could you not know that? So he. He.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah, how could you not know?

[Thomas Banks]

Right? How could you not know this?

[Angelina Stanford]

So Pete wrote, your brother is so.

[Cindy Rollins]

Much smarter than you.

[Thomas Banks]

He is, actually.

[Angelina Stanford]

His brother wrote the movie Sleuth, which.

[Thomas Banks]

Which was also a play.

[Cindy Rollins]

The Lawrence, Livia, Michael Kaner.

[Angelina Stanford]

But what's the detective story that's. That's spoofing on Sleuth?

[Thomas Banks]

That's Knives Out.

[Angelina Stanford]

Knives out, which is definitely a kind of a remake of Sleuth.

[Cindy Rollins]

There's a couple other Sleuth knockoffs from the 80s, like late 70s, I think.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, I think you're right. Yeah, I can't. It seems like. Yeah, they did that with like, you know, only one or two characters in a secluded location where they're sort of plotting against each other in some way, or one of them is plotting against the other. Anyway. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

All right, now I'm curious. What did you want to say about lowlights? So if those were your highlights, what are your lowlights?

[Thomas Banks]

Well, I read one book, a new book, actually, two new books which I richly disliked. I won't name either author, but one of them was on contemporary Christian living and how to live in the wake of Christendom.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, yes, that one.

[Thomas Banks]

And no, this book is not by Rod Dreher. Rodrier is much better than this. This book was. Imagine if someone decided, a very young man decided he was going to write like Rod Dreyer and sort of play that, you know, sort of prophet in lamentation, sort of role. And Took on himself the mantle and the beard of Dreyer, but then gave advice like, go up to people in grocery stores and give them Christian tracts or public parks or something like that. Because people respond best to religious solicitations when you surprise them. It was. This was. I almost wondered if this person was, like, kind of writing this tongue in cheek. Anyway, so this book that shall not be named, I read it, and I actually considered setting it on fire at one point. My wife restrained me. The other book was a new book, a new monograph on Jane Austen.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, that one was also Dear Wipe that From My Bed.

[Thomas Banks]

That one probably made Angelina more angry than I, because I was reading sections over, like, breakfast, and she was like, yeah, you were about ready to take it out of my hands.

[Cindy Rollins]

Was.

[Angelina Stanford]

I was about to write an angry letter.

[Cindy Rollins]

Oh, yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

So it was. It was sort of a re. Evaluation of Jane Austen as a dark writer. I can't really put it more specifically.

[Cindy Rollins]

Than that, but worse than Jane Austen and the zombies, which wasn't bad. Oh, Cindy.

[Angelina Stanford]

This book was so bad. Like, I'm trying to remember Thomas. She talked about, like, Jane Austen hated marriage and that the books are like a whole fitness subversion.

[Thomas Banks]

She says that, like, in Jane Austen, the constant theme that you find is. I think she uses the expression regulated hatred.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yes.

[Angelina Stanford]

Talks about how Jane and Bingley are obviously a terrible couple.

[Thomas Banks]

Basically, all the happy endings in Austin are really not happy, or many of them are.

[Cindy Rollins]

Not.

[Thomas Banks]

Again, I don't want to misrepresent.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah. So here's an idea. Let's take. Let's get. If we. You know how we have. At the literary life camps that we had, we'd have people bring a book, and we'd have a book exchange. Let's say you can't join the book exchange until you burn a book. You have to burn a book to get into.

[Thomas Banks]

That's actually a really good idea. Yeah.

[Cindy Rollins]

Or maybe burn it after one afterwards, because I don't know.

[Angelina Stanford]

Could certain homeschool curriculum count as that? Cindy, could we do a bonfire? Just throw certain homeschool curriculum.

[Thomas Banks]

I will say, for this book, though, it was by an author who was obviously.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, she was a journalist, not a literature.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. She was intelligent, she wrote well, and she had done her research. I mean, her psychic.

[Cindy Rollins]

Like, she was trained to think that that's how you interact with books. You tear them apart.

[Thomas Banks]

It was.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yep.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, it was. It wasn't as embarrassing as. I don't know. Well, to take a random hypothetical example, say if someone like me, who does not know the writings of Charlotte Mason. Well, were to go on some podcast or television show somewhere and talk about how Charlotte Mason did not know romantic literature, didn't really understand children and all that. I mean, that's unthinkable. Of course, that would never happen in real life.

[Cindy Rollins]

Speaking of that, what I would like to, you know, what I might burn is, like, say someone took a book like the Hobbit and wrote a workbook and asked you really stupid questions about the Hobbit, so that by the time you were done with the Hobbit, you wanted to burn the Hobbit. I would actually burn that.

[Angelina Stanford]

Thank God we're in the realm of hypotheticals. Or as long as we're playing the hypothetical game. Name. What if someone sold you a curriculum of study guides for fairy tales in which they offered a series of questions about, what would you do if you woke up in the middle of the night one night and heard your parents were planning to murder you? Would you just. Would you just put rocks in your pocket and hope for the best or, you know, or should. Should Little Red Riding Hood talk to the wolf? You know, again, unthinkable.

[Cindy Rollins]

Unthinkable. Nobody would do that. So we don't even have to worry about this sort of thing in the world.

[Angelina Stanford]

None of those things would ever happen. Cindy. What? Did you have any low lights?

[Cindy Rollins]

Well, I did.

[Angelina Stanford]

Blocked out all my low lights.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah, they. So, you know, when, you know, the algorithm that rules our life, it kept showing me a certain book, showing it to me, showing it to me. And finally, I thought, well, I might really enjoy this book. And it's a book, you know, it's very popular. It's called My Brilliant Friend. It's by Alina Ferrante, and it seemed like it would have everything I like, and it did have an exotic location for me. The girl lived in an Italian village, and it was apparently basically a true story. And I just hated the book. I just hated it. And I was so glad because I thought, I don't want to read all the. You know, there was the first one, the second one, the third one, but it just had everything a good book should have, and it didn't. It just failed miserably, I thought. And I don't know.

[Angelina Stanford]

I like you so much. I like you so much. I respect you so much, because what if we had another hypothetical? What if there was a literature podcast, theoretically, that you and I have no respect for, that was absolutely raving about this book? You just said raving about it.

[Cindy Rollins]

I did not know.

[Angelina Stanford]

You did not Know, and said that they were now obsessed with this author, wanted to read every word she's ever written because she's so amazing.

[Thomas Banks]

You're talking about the Neapolitan novelist.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yes, Neapolitan novelist.

[Angelina Stanford]

Pathetically. What if there was a book podcast that Cindy and I didn't like that raved about?

[Cindy Rollins]

Well, that's not the first time that happened when. Even when I was close, more closely involved, that there was someone who. I read a modern book that had been raved and raved about, and I just thought it was garbage. But, you know. And I am also the ultimate decider.

[Angelina Stanford]

You are. You are. I live for these verdicts, Cindy. What else you got? Any other low life?

[Cindy Rollins]

I had one other one that might not be as popular. I have tried three or four times to read the Armand Gamache French Canadian novels of Louise Penny. That means he's an inspector. And I've actually watched the new show out that has. I can't think of the actor. I really like him and I like the show. So I decided to try the novels again, and now I've read three of them and I'm just. I just can't any further. I just can't read another.

[Thomas Banks]

Is this a contemporary or an older mystery?

[Cindy Rollins]

Contemporary.

[Thomas Banks]

They have murder in Canada? I don't know.

[Cindy Rollins]

No, it's. Yeah, they do have in this across.

[Angelina Stanford]

The border in America.

[Thomas Banks]

Don't they have to, like, come here to do.

[Cindy Rollins]

It's only one town. It's like Midsummer in England. All the murders happen in one area.

[Angelina Stanford]

Otherwise, it's just an idyllic town of 15 people where everybody knows each other. And then people keep.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah. And then the new person comes and murders somebody.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's always the street stranger.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Are they Americans in the book, though? Is that who the killers are?

[Cindy Rollins]

No, the killers are. No, I. You know, there's just all kinds of characters, and for some reason, I just can't get into those books. I've tried. I. I keep trying because I think I should like these, because I actually do like the TV show, but I really like the actor who plays Gamanch, Gamache or whatever his name is. So those are my low lives. I mean, I read other not so great books, but just mediocre books. But those were the ones that I definitely had opinion about.

[Angelina Stanford]

I think I have blocked out my low lights. I don't actually have a list in front of me, so I'll have to think about this.

[Thomas Banks]

You definitely had some, because I remember times you coming into a room shouting, once you Burst into my office shouting about.

[Cindy Rollins]

About what?

[Thomas Banks]

It was some. It was a contemporary book about one of the inklings, and I cannot remember who by or what the title was. I know. I'm such help here.

[Angelina Stanford]

Temporary book about.

[Thomas Banks]

This was like, almost a year ago. This is towards the beginning of the year.

[Angelina Stanford]

I blanked it out. So, yeah, yeah, it was so low that I had now have amnesia about it.

[Thomas Banks]

Well, you're lucky. How do you do that?

[Angelina Stanford]

But I thought I would mention under the category of low life, not that. Not that it was a bad book.

[Thomas Banks]

But that it was a low life or low light.

[Angelina Stanford]

Low light because you said highlight and low light.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay, I misheard you then.

[Angelina Stanford]

Although we have hypothetically talked about some lowlifes on this podcast today, I'm gonna say low light, as in it was a heavy subject, but good. So I'll go back to the books I was talking about at the beginning, Stolen Focus and Anxious Generation. And I would also throw in their Cal Newport's books, Digital Minimalism. My favorite of his is Deep Work. I would say start with Deep Work and then Slow Productivity and Digital Minimalism. But Stolen Focus and Anxious Generation were hard books to read in the sense that they were about the ways in which technology has shaped us in very, very harmful ways. They were extraordinarily well researched, and I had to keep taking breaks from reading them. It was like. It was overwhelming to realize what an incredible mess we've made of things and how. How pernicious technology is and how deliberate it has been, that it didn't have to be this way, but that the tech masters, because they make money by how many seconds you spend on your phone, that they are trying to make the tool the master of us and the. The Stolen Focus. And so Stolen Focus is by Johann Hari and Anxious Generation is by Jonathan Haidt. The books were a little bit different, but both very, very valuable in their own ways. In fact, I had a student reach out to me and said, do you have any books you would recommend about phones and technology? And I gave her these two books, and she gobbled them up and just started writing me these long messages about, I want to get rid of my phone. I think. I think it is hurting me. Me. Like. So Stolen Focus was mostly about how we haven't. You would love it, Cindy. It's so Charlotte Mason. Because it was all about how we have no ability to focus on anything. We cannot be present in our own lives. We cannot focus. Like even talking about focus, reading a book. We can't focus on a conversation with the human in front of us because it's been stolen from us by our technology, our notifications, our dings, just everything. And so he, he takes an experiment and he goes to an island with no technology at all. Nothing. He's like, old school ipod, that's it. No, no phone, no nothing. And he goes through horrible withdrawal symptoms and then eventually comes on the other side of that and figures out how to be human again. And suddenly, you know, he has like all this time in the day and he can cook food and enjoy it and read books and go on walks on the beach. And then he has to leave all that and come back to the real world and realize, I came back with all these, you know, big goals of I'm not going to be a slave to my phone, and you can't live in this world and not have a phone. Right. And so, so what do you do? So that was very eye opening, I would say, about that book. My grain of salt with that book is the first half is really, really good, where he is diagnosing the problem. The second half, when he's offering solutions, you will be very frustrated. His entire lens is political. So that's not very helpful that. This is where I find Cal Newport to be such a nice compliment because is his, his solutions are all, you're one person and this is how you're going to carve out a life for yourself in this world. And this is, this is how you can get your focus back and learn to be minimal with, with your, you.

[Cindy Rollins]

Know, you're saying focus, but I would like to change that word to attention. Because what they're stealing from us is attention. And they know that our attention is going to be somewhere. And I mean, this goes all the way back to Charlotte Mason where she says, education is the habit of attention. What we're learning is what we're giving our attention to. And it goes back to my talk at the back to school conference, I think, where I said, if you were a bad guy, what would you do to steal this powerful tool that everybody has their attention. But anyway, go ahead.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, no, you're absolutely right. Like Cindy, I kept stopping the book and thinking. And one of the, one of the real epiphanies I had was because you and I get, you know, we get a lot of questions from homeschoolers. We on our Facebook group all the time, we're getting asked, well, you know, books are great, but I, I can't make my child read a book and they don't like it and they won't do the, they don't do the schooling, they don't want to narrate, they don't do all this. And I found myself since reading the book, stolen focus, thinking every time I see one of those questions, I want to respond, what kind of devices does your child have like this? This is not an issue of if I just buy the correct curriculum, if I just find the exciting book, they'll start to love to learn. There's a deep going on since reading the book too. I also found that every time I hear somebody say, well, I just, these old books just don't hold my attention. I can't read them. And you and I both know there's a lot of homeschool influencers out there who is saying old books cannot hold your child's attention, therefore give them easy new books. I keep thinking you are admitting there is something wrong with your child if your child cannot hold attention. That is a problem. Human beings are not made like that. And so, so you need to look into what are the devices happening? What are, what are the issues going on that is affecting my child's attention and seek to try to honestly, you know, detox. You have to detox from it. You have to get back to that, that borderline state. And that's not to say that there's not such a thing as attention deficit disorder and all these other things, but we should not be seeing it on the scale that we are. It should be everybody.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah, it's so widespread said for a reason.

[Angelina Stanford]

And I know that my own attention is much worse than it should be because of devices. And I've been trying to be a lot more deliberate about that. So it just really, it really left me thinking about a lot of things. I mean he, he's got chapters in there from different whistleblowers from tech books, tech companies, just, I mean like saying things like, well, we need them to not be sleeping because every hour they're asleep is an hour they're not on their phone and we're not making money money. And they, so they, they want you to be sucked into a real, you know, as you're going to bed and you, you know, four hours go by and you've ended up shopping on Amazon in the middle of the night. Like the whole chapter on middle of the night shopping was just very, very eye openening. So I highly recommend that book. And then Anxious generation. Holy moly. This book was so well researched that he also had links to Google Docs that he constantly updates with the latest research. Like it was Amazing. And it was a little bit different than the other book. It wasn't about our inability to pay attention. It was about the mental health crisis in our country. And that you can track the data and the data points to before everybody had a cell phone and after everybody had a cell phone. And he. It is extraordinarily researched. And listen, you and I have kids of a certain age. I mean, I had to put the book down at one point and be like, do I need to repent that? I got my children a phone and they did not have phones when they were little and they didn't have smartphones. I. They had a Kindle and they had. They had Internet access. And, you know, like, it was overwhelming to me and the anxiety it has caused the inability to have human relationships. Like, one of the points he made was when you give a child all this digital access, when their brain is still forming, the phone will shape their brain.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

And so he argues, one, this really resonated with me that when you're in an analog childhood, okay, like you and I had and all three of us had, and you're playing with the friends in your neighborhood, right, Your. Your relationships are with real people in physical proximity. He says that that forces a type of behavior, right? So I can get in a fight with Bobby across the street, but I got to see Bobby every day for the rest of my life, right. So that forces me to have to go reconcile this. Or, you know, like, you have. It's like being in a family. You can't just.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah, you're going to either forget it or you're going to.

[Angelina Stanford]

But he was saying how once your relationships all move to digital, if someone makes you mad, it's delete and block and that. That ends up shaping their entire interactions with reality. Just block, block, block. And he. So he. Oh, I'm thinking. I'm getting all worked up thinking about this book. And it's been months since I read it. But he traces almost like a perfect storm of 90s overprotective parenting. The kind of people who were like, we need to have. Have soft rubber on the playground lest Johnny hurt himself. So that kind of terrifying thing. So at the same time that they're really overprotective and. And micromanaging their child, a lot of scare tactics about, you know, stranger danger. They also gave their child a phone, which was the far greater danger, and not just for, like, the things that we think of. It shaped their brain the way it.

[Cindy Rollins]

Works, just even when it's being its best.

[Angelina Stanford]

I tell you What? So he made, he made a conclusion that blew my mind. And I never would have thought. He said, when you track the data for cancel culture and the stuff that is happening on college campuses, when you track it. Okay. And college campuses have always been a little revolutionary. It's always had kids, you know, who were wanting things to be different. I mean, there's been riots at campuses before, but there is something different about it now that everybody recognizes. And he can, they can track the data and point to a, to a year. This is the first freshman class that acted this way. And this would be the first freshman class that grew up shaped by a smartphone. And so he said, what is happening with that impulse of, I don't like what this professor said, so he needs to be fired. He said, that is just the grown up version of block and delete, delete. And block is okay. So like their whole lives have been shaped where you said something I didn't want to hear, therefore I block you. And they're trying to do that in real life now.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah, yeah, I, I see that. I see that a lot.

[Angelina Stanford]

I highly recommend that book if you're a parent, if you're, even if you're not. I mean, my kids are grown. But give it to your high school students. My high school students have been reading this book and feeling very, very convicted. And they're, they're basically homeschoolers who don't even have phones and, and they're trying to be so mindful. And after I read both of those books, I went into my classes and I just gave these long speeches and said, I realize it's not easy to be a kid today without a cell phone and your friends have it and you might feel like a freak because your parents don't give you Internet access, but you need to go thank them for that. And I had a mom message me after class and said, I don't know what you just said, but my 16 year old son just walked out of your class and said, thank you, mom, for not giving me a cell phone.

[Cindy Rollins]

That's beautiful.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah. So I, those are, those are two not, not basic Angelina books that I read, but I kind of fell down that rabbit hole of trying to figure out what was going on with my own ability to have attention and how restless I was feeling and it was all connected. And I, I really highly, highly recommend those, those books. And I'm trying to be more minimalist and did you know, well, one of the things I did this year, in addition to walking outside without my headphones on, was I got back to knitting, which is a hobby I absolutely love. And one of the knitting podcasts I listened to pointed out that knitting is sort of an antidote to fast fashion and just fast everything, because it's slow. It takes a long time to make a garment you have. It slows you down. And so that's. That's kind of been what my. My year has been. I'm still teaching. We launched the press. I've still got a lot of things going on, but I'm trying to be more deliberate. I slow down. I. I started reading physical books instead of ebooks and audiobooks, like trying to touch a book and touch yarn and, you know, touch grass, as the kids say, but just all part of that. And that was all connected, too, also to the. The talk I gave at the Spring Lit Life Conference about the music of the spheres and nature and how nature shapes us and keeps us in harmony and operates as a tuning fork. So it was. It was kind of. It was kind of all of that. Now I feel like we're just ending this on a downer. Somebody say something.

[Cindy Rollins]

I was thinking about that in terms of my Bible. Like, my parents had a huge influence on my children. My dad would come visit. He'd always get in the morning, he'd pick up his Bible and he'd be sitting there reading. The kids would be running around and he'd go, well, look what this says. And then he read a verse to them. But I read, I. I do my Bible a lot of times on my phone own. And I thought, I really, it's not to, like, do your works before men, but it's just my. The grandkids, they don't know if I'm reading my Bible. If I'm doing my puzzle, they don't know what I'm doing. I could be doing, you know, I might think it's worthwhile and it doesn't matter, but they don't know that, and I don't think it's a very good example to them. So I'm going to try to read my physical Bible out this year. I just, just. It's really hard. I don't. It's harder. I mean, I used to do it all the time, but now I feel like it's. It's a. It's really going to take a challenge. Going to be a challenge for me.

[Angelina Stanford]

It is. It's very easy to use the app and to, to search for things. Just. Yeah, everything's hyperlinked. And I, I originally, I told myself it was going to make it so much easier for me. And I would be more consistent if it was on my phone. And that is not how to be.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah, because the minute you, you pull up your phone to get on your Bible and before you know it, you're somewhere else and doing something else. You don't even.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's it. In fact, Mr. Banks asked for his birthday. I bought him. He'll show you right here on the camera. I bought him a nice analog watch.

[Cindy Rollins]

Analog watch.

[Angelina Stanford]

And it was because he had mentioned to me over the summer while I was doing all this research that he wanted a watch because he thought he checks his phone to check the time.

[Cindy Rollins]

And then it's right, right, right.

[Thomas Banks]

And then I'm gonna check my email and then Facebook and then the news and then it's. Yeah, it's too many.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah, it's just.

[Thomas Banks]

Sorry, can I end on a completely unrelated but light note? Before one new book that I read that I really liked and it surprised me how much I like this. Our. Our friend and colleague Atlee Northmore gave me a copy of the Collected Letters of Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, which I read a few weeks ago. And actually he was like the least glamorous man you could imagine, which is, you know, kind of. I mean, James Bond is, you know, exotic locations and beautiful women and spycraft and all that. But Ian Fleming I think had. The people who met him thought he seemed like just an accountant or a solicitor, just kind of. Kind of a boring middle class guy and who didn't really have any great aspirations in life except to make enough money to pay his liquor bills.

[Angelina Stanford]

Walter Mitty, he just lived in his mind?

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, kind of, yeah. I mean, he did work in MI6. He was, he was involved in the British intelligence in World War II, but as a. As a desk man, really. He wasn't out in the field doing dangerous things and running around after beautiful women or anything like that, so. But no, I like that book very much.

[Cindy Rollins]

Go ahead.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, I was going to say, Cindy, what are your final thoughts?

[Cindy Rollins]

Okay, so I did read another book that summer Smith suggested to me. It was Shakespeare the Man who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench. And I still have that on hold.

[Angelina Stanford]

From the library saying I got six more weeks to go.

[Cindy Rollins]

It's a good audiobook because it's an interview with her by this man who's an old friend of hers and they go through pretty much every one of Shakespeare's plays. And the audiobook isn't actually Judi Dench doing the audio. It's a friend of hers, Barbara. I can't think of Barbara's last name, but she sounds just like Judi Dench but a little bit younger. And then in between times, they have the real Judi Dench doing poems and stuff. But I loved her take on so many things about Shakespeare. I, I loved the way she. I mean, it's a little raunchy at times. I mean, this is a woman who was in the theater her whole life, but it just, the way she understood literature and art and theater and just Shakespeare himself I thought was so fun. And I, I did do it on audio and I really do feel like I need to buy a copy that I can, you know, get some of the quotes out of it because there are some really good ones that.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, you messaged me and was raving about it, so I went and requested it from the library.

[Cindy Rollins]

It's a lot of fun. Another good book that I read twice this year because I use it in classes as Much May Be Done with Sparrows by Karen Glass Past. It's a complete departure of essays that Karen has just off the cuff essays based on things that she reads in Charlotte's words, like this. This little phrase, much may be done with sparrows. Karen just took it and wrote some things about it. So it's a very short book. Seven. I think it's seven chapters of short essays by Karen that are very, very encouraging and good. And my last shout out I want to give is to Christina Baer, who listens to the podcast because she has written a series of like light fantasy books called the Secrets of Ormdale. And she does a lot of little hints about Dorothy Sayers and, you know, C.S. lewis, all the, just a lot of different. All the little fun Easter eggs you like to find in books. She, she. I don't usually read this genre of, you know, modern kind of fantasy. Well, I mean, it's not modern written to be in modern times. It's like 18, turn of the century kind of thing. But I, I think Christine is on the right track and I think these books are a lot of fun. If you wanted some light reading, I'd.

[Angelina Stanford]

Be curious about those.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah, they're good.

[Angelina Stanford]

Active in our Facebook group and very kindly never promotes herself. So I really appreciate that.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah, she does a great job of, you know, you'll find all kinds of little fun things. You'll be that you'll be like, I know that, you know, Dorothy Sayre says that. But it's so far beyond us sometimes. We don't always get all the jokes.

[Angelina Stanford]

Because it's usually in French or Latin.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yes, if only. I know that's funny. I just don't know why. But Christina, you know, she's on the same page, read the same books, and it's a lot of fun to read her. Her work.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, that's good. I see. I see in my. My book notebook here, I. I did read Busman's Honeymoon, so I did run through all of them and had been a long time since I had read Busman's Honeymoon. It was. It was so good. Good. It was so good. I don't understand why these audiobooks are not available in the United States. I think I would just listen to those constantly.

[Cindy Rollins]

I didn't know they weren't available.

[Angelina Stanford]

They're not. They're randomly. Some of them are randomly available on Audible and then taken off. But mostly what's there is dramatizations which are like super, like two hours long.

[Cindy Rollins]

Right, right.

[Angelina Stanford]

To actually read it. I don't know why that is. Is. But. But there you go. If they were in the public domain, I would. You and I, Mr. Banks, we would.

[Cindy Rollins]

There you go.

[Angelina Stanford]

Why don't you make Peter Winsy and I'll be Harriet Vane? That's it. They just. We just got to get them in the public domain. I would knock those out, man.

[Cindy Rollins]

Do that as a level on your Patreon where you two just read Dorothy Sayers.

[Angelina Stanford]

What? What? So what do you think your 2025 reading is going to be like? I've actually been giving. I don't usually give thoughts to that, but I'm trying to be more deliberate, you know, about how I approach everything. And so one of the things that has been kind of at the back of my mind, I actually mentioned it to you the other day. I was thinking that the 2025 might be the year I tackle some of the Dickens books. I've never read. So I have. I've read. I was just thinking about this. So I've read David Copperfield, I think, three times. That's my favorite Dickens. Tale of Two Cities a couple times. I've read Hard Times on the podcast. I read that twice. I've read Oliver Twist and Great Expectations, of course, Christmas Carol, but I've never read Bleak House.

[Cindy Rollins]

That's my favorite.

[Angelina Stanford]

See, I need.

[Thomas Banks]

I would recommend.

[Angelina Stanford]

I need to read Bleak House. It's so long. I've never read the Pickwick Papers.

[Cindy Rollins]

I just read those last year because. Emily Rabo.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes, same.

[Thomas Banks]

That's one of his funniest books. It's exhaustingly funny.

[Angelina Stanford]

Exhaustingly.

[Thomas Banks]

And it's also one of those books where if you try to explain the plot even slightly, it ruins it. It's a picaresque, right? Yeah.

[Cindy Rollins]

But just read it all year, like, just as little essays.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, that's a good idea. Just. Just pick it like a nice bed.

[Thomas Banks]

It's almost like a really long collection of comic sketches.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay.

[Thomas Banks]

That happens to people characters.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay. Okay.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. It's. It's one of his strangest books and one of his best.

[Angelina Stanford]

Mentioned the Old curiosity shop. And Mr. Bank said, do not waste your time on that.

[Cindy Rollins]

I haven't read that.

[Angelina Stanford]

Thoughts? You have?

[Cindy Rollins]

No, I have not wasted my time.

[Thomas Banks]

I'm. I'm really not a fan of.

[Angelina Stanford]

All right, so. But what else should I do then? So I. Bleak House and Pickwick. What about.

[Cindy Rollins]

What?

[Angelina Stanford]

Dombey and Sons. Is that one good?

[Thomas Banks]

Like, I've never read that. I don't think I've ever read that one.

[Angelina Stanford]

Cindy. What. What Dickens do you think I'm missing here?

[Thomas Banks]

Oliver? TW Twist?

[Angelina Stanford]

I have read all of it.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, he's read that.

[Cindy Rollins]

And you've read A Tale of Two.

[Angelina Stanford]

Cities a bunch of times. Yes.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah. I'm trying to think that. What is he.

[Thomas Banks]

He didn't.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, the Murder of Edwin. I haven't read that one because it's not finished.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah, but I think it's so hard to read it when you think it's not finished. What. What about Little Dorrit?

[Angelina Stanford]

I haven't read that either, but I.

[Cindy Rollins]

Think I watched the BBC version of it.

[Angelina Stanford]

Maybe our listeners, actually, Nicholas Nickleby. Nicholas. Nick. Okay, I haven't read that one.

[Thomas Banks]

That's okay. Or he wrote a couple of travel books. He wrote.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, he did. We have Italy, actually.

[Thomas Banks]

I've read his American Notes. He didn't really like everything about our country, but it's an amusing book.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. So if you need a travel book on your list, you might consider that one.

[Angelina Stanford]

And of course, I don't know what Shakespeare play I'm going to read in 2025. I should have mentioned that earlier because we are actually leaving it up to the Patreon to vote on which Shakespeare play we're going to read this year. So if you were like, I want to get in there and vote which one we're going to do on the podcast, then you can still. You can join our [e-mail] backslash literarylife. And the voting for that will be through December 31st. Okay. So that I'm kind of thinking about Dickens. We'll see. We'll see. It's always so hard. I have so many books I had. There's a lot of non fiction books I have. Have. I would like to finish reading all the Misha Eliota books. There's some new fry books I got. Well, they're books of essays that I would like to dive into. And then I have a whole bunch of new books on Alchemy that I really want to read too. My stack just gets longer and longer and longer.

[Thomas Banks]

But I haven't really made plans for my reading year. I mean, I know I'm going to have to read. Well, have to get to read a lot of Victoriana because I'm teaching a summer mini class on Victorian lives. And other than that, I. Yeah, I guess I won't prognosticate. I. I have been meaning to reread Vanity Fair by William Thackeray, talking about that.

[Angelina Stanford]

Maybe I'll add that to my list too.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, maybe if you read that, I'll read it as well. Because it's been.

[Angelina Stanford]

I haven't read that, but it's been.

[Thomas Banks]

A while since college for me. I loved it in college and I.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, I like it a lot too. We rushed the movie. We talked about that one a lot. We should read that one.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, I like both film versions and it's. I admire the novel and yeah, Thackeray is. Yeah, we've never done anything with Thackeray on this podcast and we should.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, you always do such an interesting mix though. You, you read a lot of biographies and history and theology, but then you also, you read novels. Like you just, you're just so disciplined with and orderly with your reading. And I feel like I'm so like buckshot with my reading. Like, oh, this is my new hyper focus. Must learn everything about this. Then I move on to something else.

[Thomas Banks]

Alchemy. Japanese murder mystery.

[Angelina Stanford]

Correct. Yokomizo. Y'all, you got to go get this book. All right. Cindy, how about you?

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah, so I just finished the Warden, which is a long time goal of mine is to go through Trollop and I, I think I've read the Warden a couple times because I always have to start at the beginning and then I don't get very far. But I loved it so much. It was absolutely.

[Angelina Stanford]

Books.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yes. It's really not about anything, but it was so wonderful. I mean, it was about something. Something. I am going to go on and try to get through Trollop this year as like you say, a kind of a detox of my mind. Just, you know, get in this other world, this older world, this other way of thinking. Get outside of this. I have started Moby Dick, and I'm determined that's going to be my War and Peace for next year, is to try to read that.

[Angelina Stanford]

I've never read that. I'm terribly intimidated by it. And unfortunately, once. And this is a terrible thing to say, but the. The Moby Dick expert professor in graduate school, I asked him one time, I said, I've never read Moby Dick, you know, And I'm kind of intimidated by it. Like, what do you think? And he was like, ah, don't bother.

[Thomas Banks]

Really?

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah. Just totally took the wind out of my sales. And I was like, well, if you don't think it's worth my dime, you teach it.

[Cindy Rollins]

It's like the last big book. I've never read that. You know, I. I mean, I'm not the last one.

[Angelina Stanford]

I will be waiting for your Goodreads review, so I can.

[Cindy Rollins]

And Esther. Esther. Yeah, on my Patreon, the girl. She's a teacher. She loves it. She read it and loved it, and then a lot of Patreons jumped on and said they love it. So I'm gonna. I'm gonna give it a try.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, that is.

[Cindy Rollins]

That's really my only plan besides, you know, reading murder mysteries randomly.

[Angelina Stanford]

All right, so between Vanity Fair, Charles Dickens, and Moby Dick, looks like we're all thinking 2025, we might knock off some long, slow books. And that's really the purpose. I'm trying to slow myself down.

[Cindy Rollins]

All right, so that's the goal.

[Angelina Stanford]

Slow down. That's the goal. I'm sure the Facebook group will be very active with what their reading goals are and what their year has been like. Cindy, thank you so much for coming back. I know it was hard to fit this into your schedule, so thank you. Like, she literally just walked in the door from going to see her grandkids in another state, so. So I really appreciate that.

[Cindy Rollins]

Thank you very much.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, you always. Your presence is always welcome, and our.

[Angelina Stanford]

Listeners appreciate it, and they miss you a lot.

[Cindy Rollins]

Well, this is my favorite episode of the year anyway, so thank you.

[Angelina Stanford]

I'm glad you came back. I was like, please, please, please, please, please. So, yes, you can always come back. Any of the books that we're doing for 2025 that you think, oh, I. I'd come give my two cents about that. You're. You're welcome.

[Cindy Rollins]

All right. If I have any.2 cents, I'll let you know.

[Angelina Stanford]

And my dad used. This is such a corny dad.

[Thomas Banks]

Joke.

[Angelina Stanford]

But he used to always say, well, she had a lick of sense. And then she used it on a stamp. Well, I don't have two cents to give. All right, so again, morning time for moms.com. you can find Cindy's Christmas sale there. And that's also where they can find out about your Patreon.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yes, they can. There's a link to Patreon there.

[Angelina Stanford]

I think those narration clubs sound amazing and I think people should definitely check that out out. Cassiodoruspress.com for ordering Dr. Baxter's new book, why Literature Still Matters, you can find Cindy at the new Mason Jar podcast. Of course, you can continue to find us here and that houseofhumane letters.com and we wish you guys a very merry Christmas and we hope that lots of you wake up tomorrow morning and find books left by Santa. Hopefully not the bad books that we mentioned, but good book, good books. Be on the lookout for the new schedule. You should have gotten the the 2025 preview episode where we talked about the books that are coming up next year and we're quite excited about that. But I will officially write up the schedule for you soon, so you'll be looking for that at the beginning of January. In the next couple of weeks we're going to air some best of episodes of when we did our lit lifes upstairs in previous years. I don't remember which years, but like 2021 and 2022. So we know you guys like titles. It might be kind of interesting to hear. Watch. I bet. I bet if I play a best of of myself, I'm going to be like, I learned to listen to audiobooks at 4. I listened to 4,000 books and it's awesome. And now I'm over here like, stop. My brain died. I had to slow down. There are finite limits. So we hope you guys enjoyed this episode, have a very lovely Merry Christmas and we're really looking forward to 2025 with all of you. Again, thank you Cindy for appearing today. All right, stick around to the end. Mr. Banks will have a special poem for you and keep crafting your literary life because stories will save the world. Thank you for listening to the Literary Life podcast brought to you by our loyal patreon sponsors. Visit HouseOfHumaneLetters.com to find Angelina and Thomas and to sign up for our newsletter with podcast schedules and more. And keep up with [e-mail] Join the Conversation at our member only Patreon forum or our Facebook discussion group. Visit patreon.com theliterarylife to find out how you can sponsor this podcast and get great bonus content. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review and check out our sister podcasts, the New Mason Jar and the well Read Poem. And now for a poem read by poet Thomas Banks.

[Thomas Banks]

There is no frigate like a book by Emily Dickinson. There is no frigate like a book to take us lands away, Nor any coursers like a page of prancing poetry. This traverse may the poorest take without oppress of toll. How frugal is the chariot that bears the human soul.