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The Literary Life Podcast
Episode 258: "Best of" Series - Our Literary Lives of 2022
01:31:58
On The Literary Life podcast today, we bring you another episode from our podcast archive in which our hosts look back on their reading lives of 2022. Angelina, Cindy and Thomas each share a commonplace quote, then they each share a little about how...
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- [00:01]
Angelina Stanford
Welcome to the Literary Life Podcast. We've grown quite significantly since our debut in 2019, and we've had many requests to highlight older episodes that new listeners may have missed, as well as revisit listener favorites. To honor that request, I present to you this episode of the Best of the Literary Life podcast.
- [00:22]
Cindy Rollins
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. Foreign hello and welcome to the Literary Life podcast. Today we are finishing up 2022 with our episode, Our Literary Lives of 2022. And with me, as always, is the even more blonde bombshell, I'm told. Cindy Rollins. Hello, Cindy. Merry Christmas. Happy New Year.
- [01:53]
Thomas Banks
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all, Both of you.
- [01:58]
Cindy Rollins
Well, thank you, thank you. And, and sitting next to me is the man who I'm told is still.
- [02:06]
Angelina Stanford
My husband, according to the most recent reports.
- [02:08]
Cindy Rollins
Yes, according to the most recent reports. I'm laughing about that because every now and then it comes to my attention that someone doesn't know where we're were married and that that's created some, some scandalous theories among our listeners about how someone once sent us an email saying, it seems like he's in the room with you. Why? Why is he always there? You talk about having a husband, but. But then this Banks guy is just. He's always there. So that. Yeah, that's very funny to me. We are in fact married. This is my husband. I am his wife. The rumors are true. The rumors are true. There is something going on between us. So if you picked that up on the podcast. Well done. Well done. So today we are going to talk about what our year in reading has been like. But before we do that, we're going to share a commonplace quote. One of the things we'd like to do on this podcast, and this was the brilliant brainchild of our blonde Bombshell, was to start off each episode with a quote from something that we are reading. If you're new to this podcast, this is something we do, and it's been a wonderful practice. So, Cindy, why don't you give us your very last commonplace quote of the year?
- [03:19]
Thomas Banks
I'm so glad you remember the things I do, because I don't remember them. And then I get credit for things that I don't even know I. I did. So.
- [03:27]
Cindy Rollins
So you know this about me, that I am a stickler for crediting people. I don't like taking false credit for things.
- [03:35]
Thomas Banks
Right, that's. And that's great, because in the Internet universe, false credit is rampant. Rampant.
- [03:41]
Cindy Rollins
And having had my own Internet and rabid, pretty wildly stolen. Cough, Cough. That'll be a different podcast episode. I'm even more careful about making sure that I give credit where credit is due. So, Cindy.
- [04:00]
Thomas Banks
All right, so I have just really hijacked the podcast with my grandchildren, and today I have. I was having a text conversation with one of my sons, and I just. Mr. Rollins. We'll call him. Well, then let's say Timothy. It was my son Timothy. I'll just say it. And he said something so good in the text that I'm just going to share his text. We were talking about stories, and I'll give you the backstory. We were talking about the new Pinocchio, and he just was devastated. This is a kid who read the original Pinocchio, and we saw the Robert I can't think of his last name movie, you know, years ago that was so faithful to the story. And he was just genuinely upset about what they've done to Pinocchio. And they basically, the director, the producer, somebody said, I wanted to turn this story upside down. I wanted to tell the opposite story of what it actually the original story was. So we got to talking about story and virtue and all these things and how they play out in stories. And then he said this. A good story isn't told to make a point. A good story reflects the world God created. The point makes itself. And I just thought that was really good, succinct way of saying what we keep trying to say over and over on this podcast.
- [05:27]
Cindy Rollins
That's one of those moments someone's been listening.
- [05:31]
Thomas Banks
Yeah. I mean, I'm rambling onto him back and forth, and then finally he just puts it onto these little short words, and I'm like, okay, that's it.
- [05:39]
Cindy Rollins
Well done. Well, that's excellent. That is absolutely excellent. All right, Mr. Banks. My. My espoused. My legally wedded husband.
- [05:51]
Angelina Stanford
Yes. So my commonplace comes from a Hugh Walpole novel which I read just finished this past week, called Fortitude which I. A shout out to our own Atlee Northmore, who gave me the copy that I read. Very nice copy. So this is sort of in the form of a prayer at the end of the book. Blessed be pain and torment and every torture of the body. Blessed be plague and pestilence and the illness of nations. Blessed be all loss and the failure of friends and the sacrifice of love. Blessed be the destruction of all possessions, the ruin of all property, fine cities and great palaces. Blessed be the disappointment of all ambitions. Blessed be all failure and the ruin of every earthly hope. Blessed be all sorrows, torments, hardships, endurances that demand courage. Blessed be these things, for of these things cometh the making of a man.
- [06:49]
Thomas Banks
Oh, wow.
- [06:52]
Cindy Rollins
Well, that's good that.
- [06:53]
Thomas Banks
I didn't know where that was going to go, but I didn't know if it was going to go funny at the end or if it was going.
- [06:58]
Cindy Rollins
To go in a book called Fortitude. No.
- [07:02]
Thomas Banks
Oh, wow. Hugh Walpole, Fortitude.
- [07:06]
Angelina Stanford
I think because of a couple of references, I think he was sort of trying to write his own David Copperfield with this. It's the story of a poor kid who has kind of a deprived family background and how he becomes an author and falls in love. And so, yeah, I think this was sort of his homage to Dickens. He actually, I think, think wrote a screenplay for an early film version of David Copperfield.
- [07:35]
Cindy Rollins
That is really.
- [07:37]
Angelina Stanford
That was a book that. Yes, he really, he really admired that novel.
- [07:41]
Cindy Rollins
Yeah. So Hugh Walpole, if our listeners are not familiar, is a. A minor 20th century author. Now he was very prolific and popular in his day. Contemporary of E.M. forster and that crew knew Elizabeth von Arnhem. We talked about him a little bit. And when we did in the Enchanted April on the podcast. But my husband's a huge Hugh Walpole fan, Atlee. And I like to always, if we're out and about and we see a nice, you know, everyman libraries copy of a Hugh Walpole, which this one was, we like to snag it for him.
- [08:11]
Angelina Stanford
Yeah, he's one of those authors. It's really easy to find his books in used bookstores because he was. Yeah, he was a very popular author in his own day. I think probably all but three or four of his books are now out of print, though. It's kind of a weird thing on.
- [08:25]
Cindy Rollins
Mr. Banks's recommendation, actually, when we were dating, I read the Killer and the Slain, which is kind of a doppelganger, Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde kind of really enjoyed it.
- [08:36]
Angelina Stanford
That's a really good one. Yeah, if you like, you know, dark, kind of gothic.
- [08:40]
Cindy Rollins
We'll be throwing out so many book recs over the next hour.
- [08:43]
Thomas Banks
Yeah, so he did lots of different genres, it sounds like, I mean, because he do some comedy.
- [08:50]
Angelina Stanford
Yeah, some of his books are. One or two of his books are quite funny. Others are almost. Almost nightmarishly dark. There's this one called the Three Old Women, in which these three old women living in a. They don't have much in common, except they're all living in the same pension flat together. And one of them, it seems, starts plotting against the other over this heirloom that she has that the. The woman wants anyway. So, yeah, Hugh Walpole was. He's kind of my guy.
- [09:23]
Thomas Banks
That's too close to home there. Three Old Women. Okay. He has a book called the Last Trump. So I like that. Anyway.
- [09:35]
Cindy Rollins
All right, well, I will be talking in just a few minutes when we start talking about our year in reading, about the fact that with my fellows that I've been training, we have taken a massive deep dive. I mean, deep dive doesn't even begin to explain the. The obscure things we are digging up. But we've been really working on uncovering CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien's literary theory. When they were head of the English department at Oxford, they established the English curriculum and they wrote quite a bit about it, but not in the major works that people are typically familiar with. So we, you know, we're in touch with all these Tolkien and Lewis scholars, and we've been following the footnotes and uncovering things at universities and obscure little places here or there and just having a great time. But along those lines, you know, we think of CS Lewis, rightly as this. This. This medieval author whose stories are just absolutely steeped in mythology and fairy tale and folklore, and that he has this understanding that images and symbols with his doctrine of transposition, that these. These are signs of spiritual realities. You know, basically all the things we try to get across in this podcast. But what people might not know is that he did not always think that he.
- [10:56]
Thomas Banks
His.
- [10:56]
Cindy Rollins
His trajectory is very interesting because as a boy, of course, he loved these stories, and then he felt that they were so important. But then he goes off to war, and he comes back a little bit of a gritty materialist and thinks, well, you know, when I was a child, I acted like a child, and now I'm a man, I'm going to put away childish things. And so if you can imagine it, CS Lewis sort of turns his back on all of that. And is kind of embarrassed that he ever held such a high place for those things, you know, in his own imagination and in his heart. Just to fast forward a little bit, it was. It ends up being Owen Barfil who helps him to reject materialism and to see again that there's a sacramental meaning in the world. And Lewis considered that a huge first step toward his ultimate conversion. But he ends up, after the war, of course, becoming friends and colleagues with Tolkien, who still. Who comes out of the war more convinced than ever on the importance of stories and the truth that these stories have. And so he and Lewis are together. And Lewis famously says to him that myths are lies and worthless even if they are breathed through silver. So Tolkien is quite upset about this and concerned that his friend here thinks that. That myths are lies, which I know so many of our listeners have experienced. People, you know, maybe they thought that themselves for a while before they listened to our podcast on why read myths? Or maybe they know people who think that. So Tolkien sat down and wrote a long poem in response to Lewis and in response specifically to him, saying that myths are lies, in which he argues that myths are true. And the name of this poem, and it's Greek. Honey, you're gonna have to help me. I feel like I'm gonna butcher this. Mythopoeia. Mythopoeia, in which he. It's a wonderful poem, and I highly recommend everyone read. And I'm just gonna read one small section. So he goes through. Really, It's. This is kind of Tolkien's literary theory right here in a poem. And he. He goes through and explains how if you look at a tree, it's pointing to, you know, the spiritual reality, et cetera, et cetera. And he kind of gets to this section where he says, blessed are the legend makers. And it's fabulous. But my favorite part is at the end. So he's. He's laid out his case here.
- [13:12]
Thomas Banks
About.
- [13:12]
Cindy Rollins
The importance of story. And then it ends on this, like, kind of triumphant note. I can't read this section without, like, hearing the trumpets blasting. Saving the banner of stories will save the world. In which he says that he is going to continue to fight for the importance of stories, and he is not going to embrace the lies of the material world. And here's what. So here's this part. This is my favorite. This is just one stanza of the poem. I will not walk with your progressive apes erect and sapient. Before them gapes the dark abyss to which their progress tends, if by God's mercy, progress ever Ends and does not ceaselessly revolve the same unfruitful course with changing of a name. I will not treat your dusty path and flat denoting this and that by this and chat your world immutable, wherein no part the little Maker has. With Maker's art I bow not yet before the iron crown, nor cast my own small golden scepter down.
- [14:21]
Angelina Stanford
He actually was quite the poet. Yeah, he makes you wish that he wrote more honestly. And there's. He has bits of poetry, I know, that appear in the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, but, you know, he had a knack.
- [14:34]
Cindy Rollins
Oh, just. Just his mind is utterly fascinating. And I'm so enjoying getting to know this aspect of him. He and Lewis, so much more. I should say that this episode aired late because I had a complication from my oral surgery. If you guys were listening to the Dracula episodes, you know that I had oral surgery and then carried on with the podcast. Well, I ended up doing way too much and had terrible complications and ended up back at the surgeons. So here I am today, delayed. And while I am told you cannot hear anything different about my voice, I feel it. My. I still have swelling inside my mouth, and I kind of feel like the inside of my mouth is too big for my face for some reason, if that makes sense. So I feel like I really mangled that poem and can't quite close my mouth all the way. But hopefully I did it justice. And I. And I highly recommend you all. You all look that poem up. It's really good.
- [15:26]
Thomas Banks
All right, well, I think you did well.
- [15:30]
Cindy Rollins
Oh, thank you. Thank you. It's hard. It's hard. The one thing in the world to strike me down with. I wasn't able to talk for quite a few days. Quite a few days. I just had to keep my mouth completely shut and silent for. And I thought. Oh, I. If I ever was unsure if I could take a vow of silence, I'm. I'm quite certain I cannot. So you see. Yeah, like, I learned how to talk only out of one side of my mouth. Like, not. Not figuratively, mind you, but literally, figuratively. I do not talk out of both sides of my mouth. But anyway. Yes, so there you go. I. Yes, it's been quite the haul. But anyway, here we are. All right, so let's kick it off by each of us kind of generally describing what was our reading life like. But, you know, sometimes people presume that because we read so much that we live in some kind of, I don't know, library bubble in our Home, where we don't have to deal with real world things. And sometimes people will make comments about, well, I just don't have time to read as much as you guys do. Or other times people make snarky comments about, well, I don't read as many as you guys do, but that's because I read more deeply, which. That. I. That, that. That kind of. That. Ouch, right, that there's a knife in.
- [16:50]
Angelina Stanford
The ribs right there.
- [16:52]
Cindy Rollins
I'll just say I'm hurt instead of saying I'm infuriated, which would be a little more action words at the implication that the three of us are superficial readers. I don't know what on the podcast could have possibly given anyone an idea that I read surface level. And so maybe we could just talk about how, How. How do we read as real people with real lives and real interruptions and real things tugging on us and what does that look like? So, Cindy, I'm gonna. I'm gonna punt this one over to you.
- [17:22]
Thomas Banks
Yeah, I was thinking about that. So a couple years ago, it looked like I was gonna have an empty nest. And it did look like, man, I'm gonna. I'm gonna get in 200 books a year. I'm just gonna sit here in this quiet empty nest and read away. And then that changed. And the change was excellent. It was good. It was wonderful. But it did affect my reading. So this last year, my reading, it was. It was hard for me to read. I read a lot of light reading, but I. I did get in some very deep, heavy books also. And. But. But it was like I had to make an adjustment in the way I went about things because the. My regular habits were. Were not working with my new life with, you know, just having people in my home a lot more, visiting my grandchildren a lot more. We had three new grandbabies this year. So, you know, that. That was a challenge, and that was something different. So I will end up with 102, 103 books this year. But. And they were hard ones. Some were very short. My husband and I listened to. He likes these little cozy mysteries, and he has a group of them he likes a lot, the Cherringham mystery. So whenever we're in the car together, because they're like three or four hours, we will put one of those in and listen together. So they give me credit for books, but they're very short. And. But on the other hand, I also read, you know, the Ink Black Heart, and I read the Canterbury Tales, and I read several other very large tomes along with Books that weren't books or that. That, you know, I never finished, I just read inside of them. So that. All that to say that this was a challenging year for me to read because there were just times when I'd been with people so much, and I find it's like my life goes full speed ahead, and then it comes to a screeching stop, and I. I don't. I have to readjust and say, oh, I could pick up a book here because it isn't in my normal rhythms where I would just naturally be doing that. So I get that it's a challenge to read. I make a lot of decisions to. To read when I could be watching, but I still watched a lot. So I really just genuinely don't know what to say about that. Someone said, who says they can't? It is true that when you have small children, it's very difficult to read, and I think audiobooks are a huge help. And yet you can't just have your head in the headphones all the time. There's that. So I babysat some grandkids for a couple weeks this year, and I. I read before I went to bed, but that was it. I didn't really get in a lot of reading time otherwise. So I get. I get how hard it is to read for some of you in the season of life you're in, and I also get that some of you are. You know, there are seasons where you can read more, and then there are seasons where you have to make adjustments. And I just say it's better in life when you have to make adjustments to make the adjustments and not worry about it. If you get 100 books in, great. If you don't, great. It's. It isn't worth stressing over. It is worth shooting for, but it isn't worth stressing over. I don't know.
- [20:52]
Cindy Rollins
That's what. That's well said. You know, anybody who listens to our literary life of episodes, we always try to highlight the fact that different people are in different seasons of their lives, and your reading life looks different. Like, you know, so if this is your first episode, we're not beating up on anybody who's home with nine kids. You know, Cindy was home with nine kids, I was home with kids, homeschooling. Both of us had seasons where we did not read very much because we were just in the thick of life. And we talk a lot about that in those episodes, and we highlight people in all different stages of life to talk about how the reading life is different. But that said, I. I also know that it is true that I think that there were times when I made my busy life an excuse not to read, that I could have read more than I did. And Cindy, you always were an inspiration to me because you talked about just being a plotter, just, you know, just a few pages every day, and then you're surprised how much you, how much you get through. And there was a, a post recently, and forgive me that I don't remember who posted it, but someone posted in our Facebook group that they also had just assumed, well, I can't read because, you know, I'm a busy homeschool mom. I've got these small kids. But that she had determined to make a habit of reading. And one of the things. And so she's read more this past year than she ever had. And one of the things that she said that I just thought was such a great point was that it turned out it was not a matter of time. It was a matter of discipline and habit. And I think there's a lot for creating the habit of reading. And that's not to say every year will be a triple digit year, but, you know, if you make a habit of it in a very busy year and read 25 books, then that's, that's huge. That, that's 25 more than you would have read.
- [22:42]
Thomas Banks
I often look at reading. I often look at books. I'll pick up a book, say my book club's gonna read it or something. I know I have to read. And I divided up in my mind to, well, you know, we're, oh, no book clubs in 15 days. But I haven't started this book. But it has 15 chapters. So I'm. I know I'm going to read one chapter a day or if I have extra, I know I don't have to, you know, extra days. I don't have to read a chapter a day I can read. All I have to do is pick that book up and start reading it. And usually if I do that, if I pick it up and if I start, then I can plod through to the end of the month and have that book read. I'm. I am a plotter. And I think the key to plotting is to pick it, pick it up and read a paragraph, you know, read the first paragraph, read the second paragraph. And don't necessarily, don't think of it as I have to read this whole book. I really just have to start this book.
- [23:41]
Cindy Rollins
And you know, if I think about what my reading life is like, I mean, obviously, Mr. Banks and I are teachers, so we read for a living, and of course, we do this podcast. So some things I'm plodding along with and. And that's, you know, those are outside demands. The podcast, reading, my. My book reading, and then I'm, you know, whatever I'm teaching. I also try to have a certain amount of scholarly books alongside that each year so that, you know, I stay on top of things. But, you know, not every book I read is a hard book. So I. I alternate. I have. I have books for school. I have books that require a little more attention and thought. I consider those books like books I'm studying. And then I have lighter things that I have going for fun very often in an audiobook. And the reason I bring that up is because that gives me a lot of options any single day. When I think about what my day is going to be like, what my time's going to be like, if it's a very busy day and I'm running around, I've got a light audiobook on. If it's. If it's a day in which I have a little more time, I think, oh, okay, well, this is where, you know, I'll pick up. I'll spend 20 minutes, you know, studying this chapter kind of thing. And so I don't think anybody listening should hesitate to have a variety of books on their nightstand. And so just depending. At the end of some days, I am too tired. My eyes are just physically too tired at the end of some days to pick up a book and read. And so then I put in an audiobook. Other times I'm a little more fresh and I can handle something a little more difficult. So, you know, I think. I think we kind of all approach it. Well, not all. My husband doesn't approach his that way, but that's the way. That's the way I think Cindy and I approach it. We have a lot of different things we can choose from at any given moment.
- [25:20]
Thomas Banks
When I get up in the morning, I usually have a set five books that I'm reading through. And if I have a good morning where it's all to myself, you know, I just take my time and read a little bit of each of those books. But a lot of mornings, you know, I'll get two books in and things will interrupt me and I won't be able to finish. But I think about Thomas, and I'm curious. So we read like. Does he read, like, one book at a time all the way through?
- [25:44]
Cindy Rollins
Talk to us about how you approach Your reading. You. You are the most disciplined reader I have ever met in my life. Well.
- [25:51]
Angelina Stanford
Well, thank you. First of all, that's. That's really kind. I. This. Okay, so this year, I found that a lot of my reading was dictated by webinars. I mean, I'm always, you know, have to keep up with my class reading. But, yeah, the independent webinars I did, I read. Let me say I did a webinar on Napoleon back at the beginning of this year. So I read a handful of books about Napoleon and Napoleonic France and the wars of the time. And the same this fall when I did another webinar about Henry viii. So I read a couple biographies of him, one or two studies of the English Reformation. So I felt that, like, I kind of had. I kind of had my reading life cut out for me by professional, you know, duties and that kind of thing. And that's fine. I still enjoy reading all that stuff. Otherwise, when I have leisure time to read, I'm usually reading, like, a book of essays, some poet or other, maybe a novel or a history, sort of depends. I did get a good number of novels read this past year. I think about. I think I knocked off about 15 or 16 novels. Not all of them necessarily really long, but, yeah, I was glad that I had time for fiction.
- [27:07]
Cindy Rollins
Now, you told me once that since you were 18 years old, it has been your habit to read two books a week.
- [27:13]
Angelina Stanford
And that's not the case anymore. But. But, yeah, all the way through college and my. Most of my.
- [27:20]
Cindy Rollins
Let me. When he said that, ladies and gentlemen, you should know that I am the reason why he no longer.
- [27:24]
Angelina Stanford
Yeah, most of my 20s, I guess I managed to do that. But. But, yeah, in the last. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much since I've gotten married, I find I can do one, one and a half maybe. So I think this year I knocked off a total of. I'm going to say I did maybe 60, 65 books. I think that's a fair guess.
- [27:46]
Cindy Rollins
Now, my husband. I should say this, my husband does not listen to audiobooks. And the reason that I. Yeah, I did not start breaking triple figures until I started doing audiobooks.
- [27:58]
Angelina Stanford
I started watching more lectures online, like, or, you know, YouTube or whatever. I. I've. The other day, actually, I was just listening to a really cool lecture about the wars of the Roses and Richard iii because I'm reading this mystery that my wife.
- [28:11]
Cindy Rollins
We're gonna get to that in a minute.
- [28:12]
Angelina Stanford
Gave me for Christmas.
- [28:13]
Cindy Rollins
Yeah, we're gonna get to that in a minute. But, yes, you. He will you also watch a lot of online lectures.
- [28:20]
Thomas Banks
Yeah, so, I mean, I struggle to do that because of that, because it takes away from my book reading.
- [28:25]
Cindy Rollins
Yep.
- [28:26]
Thomas Banks
I really struggle to listen to podcasts. I struggle to watch lectures. You know, my kids will often suggest different, you know, lectures and podcasts, and I. I feel like that's bad. But I don't want to not read books because I'm watching podcasts or reading, you know, watching YouTube.
- [28:46]
Cindy Rollins
A lot of times Mr. Banks will have a lecture playing while he cooks dinner.
- [28:52]
Angelina Stanford
Yes.
- [28:53]
Cindy Rollins
Where I might have an audiobook on if I was doing the same thing.
- [28:56]
Angelina Stanford
So.
- [28:56]
Thomas Banks
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a good idea when you're doing something like that. Have a lecture on. Yeah.
- [29:05]
Cindy Rollins
Well, so my reading life is interesting. Cindy, you said, you know, you had a. I also kind of had a difficult year, in a sense, when we moved, and that was a huge undertaking, and I. And so I knew I wanted a lot of just light, fun reading to just have on an audiobook while I was packing books and then unpacking books and. And all of that. So I had a. Had a lot of light reading this year. At the same time, though, I am, you know, doing this teacher training fellowship, and we are, like I said, deep diving into Lewis and Tolkien's literary theory, and that has required a lot of scholarly reading. So I've done, on one hand, I've done sort of maybe more scholarly reading than I usually do, in a sense, because this isn't directly related to a class. And then I've. I've balanced that with a lot of fun reading. And one of the things that happens to me. And so this is another one of these page count questions, and they, like, you know, I don't want to listen to a lecture because then it doesn't count as a book. So when I'm in the midst of research, like I am right now, I don't usually read a whole book. So I'm reading, like, a lot of. A lot of scholarly articles that I'm getting from universities. I'm reading a lot of that. I'm reading sections of books. I never know. I don't. I don't put that on my reading log. But then another part of me is like, well, man, I read enough articles. That certainly counts as a book. You know what I mean? Like, but I don't count it. But I did a lot of that kind of reading this year. Yeah, I did hit triple, triple digits, but kind of just barely. I'm probably, like, around 103, 104 as well. Cindy, Although I did do a lot of longer books, like you said. One of the things that happened to me this year, and I don't regret this, is that, as Cindy said, the new. The new J.K. rowling detective book, the new Corman Strike book, came out as book number six, I think. So I had that on preorder. And so over the summer, I reread all of those. And those are huge. Those are like 1200 pages each. Those are really big. But they were awesome. And so, yeah, I reread. I reread all of those. And. Yeah, but I mean, I feel like I had an enjoyable year, but looking at it, I was kind of surprised how much light reading there was. But, you know, again, I was also doing a ton. A ton of research. One of the things that I. One of the books I read at the beginning of the year, I talked about this on an earlier podcast, was the Golden Age of Murder by Martin Edwards. It was a history of the detection club. And after that, I got so pumped. And so I started. Just at the same time, they re released a bunch of the old ones. So Anthony Barkley and Ronald Knox, and those guys are back in print. So I started just tearing through those audiobooks, a bunch of Anthony Barkley and Rex Stout and all these. And that was. I had a lot of fun with that. When I was reviewing it today, I thought, oh, maybe I should read something different this year. But I just love it so much. And I. Of course, I love Golden Age detective fiction so much that I actually. Upstairs. Well, so we have a formal library downstairs, and I have a library in my office, and he has a library in his office, and we also have a library in the guest room I made. Upstairs in my reading turret. I made a section for my library of just golden Age detective fiction. So I may not. I may not actually be slowing down on that, but it's okay, I guess.
- [32:40]
Thomas Banks
Yeah. I think 25. Almost, not. Not quite. I think 24 books that I read were light murder or. Or detective fiction. That's a lot.
- [32:52]
Cindy Rollins
It is. I didn't.
- [32:53]
Thomas Banks
Yeah.
- [32:54]
Cindy Rollins
I didn't add up how many. I don't want to know how many. Of all people. I should not be feeling bad about that because I was really excited to listen to some of these authors that I was not familiar with, but along that. Okay, so I'm gonna ask. Well, I'll go ahead. I'm gonna Skip ahead because Mr. Banks already alluded to it. So, you know, we had in the reading challenge the category of a classic detective fiction and modern detective fiction, which, of course, Cindy and I had no problem checking those off. But my husband is not a big fan of the detective novel. He's not against it. No one should grab the smelling salts. He has mother who loves those kinds of books. He has a wife who loves those kinds of books. And he is very appreciative of those books. But whereas when I'm feeling high anxiety, that is my absolute go to book. Right. So I had to pack up a house, boom. I put in the headphones and I plowed through a whole lot of detective books. That's not his go to book, but I really wanted him to have a great detective experience for the reading challenge. So another. I give Cindy the credit for this again, years ago, Cindy, you recommended to me Josephine Tay's the Daughter of Time. And I read it and loved it. And I was thinking, this, this is the kind of detective novel my husband would like. And I gave it to him for Christmas. And I knew he fell in love with it because he's been walking around the house reading it and he said, this is brilliant. This is brilliant. So tell our listeners about how much you are enjoying this. I should say the reason I got it for him is he's. It's very different. The detective is in a hospital bed.
- [34:32]
Angelina Stanford
Yes, it's a really good setup. So, yeah, the. The main character, Inspector Grant, is a detective whose leg is recovering from an injury and he's kind of bored. So he starts reading about Richard iii. Richard iii, the evil hunchbacked king of England who murdered his nephews. So everyone knows. And the more he starts reading about him, he begins by reading a. I think he starts by reading a historical novel about Richard and he thinks that's kind of interesting. Then he starts reading actual history books and he starts to think that maybe Richard's reputation has been blackened by the concerted efforts first of the Tudors, I mean, the Lancastrians who won the wars of the Roses, and that Richard, basically, Richard has been framed. So that could be like a bumper sticker or something. Richard, you know, Richard III was framed. But anyway, it's very interesting and it's a very well researched book too. And actually, I think it is a work of fiction. But, yeah, it does bring up some considerations that real historians and Richard's definitive biographer, Paul Murray Kendall, also have made. That is, not all the evil things that he is reputed to have done are necessary matter necessarily matters of established fact. So, yeah, some things in the past that everybody knows can be reconsidered. It's cool.
- [35:59]
Thomas Banks
Yeah. Shakespeare really did a number on Richard iii. And when you read Shakespeare.
- [36:04]
Angelina Stanford
Sure, yeah, that's.
- [36:06]
Thomas Banks
And it's kind of fun to read Richard III and then be like, oh, what a horrible person in Shakespeare. Then read the Daughter of Time and some of these other books and then go back and read Richard III and think, wow, this is just really mean. I mean, the things that Shakespeare have people say about him are just horrific.
- [36:28]
Angelina Stanford
Yeah.
- [36:28]
Cindy Rollins
One of my favorite things is when I can find a book that somehow crosses over to where it's something we both really like. So I'm very excited. That's why he was watching the lectures about this. He keeps saying, this book is brilliant. It's brilliant. So well researched. So this made me super duper happy.
- [36:47]
Thomas Banks
I did go down a deep dive of Richard III for still in that sometimes after that book.
- [36:54]
Cindy Rollins
One of the reasons that I love a good golden age detective novel is because they do, they do get into more than just the plot. They don't all, but many of them do. So one of the books I read this year, I read Ngaio Marsh's, I think it's called Light Thickens. I could step outside into the turret and see it's right there. But what was so cool about that one? Is there. So a group of actors is staging the Scottish play and there's a murder on stage that is. Is a real murder, not just the one on, in the play. And it was. So what was so interesting was that Ngaio Marsh, in the telling of this detective story, gives a really first rate analysis of Macbeth. I was nodding along like, yes, yes, that is exactly what's happening in this play. So I mean, that's, that's why I like it. I like that kind of stuff because you get that. Well, you get the fairy tale ending. And so my, I mean, on that level, you know, my brain likes a puzzle and, and I feel very ordered after listening to detective novel. But a really good one. It's light, but it's got just enough, you know, literary panache that kind of wets that for me as well. So I was going to ask everybody what their biggest surprise book of the year was. And I'm going to guess that's yours.
- [38:13]
Angelina Stanford
That is definitely up there, actually. Yes, I would say that's at the top of my literary surprises.
- [38:19]
Cindy Rollins
But before we get to that for the rest of us, let's start with you this time, Mr. Banks. What were some of the standout books you read this year?
- [38:28]
Angelina Stanford
Oh, let me see. One of the biographies of Henry VIII that I read by a woman named Beatrice Saunders was everything that I look for in a biography. And I reread a Walter Scott novel, the Talisman, which I'm, I'm starting to think is one of his best, maybe. Maybe his best medieval novel, even ahead of Ivanhoe. That's. It's awfully good. Yeah, it is awfully good. Let me see what else I. It wasn't the again, not the first time I read it, but Hard Times, which we did on the podcast in which I'm also teaching in one of my. In my later modern literature class. I forgot both how bitterly sad and how wonderfully funny that was and just how splendid the characterization is in that book. I think that's. I think that book really does have some of his best characters. I read a book of sermons by Ronald Knox that was my favorite author of a favorite author. He was one of Evelyn Waugh's favorite. Another cross, another crossover guy, Ron Locks, a sort of Renaissance man priest. But yeah, this book of sermons called Captive Flames. I read that one when we were on retreat in South Carolina and yeah, he was really just a splendid. I appreciate a well written sermon. It's. Yeah. So.
- [39:50]
Cindy Rollins
Well, that sounds really good. How about you, Cindy? What were some of your standout reads?
- [39:54]
Thomas Banks
Yeah, let me see. So for standout reads this year, I think I read the book of the Dun Cow for the first time, Walter Wagarin. And honestly I thought it was going to be like the. I really didn't think I was going to like it as much as I did. I thought. I thought it was going to be one of these fashionable books to read that were really fell short and it wasn't. I just thoroughly enjoyed it. Had a great time reading it. I love the Most Reluctant Convert, a short book on C.S. lewis in which they made that movie the Most Reluctant Convert such a great. It did include information that in a way that was if not new information then it than information that was delightfully presented. And I'm not going to name anything that we did on the podcast. Some of you know, I read the Truth and Beauty and I thought chapter three of that book was so outstanding that I've just gone around talking about it to everybody I know. I mean the book is good but. But chapter three is, I think, incredible. The other books that I really, really liked were a couple that were true standouts. The man who Knew Too Much by G.K. chesterton. I thought I had read that before and I. And yet Mr. Banks really wants us.
- [41:16]
Cindy Rollins
To do that on the Podcast.
- [41:17]
Thomas Banks
Oh we should do it. It is so much fun. It is the great and Emily Rabel was at my house and we got to talking about it and so I thought well, you know, I just vague about I don't remember this very well. So I pulled it out and read it and I it. It was a blast. It was such a blast. It is such a good read. I. I think yeah, we. Everybody would love it. I. I'm sure. So that goes to Emily. Emily gets great credit for that. I read the Rosettis in Wonderland, which is a hard book to read. It took me a long time. I plotted very slowly through it, but it really gave me such a deep picture of the Rossetti family and all their glory and weirdness. And I'm so glad I read it. And I. I do think that if you are interested at all in the Rossettis, you would enjoy that book. It's not a cheap book. Maybe borrow it from a friend if or go together with a group and buy it because it's rather expensive right now. Of course we all love the Ink Black Heart and I everybody knows. I read a ton of hiking books, Appalachian Trail books. I finished off with one that somebody recommended. I thought I was done. And then on the Facebook page somebody recommended Just Passing through, which is about a store on the Appalachian Trail and the guy just relates stories of hikers coming through. That was very good. I'm so glad I read that. It was perfect way to cap off that. And then finally and I still haven't named my most surprising book, but I read a Martin Edwards book and I really do highly recommend his books. I read a book called the Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories which had all short stories from Golden Age detectives.
- [43:10]
Cindy Rollins
And what he does, if you're listening along that the book I read the.
- [43:14]
Thomas Banks
Golden Age Murder and there's a ton of his books on Scribe. But I think he's the reason why.
- [43:20]
Cindy Rollins
All those Golden Age books are now on scribe.
- [43:23]
Thomas Banks
Exactly. He is getting them redone. Right. His group is doing that. But he gives a little blurb about each one before each of the short stories and tells, you know, whether they were in the detective club or the detection club or the the other murder mystery or detective fiction club that there was another one where a lot of them were involved and he gives some backgr and then and then the story and then the short story. And I really love short stories in this genre. PD James has a great book of short stories for Christmas that just our mind. Some of them are some of the best stories I've ever read. So if you ever get a chance to read that. So those are my standout reads. The. I mean, besides the ones that we did on the podcast. And I had a lot. In spite of the fact that I read 24 murder mysteries, I still had some really good reading that I did this year, I'm glad to say.
- [44:23]
Cindy Rollins
No, that's really good. Yeah. So if you're looking at the 2023 Lit Life Bingo reading challenge, and you've got a square there for starting a detective series that's new to you, that's a great place to start, is looking at all the authors that Martin Edwards has been bringing back. I think I might read Edmund G. Crispin this year. I've not read before, and he hasn't. He's been on my list forever.
- [44:48]
Thomas Banks
They're easy to read, but they're so intelligent.
- [44:51]
Cindy Rollins
That's what I think I want. Yeah. Yeah.
- [44:53]
Thomas Banks
I think Thomas would like them. He was a Dawn, wasn't he?
- [44:57]
Cindy Rollins
Yeah. So it's all set at Oxford. It's an Oxford don. It's super literary.
- [45:01]
Thomas Banks
And there are more than one murder mysteries based around the play that Shall Not Be Named. But. So I always get it mixed up when. When someone mentions one, because I. I probably read, like, three that are based on that concept over the years.
- [45:21]
Cindy Rollins
Well, that's good. Yeah. That sounds like you had a really good reading year. All right. So for me, my standouts were. So if you want to see how my brain works, at the beginning of the year, I read the Golden Age of Murder, and that set me in two different rabbit trails simultaneously. One, I had to read as many Golden Age detective novels as I could get my hands on. And two, I just got all excited about Dorothy Sayers again because he tells so many great stories about her. So I. I read a biography of her. I also read the new. I also read the new biography of Agatha Christie by Lucy Worsley. I think you read that, too, Cindy. That was really.
- [46:00]
Thomas Banks
Yeah, I. That was a really good book. Also.
- [46:02]
Cindy Rollins
I enjoyed that as well. Also on Scribe in audio and the author reads it, I enjoyed that. But what ended up happening was I listened. So I think Simon Vance was my unofficial narrator this year. Like, if I sat down and told you how many books I read that were narrated by Simon Vance. Cindy has a theory that Simon Vance is a huge CS Lewis fan because he's in all of them. So he actually narrated a lot of the stuff. But I read the new Dorothy Sayers bio. I read also to the audiobook By Colin Duria. Did you meet him? Him, Cindy?
- [46:36]
Thomas Banks
I did meet him and he is just delightful. He is very hobbit ish. Very nice guy.
- [46:45]
Cindy Rollins
Well, I enjoyed that. Dorothy and I had read Dorothy Sayers biographies before, and I wasn't really expecting to learn too much from this one, but he had a lot of really interesting. He actually even mentioned Charlotte Mason in this biography and contrasted it to the Lost Tools of learning, and that was quite surprising.
- [47:01]
Thomas Banks
Wow.
- [47:02]
Cindy Rollins
I know. But anyway, that made me deep dive. And then I went and read all of the Inklings biographies by Colin. Jorge. He has a law. So he has a Sayers. He has one on Lewis, which again, like you said, Cindy. Cindy had said to me, because Cindy's like, read every Lewis biography. No, there's stuff in here I never heard before. And that was true. The Tolkien one. And then he's got one called the Inklings Friendships. So that's about, like, Lewis and Tolkien's friendship with Barfield and Charles Williams. Anyway, so that was a deep dive for me, all those biographies. And. And yeah, I highly recommend anything by Colin Duriez. Those were all really, really good. I also. So, because I am reading all this stuff about Lewis's literary theory and just understanding a whole lot more about the context that he was writing, in particular, what was going on in a debate between Oxford and Cambridge on the right way to teach. Teach English and the right way to read. Getting that background, really, I don't want to say change, because that's too strong a word, but when I revisited Lewis's work this year, it landed differently to me. Just, just, it just. I don't even know if I have the words. I could just see so much clearer what he was responding to, what was happening at that time that he's writing. And so it just threw everything into much larger rel. So the Abolition of Man, which we did on the podcast, I read Experiment and Criticism, I don't know, three times this year and went through it with my fellows. But going through it in the context of understanding the debate, what he and Tolkien were fighting for, that really, that also just really changed it. But the funniest thing was in my middle school, I was teaching the Silver Chair, and my fellows are also teaching the Silver Chair to me as part of their teacher training. And. And this will go up, up. And being one of the biggest surprises of the years, I not only have I read the Silver Chair a million times, I've taught it many, many times. But reading it in the context of the literary theory blew my mind. Because I could see that what Lewis had done, and Tolkien does this with the Lord of the Rings also. But people don't realize this is that each of them got to a point where they felt like, I can no longer explain to you what it is that I think stories do. I have to show you the Silver Chair. We were all. I mean me, my fellows, our minds are just blown. The Silver Chair is Lewis's literary theory via story. It's not didactic, though. So that's why you can read it and not know that's what it's about.
- [49:39]
Thomas Banks
But that's why I'm constantly bringing it up as an example of things I'm trying to prove to people.
- [49:44]
Cindy Rollins
Well, exactly. And we were just like, holy cow, this is. This is it. This is. This is what he said in the essay. This is what he's showing. And, and so that was super, super exciting. And then, of course, the Silver Chair audio is just absolutely fantastic. Jeremy Northrum doing Puddlebloom's voice and just so good, so good. I could not stop talking to my husband about everything I was seeing in the Silver Chair. And so then he ended up rereading it.
- [50:12]
Angelina Stanford
For the first time, I should add, since I was a kid, elementary school.
- [50:18]
Thomas Banks
Wow.
- [50:19]
Angelina Stanford
Honestly, I had forgotten. I have not read a number of the Narnia books in quite a long time. But I've been rereading a couple of them this last month and quite enjoying myself.
- [50:28]
Thomas Banks
They never get old. I mean, I've read them aloud to just anybody I have a chance to read aloud to, and I never get bored reading those books.
- [50:38]
Cindy Rollins
Yeah. Now. Now I feel like I got to read them all over in the context of what I've been learning. Because I really do think that he's just. He is showing us what it is that stories can do, but in a non didactic way. Because, of course, that's one of the things he believes about stories, is that they're not didactic in the way that they teach, which is.
- [50:56]
Thomas Banks
And that's. And that's really what he did with that hideous strength and the Space trilogy. All of those are him taking concepts that he's talked about and, and putting them in a story.
- [51:10]
Cindy Rollins
So I also chose for the reading challenge a favorite author of your favorite author. I decided this would be the year that I read William Morris. And I finally did. I read the Wood beyond the World, which was a huge influence on both Lewis and Tolkien. And it was delightfully bizarre and weird. And you can, you can totally see the influence through the fairyland stuff. Both Lewis and Tolkien were just extremely smitten with William Morris. So that was, that was the standout. That was something I had been meaning to read forever and finally got done. Now, this next book, even though we read it on the. We did it on. We did not read it on the podcast. We interviewed the author on the podcast. I'm going to count it anyway, because I lost my mind over this book and that's why we had the author on the podcast. So one of perhaps my biggest standout book of the whole year was the medieval mind of C.S. lewis by Jason Baxter. And I told this story on, on the episode he was in that I never, I mean, this is a very rare thing for me to pre order order a book. And I did and just absolutely lost my mind over it because people ask all the time, you know, what's an easy primer for medieval cosmology? How can we understand the universal symbolic language and these things that you're talking about? And, you know, for a long time the answer was, there isn't one. And. But this book by Jason Baxter is just so well done and really, really does a great job of expressing how C.S. lewis understands reality and images and that kind of how stories work, work. So that was a standout. It was such a delight to have him on the podcast as well. I did notice when people were on Facebook posting pictures of their Christmas book hauls that there were a lot of Jason Baxter titles there. So I hope Jason Baxter had an extra special, profitable Christmas.
- [52:55]
Angelina Stanford
A few shekels in Kiss Deserves it.
- [52:57]
Cindy Rollins
Authors don't get the gold, if not.
- [52:59]
Angelina Stanford
The frankincense and myrrh.
- [53:00]
Cindy Rollins
That's right. Well, with these prices, frankincense and myrrh might be more valuable. Yeah. So I kind of had like a whole Lewis themed thing. But two other books I'll mention I read Rob Roy this year, which I had never read before and really, really, really enjoyed it. So I'm excited about the Sir Walter Scott square on our bingo card. I can't decide if I want to do Ivanhoe or Talisman. Maybe I'll do both. But I really enjoyed Rob Roy and the rumors were correct. It has nothing to do with the movie. I had seen the movie. Okay, so, yes, even me. I sometimes watch movies instead of read books. Books and are before I read the book and I knew it was different, but I'm like 600 pages into this thing and I tell my husband I still haven't met a single character from, from the movie. Like, is it ever. Is it ever Gonna get to the movie. And he's like, oh, yeah. And eventually it did. But, like, the movie takes the most, like, size.
- [53:55]
Angelina Stanford
Oh, yeah, the movie. It's like. Yeah.
- [53:59]
Cindy Rollins
Nothing.
- [54:00]
Thomas Banks
Yeah.
- [54:01]
Cindy Rollins
But that was.
- [54:01]
Angelina Stanford
They both have a character named Rob Roy, Right?
- [54:05]
Cindy Rollins
That was about it. That was about it. And a book I reread this year was Brideshead Revisited and just loved it. That may have been my third or fourth time reading it, but just loved it. I listened to the audio by Jeremy Irons and that man could read the phone book.
- [54:27]
Angelina Stanford
Book. Oh, yeah.
- [54:28]
Cindy Rollins
I mean, what.
- [54:30]
Angelina Stanford
I usually don't like voiceover a lot in movies, but his voiceover in the TV show is one of the best things about that show.
- [54:37]
Cindy Rollins
Oh, it was, it was really good. And I was excited just, you know, to see all the themes again. So that was. That was a really. That was a really. That was a standout too. I enjoyed that as well. All right, so Mr. Banks, you already said what your biggest surprise was. Was there. Was there another book that sort of took you by surprise?
- [54:58]
Angelina Stanford
You know, I. Not. Well, actually, here's one. I. I didn't actually finish this book, but I. I got started on it and then I got distracted. It's a. It's a novel. I think it's the only novel she wrote. Edith Sitwell, if you know. Yeah. Better known as a poet. It's called I Live Under a Black sun. And it's a novel. Imagining these sort of like last year's, you know, dementia written years of Jonathan Swift. It's a frightening book. I didn't finish it. I needed to set it aside, like I said, and work on something else. But that was. I had not known of the existence of this book and it. It's caught my interest. I don't know if I love it, but. Another one I liked a lot. Also a very frightening book. It's called the Dwarf by the Swedish novelist Per Lager Kvist. And it's this evil Machiavellian dwarf at the court of some Renaissance Prince in the 15th century. Yeah, it's one of those books where it's not like things that happen are especially bloody or violent or graphic, but just the. The idea that someone could be this self consciously wicked is a little bit disturbing.
- [56:15]
Thomas Banks
I feel like that's become kind of a trope now. Maybe he created that trope.
- [56:19]
Angelina Stanford
It's one of those things. Like, it seemed like some. If this book were better known, it could easily be a NETFLIX Original Series or something. Probably best that it isn't, but. Yeah. Anyway, I enjoyed It a lot.
- [56:32]
Cindy Rollins
How about you Cindy? Anything took you by surprise this year?
- [56:35]
Thomas Banks
Yeah, I'm gonna say something a little weird. So I like devotional reading and I always have some sort of devotional reading going on and I'm kind of picky about it. I don't want to just read read, you know, SAP or syrup. But this year I read at the end of the year I had gotten well for the last six months really. Someone had posted a book called by Alan Noble who is a professor at Oklahoma State University, Oklahoma Baptist University. Oh, Alan Noble. And I heard of his name before. But this book is about the Heidelberg Catechism Question 1 and it's called, the title is you are not your own. Let me give you this subtitle.
- [57:17]
Cindy Rollins
You have gotten my fellows so excited. They're all reading that and discussing it amongst themselves.
- [57:23]
Thomas Banks
So it's called Belonging to God in an inhuman world. And it uses the Heidelberg Catechism Question 1, which for those of you who don't know it starts out what is your only comfort in life and death? And then it goes on to that I. My only comfort in life and death is that I am not my own, but belong with body and soul both in life and in death to my faithful savior Jesus Christ. And it goes on from there. But if you just take that first sentence that I am not my own, but belong with body and soul both in life and death, it's. It's mind boggling. And he applies it to modern culture, this concept that we are not our own. And he does it in a very non utopian way. He does it in a very realistic way. But he also, it's like shining a light in the darkness of this concept that we are our own and that we belong to ourselves. And it's up to us to get this right because you know, with the whole betterment culture, the self help culture, the whole self care culture, not, not that any of that stuff is. I'm. I'm a huge. Like it's January 1st. I'm. I'm getting on my plan, you know, I'm going to get this year off to a good start and I don't ever regret that. But this book just to me it is, it is just like breathing and deep comfort. The deep comfort of the idea that I am not my own. Oh thank goodness. You know, I am so relieved. It is such a burden to belong to myself and. And he just does it in a way that is not. Some people said they had trouble with the first few chapters, but it gets better. I read it very, very slowly. I did not like rush through it. I just think it's an absolutely tremendous book for our culture and our time. And I think it's so needed and so lovely. And I'm just so happy that he wrote this book. So it has turned out to be a kind of surprise book. Even three or four months ago, I probably wouldn't have said this, but the further I went, the more I went, oh, this is so helpful. This really does help me recenter myself after breathing in the noxious air of being told constantly that. That I belong to myself.
- [59:58]
Cindy Rollins
Okay, that's got me excited. I'm gonna have to get myself a copy of that. So for me, the biggest surprise was, well, medieval minus C.S. lewis was a huge surprise in the best way. But the others, I'm throwing y'all a curveball for my, for my surprise pick a genre of book I really never ever touch. Contemporary science fiction. A book that was really popular when I was in high school. I never ever thought I would have anything to do with it. But when the new Dune movie came out, I enjoyed it so much and everybody was talking about the book. And shout out to Alex and Chelsea Lane, our two patrons who've taken my classes. They're both English majors and Alex is a huge fan of Dune and kept, kept chatting it up and it had the symbols and the images and he really thought I'd like it. So over Christmas when I was wrapping presents and I honestly thought to myself, I need to listen to something that's not a detective novel right now. For some reason just Dune popped into my head and I thought, oh, let me, let me try that. And so I put it on and I am loving it. I'm almost finished and just, just absolutely loving it. Hero of mysterious origin on an identity quest. I mean, that's my love language. And it is probably the best produced audiobook I have ever heard.
- [61:24]
Angelina Stanford
And who's the reader?
- [61:26]
Cindy Rollins
Simon Vance.
- [61:26]
Angelina Stanford
Oh, Simon, of course.
- [61:29]
Cindy Rollins
In some ways it reminds me of Dracula. So the Simon Vance Dracula was a multi cast production, but it wasn't a dramatic read adaptation. It was just different narrators for the different narrators in the book. And the Dracula audiobook was really, really good. But this one also has different narrators for different chapters and it really helps for keeping the characters straight. But something that it's done in which I got. I know this is going to sound cheesy, so I need, I feel like I need to say I have a very high standard for this or maybe I should say Low, low standard, because I can't tolerate it. I do not like music and audiobooks. Okay. I love the Narnia. Audiobooks are so well done with all those fantastic actors. But the, the musical interlude between the chapters makes me want to stab my ears out. Just. It just, it completely interrupts the flow of the story in my mind. And I hate it. But I know other people like it, but I, I personally hate it. But what they're doing in the Dune audiobook, it's not music. It's ambient sound. And it really works. It really works like a movie soundtrack, like a movie score. Right. Where it's just they're using the music to create the mood. It's not even music, it's ambient sound. I don't even know how to describe it, but it is so interesting and well done. And when it started, I was like, oh, I don't know if I'm gonna like this. And then I was like, oh my gosh, this is making it so intense and suspenseful and good. It's really good. It's like watching a movie in my ears. It's amazing.
- [62:59]
Angelina Stanford
Like watching a movie.
- [63:01]
Cindy Rollins
Watching a movie in my ears.
- [63:02]
Thomas Banks
Yep.
- [63:03]
Cindy Rollins
And. And they also do interesting stuff with the sound. Like sometimes they'll be. It's like if they're in space or something, they'll be like an, an echoey sound, you know, like, like they're in some kind of space lock. Anyway, it's probably the best produced audiobook I've ever heard. So I am thoroughly enjoying Dune. Something I never, ever thought I would say. I feel like 15 year old me is shaking its finger at me and saying, saying nerd. But I'm embracing it. It's. It's really good. That's one of my surprise things. Yeah.
- [63:33]
Angelina Stanford
Actually I'm. I'm almost as surprised that you enjoyed the new movie because it is a very loud spectacle type of. Type of film. And that's usually not.
- [63:42]
Cindy Rollins
It is not. But cars blowing up. I wouldn't like that. There was a mythic quality to it. I think that that, that brought me in.
- [63:52]
Angelina Stanford
Angelina Stanford endorses Dune. The world has been waiting to hear your stance on, on this. On this very issue.
- [63:59]
Thomas Banks
You never know.
- [64:00]
Cindy Rollins
You never know. All right, so now that I've shocked everybody in a good way, now it's time to shock them in a bad way. Right. Did you guys have any book that was a big disappointment. I feel like this is where I always offend a good third of our listener.
- [64:18]
Angelina Stanford
I shouldn't name them because the authors are still living. But I. I reviewed a book back at the beginning of the year which. Which did not impress me. It was.
- [64:31]
Cindy Rollins
It was a book about to claw my eyes out. About.
- [64:35]
Angelina Stanford
Okay, it was not the Jason Baxter C.S. lewis, but it was another recent book about C.S. lewis that was. We'll just say it was not as good as Jason Baxter's. How's that for a vague answer? Yeah. Yeah, it was. It involved. It involved. The book involved. Okay. This is a non fiction book, but part of it was an imagined dialogue between C.S. lewis and the author of this book, which Shall Not Be named, in which C.S. lewis is made to confess his sins to the author and apologize to her, this person who he had never met. It is. It was. It was. I. Yeah.
- [65:13]
Thomas Banks
Oh, my goodness.
- [65:15]
Angelina Stanford
Deeply impressed by this. Yeah. Anyway, that's going to be our new.
- [65:21]
Cindy Rollins
Code when we hate something. Well, it's not Jason Baxter. How about you, Cindy? Anything really disappoint you this year?
- [65:29]
Thomas Banks
I feel like I recently had a book I just hated. I just hated it and I cannot figure out which one it was. So. Yeah, I try not to be too negative to. Mostly the books I hate. The authors are alive, so.
- [65:47]
Cindy Rollins
Correct. Same.
- [65:49]
Thomas Banks
Yeah. So I honestly don't know what book I hated recently, but I remember giving a one or two stars to something and I can't remember what it was. What about you?
- [66:02]
Cindy Rollins
Well, okay, so, you know, I'm gonna blame J.K. rowling for this. Not that she disappointed me. The Ink Blackheart was not disappointed disappointment. That was fire. It was amazing. But I'm gonna blame her for making me think maybe I should give modern novels a try. Because, yes, modern novels are really good. So I'm gonna blame her for that. Oh, no, because they're not. They're not. They're horrible. They're horrible. And their authors should die and then we should forget about them. But no. So, you know, I really enjoyed it.
- [66:34]
Angelina Stanford
I love, like, it's so interesting when you criticize something. I mean, you are capable of giving like nuanced, moderate sort of criticisms, but usually it's more the scorched earth sort of thing. Their authors should die and we should forget about. And the place thereof shall remember them no more.
- [66:52]
Cindy Rollins
Die and become one of the immortals. You know, the dead authors.
- [66:55]
Angelina Stanford
Yeah. You know, wow.
- [66:56]
Cindy Rollins
But to be forgotten. Had this conversation last night in the kitchen and you laughing and laughing about how I am the most. Most easygoing person, except when it comes on matters of books. And then I have a scorched earth policy, Correct?
- [67:08]
Angelina Stanford
Pretty much, yeah. Wow.
- [67:10]
Cindy Rollins
Yeah, he was laughing last night because I said something and I used the word hate. And he stopped and he said, darling, do you realize that literally no one else in the world would use the word hate about, about this? Like, you know, just like this is. What did you say? You said something like the criteria with which I hate people isn't.
- [67:30]
Angelina Stanford
It just reminds me, I mean, when this is actually not a digression. It'll sound like it, though. When Charles II was restored as king of England in 1660, Oliver Cromwell had just died. So Charles had him dug up and his mortal remains suspended in shame in London Square or someplace like that. I sometimes think that, like, Angelina would like to do this with, I don't know, FR Leavis or some other literary criticism service. Yeah, yeah. That their grave should be desecrated. And if they have any living relatives today, they should, should be sent into ignominious exile or something like that. Unless they denounce them. Wow. Chilling.
- [68:09]
Cindy Rollins
I will hand up IA Richard's Principles of Criticism.
- [68:11]
Angelina Stanford
That would be the most interesting tyranny ever. You know.
- [68:15]
Cindy Rollins
Exactly.
- [68:15]
Angelina Stanford
The Stanford dictatorship.
- [68:17]
Cindy Rollins
That would be a strange. Most people, just a handful of literary critics and other pretentious fools would be suffering appropriately. They, you know, their heads at the gates. You know, that's where they wanted to be, just not quite how they wanted it to be. So anyway, think Blackheart was amazing. And then of course, a new Anthony Horowitz came out in the Hawthorne series. I don't know if you read that yet, Cindy. The Twist of the Knife.
- [68:42]
Thomas Banks
I don't think I have.
- [68:44]
Cindy Rollins
It just came out. I listened over Christmas. Well, it was fantastic. So the 12 punch of those guys being awesome made me think, well, maybe I should give newer, newer books a try. So another new writer of Detection Fiction, which everybody was saying, you know, it's old school, Agatha Christie esque, which is the same thing that they say about Anthony Horowitz. Correctly. I decided to give this book a try. So I read Lucy Foley's the Hunting Party. It's a locked room mystery. And I figured out the entire plot within the second chapter. And it was so obvious to me that I thought it has to be a red herring. So I finished it just to see if it was a red herring. And got to the end and thought, are you kidding me? That really was it. That could not have been more obvious. So no, I, I, yeah, so that, so Lucy Foley was a big thumbs down for me because I figured it out too quickly.
- [69:40]
Thomas Banks
I, I hadn't even heard of her. So I'M glad to hear.
- [69:42]
Cindy Rollins
Well, it was a name that got bandied about and there's another one. And honestly, I'm just too full of the Christmas spirit right now to say this, so. There's another book that I noticed a few people in the Facebook group saying they liked that I was angry about. I hated it so much. And I sent Cindy an angry voxer about it about how bad I thought this book was because another podcast had recommended it and it was kind of making the rounds. And I just thought it was one of the worst books I have ever read. Worst books in the sense of, like, badly written. Yeah, I like life badly written and unbelievable in the sense that it purported to be a book about. About people who love books. And I think never read a book because. Or I met anybody who loved books because we love books and the three of us talk about books to each other constantly. So I'm very familiar how readers talk about books. What we do not do is quote Wikipedia articles to each other.
- [70:42]
Angelina Stanford
So this is another author who needs to be on their guard, start getting their passports ready.
- [70:47]
Cindy Rollins
You know, since actually, I mean, I kind of think the book was written by committee. Like, there's just no way this could be an.
- [70:53]
Thomas Banks
Exactly. Oh, this is probably what people talk about.
- [70:57]
Cindy Rollins
An AI program.
- [70:59]
Thomas Banks
Yeah, yeah. Did you watch the Magpie Murders on pbs?
- [71:05]
Cindy Rollins
We did and really enjoyed it.
- [71:08]
Thomas Banks
I thought it was so brilliant the way they. They brought in the. The. What's his name? The old puddle Glum. What is his name? Put the putt. The. The detective.
- [71:21]
Cindy Rollins
Yes.
- [71:22]
Thomas Banks
Yes. I thought that was well done because.
- [71:24]
Cindy Rollins
That was a challenge.
- [71:26]
Thomas Banks
Yes, I thought so.
- [71:27]
Cindy Rollins
That was a real challenge to adapt that book to the. To the screen. Of course, Anthony Horowitz is a screenwriter, and he adapted it himself. And so I was sitting there thinking, this is wildly different from the book, but I totally see why they. Yeah, you.
- [71:40]
Thomas Banks
You understood why they had to do it that way. And I thought, well, good move. Way. Way to make it work.
- [71:45]
Cindy Rollins
It did make it work and was totally true to the spirit. Yeah, I'm a huge Anthony Horowitz fan. He's. He's delightful. I've really, really enjoyed his book.
- [71:57]
Thomas Banks
I did read a book at the beginning of the year for our book club, which I just hated so badly. And one of the things about a book club is I feel like when you go to a book club, if everybody's not honest, then, you know, it's a boring book club. You have to be able to say, I hated this book, or to make the conversation interesting. We did read one book a few years ago that we all hated, and that was a fun. We had a great conversation about the book because we all hated it. But it was called the Witness of the Stars by somebody, Bullinger. It was. It was just this crazy book about the stars and how they tell the gospel story, which I'm willing to believe. But the way this guy in the 1800s laid it all out, it was kind of, it was kind of Scofieldish. If I can say that without hurting anybody's feelings, I probably can't, so never mind.
- [72:55]
Cindy Rollins
All right.
- [72:55]
Thomas Banks
It's like a stretch, Constant stretch.
- [72:59]
Cindy Rollins
But no. Okay, so hear me out about this, because Mr. Banks has noticed this about me. I will judge a book much more harshly if I actually approve of the thesis, if that makes sense.
- [73:11]
Thomas Banks
Right, right.
- [73:13]
Cindy Rollins
Like, I feel like, dude, you had, you had the truth and you blew it, and now I'm mad. Whereas I'd be like, not my thing. Whatever.
- [73:24]
Thomas Banks
Yeah. Like, you're going to write a story, you're going to tell a story, and then you. And it's a true story, but you're going to tell in a way that nobody's going to believe it.
- [73:32]
Cindy Rollins
Right. To write, like, to write a bad book about CS Lewis and make your readers hate him. Now I'm going to, you know, hunt your family.
- [73:38]
Thomas Banks
Yeah.
- [73:42]
Cindy Rollins
A lit, A lit, A lit. Not a witch hunt, but a lit hunt.
- [73:47]
Thomas Banks
I hated. That's what I didn't like about all the Light We Cannot See, which, yes, I know, everybody shoot me now. But it was like, you had a chance to tell this great story and you were really doing a good job, and then you just didn't. That's the modern way. And, and I think it's a lack of understanding how stories work, really, that.
- [74:08]
Cindy Rollins
See, I, I feel that a lot when I try to dip in. In fact, I was so angry about the book, I just didn't name that. Cindy and I both just went on a rant again about how this is why I can't read contemporary fiction. I, I, it's just bad. And, and to hear so many people praising the book, it hurts my heart because I think this is how far we have fallen culturally, that someone thinks this is good.
- [74:35]
Thomas Banks
Yeah.
- [74:39]
Cindy Rollins
And it also irritates me because when I publicly call out a book like that and say I didn't like it, inevitably someone will say, well, I enjoyed it for what it was. And I think, oh, how do I even begin to unpack that comment? You think I can't enjoy light fiction? Look, at look at the. Read my reading. I've read so much light fiction this year. I adore light fiction. Yeah, that's like saying, you know, that's like saying, here's some maggot infested meat. Well, I don't want to eat that. It has maggots in it. Why can't you just enjoy it for what it is? Angelina, it's maggots. I mean, no one should enjoy this, right? Yeah, it's very irritating to me. And I think a lot about Lewis, you know, CS Lewis saying you can't teach taste and you can't convince not they can't teach taste. You can't convince someone that they have bad taste. You simply have to cultivate good taste in them. And so I know that. And so sometimes I bite my lip when people are praising books that I despise or think are second tier. Yeah, but that one, but that one was annoying to me because it did not have the ring of truth in it. I think sometimes I get unfairly criticized as if people assume every time I sit down to a book, I expect to encounter Shakespeare, you know. No, I read light books, I watch Netflix. I, you know, we, we, we're regular humans. Yeah.
- [75:58]
Angelina Stanford
And I think a part of learning to be a good reader is learning to recognize something that is good in its kind. So I mean, learning to recognize a good popular thriller. I mean there's. Yeah, there's a good popular thriller. There are plenty of cheap, bad ones. And knowing that you're using a different set of criteria to establish what is that than you are to seeing what is a great classical drama or epic or novel or whatever that is the.
- [76:23]
Thomas Banks
Problem with Goodreads, like this is the ultimate. The big deal is this a five star book for its own genre, for what it is trying to be. Or is it, you know, Dorothy Sayers? So. And, and I actually give pretty high ratings on Goodreads if I like a book, especially if the author's living. Because I know I've written books and it matters in the modern world how, how many stars you get on your book. It just matters. So anybody who wants to rate or review my books, please go now. And only if you want to give me five stars. But. So I am hesitant to be like really critical of a living author's book or, or even to be. But I do try to put reviews in the words. I try to say for what this is, this was, you know, a five star book.
- [77:12]
Cindy Rollins
Even though it, but sometimes for what it is, it's garbage. And I feel like we need to be able to say that. And so if someone assumes that I don't like a light contemporary novel because I had unfair expectations, that's actually judging me as a reader. But I'm a good reader, and I know how to read a work of light fiction, expecting it to be light fiction, but the characters still have to be believable. They have to have conversation that sounds like it was uttered by a human being. And, you know, and so if these people are sitting around and they love books, and they don't sound like people who love books, they sound like people trying to pretend to be people who love books. And I can tell the difference, then that's not that I read it wrong, it's that the book is not good, but it's very complicated. We talk about this a lot in the, in the Patreon forum. It's complicated because what does it mean for a book to be good? One of the things that C.S. lewis says in Experiment criticism is that a lot of times when people say this was a good book, what they mean is they enjoyed the, the emotional response that was triggered inside of them by the book. But that's not what I'm talking about. Right? I'm talking about is it well crafted? Is it a good story? Was it well composed? And if I think it was not a well crafted story, I will say it was a bad story. I don't mean it was morally bad, and I don't mean you're wrong that you got the warm fuzzies when you felt it. But sometimes I feel like we're talking at cross purposes where I'm saying this is not a well crafted, crafted book. And somebody said, but it made me feel really good, and that's why I liked it. But, but, but, but I'm saying it's not good, and they're saying it is good. But we're, we're defining good in two different ways. And I know it's extremely difficult to separate our emotional responses from the aesthetic qualities of a book. And I'm very aware that there are books that are emotionally important to me that are not necessarily the most aesthetic things. C.S. lewis had those books as well. Every reader has those books. But, but we need to be able to differentiate. But our enjoyment, our lack of enjoyment versus quality. So, yes, now everybody's going to be dying to know what the book was. But yeah, it was recommended on some popular podcast and a bunch of people read it. And so I read it because I was looking for a light book and I had really, really liked the books that this book was obviously copying, and it was horrible. It was seriously the worst book I've read all year and one of the worst books I've ever read in my life. And I was just angry that I couldn't get that time back. Yeah, I'm too old to read bad books, and I'm just gonna go back to dead authors.
- [79:43]
Angelina Stanford
Okay.
- [79:44]
Thomas Banks
Yeah, it's true. It is true. When you put these elements together in a soup, like, and you think you're gonna make a good soup, but you don't know how to do it. You don't know how to make this.
- [79:53]
Cindy Rollins
That's exactly it. It's like if you hand me a bowl of soup and you put too much salt in, and I go, oh, wow, that's really salty. And somebody's like, angelina, why can't you just enjoy it for what it is? What, A salt lick. No, I can't. No one can enjoy the salt lick. Like.
- [80:05]
Thomas Banks
Yeah, so you're talking two different things, so.
- [80:10]
Cindy Rollins
That's right.
- [80:10]
Thomas Banks
I think that's a great distinction.
- [80:13]
Cindy Rollins
All right, well, last question for you guys. We read some fantastic books on the podcast this year. Mr. Banks, what was your personal favorite? If you can narrow it. I don't know if I can narrow it down so you can. I can say favorites plural. We read some amazing things.
- [80:28]
Angelina Stanford
The one I had the most fun with, I. I'm gonna say a toss up between Enchanted April and Hard Times. Enchanted April, that was my first read I had. It's one of those books I'd always kind of been intending to read, and I finally had a reason to do so. So now I'm gonna have to read more. Elizabeth.
- [80:45]
Cindy Rollins
So I gave Mr. Banks that book. It was another one that I had read a long time ago, and I thought, you know, I bet this is the kind of book that we both like. I liked that it was kind of magical realism and. And very fairytale, but it had enough, like, I don't know, kind of EM Forster vibe. Like, you, like. I don't know how to describe that.
- [81:07]
Angelina Stanford
I think it's a very.
- [81:10]
Cindy Rollins
You read those kind of, like, Edwardian books where it's a lot of social interaction and commentary, and so I thought, oh, this will be one we both like. And I was so delighted how you loved it. He loved it and loved. You read it, and then we did it on the podcast, and you read it again. Yeah, that was. That was a standard.
- [81:29]
Angelina Stanford
Oh, I think that's it. I think it's almost a perfect comedy.
- [81:32]
Cindy Rollins
It really Is. It's so good. How about you, Cindy, of the podcast books? Anything stood out for you?
- [81:37]
Thomas Banks
I think we read great books this year. So great. I loved all of them. I loved them each for different reasons. Dracula just took me by surprise. I had read it earlier in the year, as most of you know, and it just. I, I didn't. I, I don't. It was so surprising. I, I didn't know where to begin with it. It was just not what I thought it was going to be. But we've, we've covered that. But it's hard to beat the Enchanted April. That was, that was so beautiful. I think emotionally that was probably the best. Although I loved hard times too, so I'm gonna go with the Enchanted April also.
- [82:17]
Cindy Rollins
Wow. Let's say we're gonna get three votes for the Enchanted April. It was really special to me, too. It's special to see my husband much, but also special to talk about it on the podcast and to see that it really was a fairy tale, that it was just absolutely delightful. Hard times I had not read in a long, long time and really, really enjoyed going through that again and reading that as a fairy tale. And then Dracula has been special to me for just decades, but I had not read it really since the early 90s. So that book kind of took me by surprise in a good way, how it ended up being just such an embodiment of everything I was teaching my fellows in, in, in our, in, in our. In our fellowship about how to read. And Dracula ended up being such a perfect example of how you find the meaning of a book. And if you use the old ways of reading, you get this, you know, deeply Christian story. But if you use Freudian readings and our modern psychological readings, you're. You're going to get all twisted inside out and you're going to actually read the book the opposite of the way that, that it was meant to be read. And it's not going to have a Christian message at all. So that, that really surprised me and delighted me how much it ended up being just a living illustration of everything I was teaching. And then to have so many people reach out to us and to say that they had loved the book but had felt ashamed that they loved it and that I had given them words now for why they loved it. Other people saying, A lot of people wrote in to say I had redeemed the book or we had redeemed the book for them because they had read it in a book club. And, you know, there was a lot of Freudian Stuff that had really turned them off. So that was really exciting to me to think a book had been redeemed. And I think a lot of people are excited about what gothic fiction can do now. That was. That was a real standout for me too. But I agree. We had just a fabulous year. We read A Midsummer Night's Dream and the Abolition of Man. We read a lot of really good stuff, and we're going to have a lot of good stuff to read this coming year in 2023. We have not put out the schedule yet, so just, just hang on. In January, we're going to do some best of series, and then I'll put out. Out in January. I'll put out the. The schedule for the rest of the year as we make our final decisions of what we're going to cover. But it has been a very good year of reading for me personally and for me reading on the podcast and just a lot of fun to read along with you two guys who do not sound like you're quoting Wikipedia articles. Cindy, I have never once thought to myself, cindy is talking like she's pretending to be a reader, but she doesn't actually read.
- [84:44]
Thomas Banks
Well, you know, I think this is why we love the podcast so much and why we do what we do and why, why, why we talk about Lewis, we talk about Tolkien, we talk about these ideas behind stories. In a way, yes, we're curmudgeonly about it in some ways, because we can't really, really care. They cared. And we are continuing on with the tradition of really caring about stories and wanting them to be rescued from modernity in so many ways. And so maybe, you know, we come across us really strongly a lot of times, but it re. We feel like it really matters.
- [85:23]
Cindy Rollins
That's well said. You know, one of the things in studying Lewis and Tolkien and their literary theory, not only did they take it really seriously, but they suffered professionally, both of them, for the positions that they took. So, you know, at a time when Freudian psychological reading was winning the day, they held out against it to their own hurt. And that has just really stirred up something in me. You know, this. This stuff is important, and it does matter, and it matters to me, and it matters to them, and I need to be willing to suffer for it. And I know that all of us as readers sometimes feel like, am I wrong to take this so seriously? But, well, we need. People get Abolition of Man wrong all the time. Of course, we did a podcast series on this, which I highly recommend. If you haven't listened To. But it. People miss the point about abolition of man all the time. All the time. Even though he specifically says the point and he names the names. But, you know, we. We read what we want to read, and people read Abolition of Man as if Lewis is saying subjectivism is what is going to destroy humanity. What he actually says is subjectivism as it is introduced as bad ways of reading. That's what he says, says is going to destroy humanity. Bad reading. And he calls I.A. richards out by name. That I. A. Richard's way of reading is going to destroy humanity. And so, yes, I take this very seriously. And yes, I. I'm upset about bad ways of reading because it's not about. Well, this is how I like to read. This is how you like to read. This is about meaning and truth, and does truth exist and can it be known? Or are you reading in a way that undermines the very things that you claim to be real and that matter? And IA Richards was Lewis's lifelong enemy, and he called him out by name many, many, many times. But in Abolition of Man, specifically, that the way I.A. richards was teaching people to read would ultimately result in the abolition of mankind. And so yet matters. It mattered to Lewis that he wrote a book in which he made the bold claim, the bad ways of reading will destroy the world.
- [87:33]
Angelina Stanford
Set me straight on this, because I. It's. It's sort of a funny story if I remember rightly. Didn't Lewis give IA Richard books to people who were staying as guests in his house? Gave it to IA Richards to help him fall asleep.
- [87:46]
Cindy Rollins
Okay, so I. So. So I.A. richards came to. He was a Cambridge professor. He came to Oxford to speak. And the only rooms available were C.S. lewis. C.S. lewis was his host for the night, despite the fact that they were intellectual enemies. And so Lewis said, well, I didn't know you were coming, otherwise I would have, you know, prepared the guest bedroom a little better for you. But I left something on the end table that might help you fall asleep. And it was his own book with C.S. lewis's notes in it.
- [88:15]
Angelina Stanford
Wow.
- [88:16]
Cindy Rollins
It was his book about how to read Principles of Literary Criticism.
- [88:20]
Thomas Banks
With Lewis's literary criticism of him.
- [88:23]
Cindy Rollins
Yes, exactly. With Lewis's notes about how incredibly wrong he was. So, yes, now that I've gotten myself all worked up, I do this podcast because I think stories matter. And I teach the classes I teach because I think stories matter. I think they matter a whole lot more than we think they do. And I think C.S. lewis is right, that wrong ways of reading books have much greater implication than. Than we think they do. And really the stakes are life and death. I absolutely believe that. And that is why, you know, people say all the time you're giving free college classes on this podcast. And we are, because that's how much it matters to me. So thank you all for being here with me in this work that I think is matters. And when I say stories will save the world, that is part of what I am getting at. The right way to read is going to be part of our salvation and, and learning to read the story, capital S. You know, it's what we talked about in Dracula. It's a. The story, the one that undergirds all reality. Anyway, I'm getting myself all choked up right now. So it's been a great year reading.
- [89:35]
Thomas Banks
And take knife away from her as you as we hang up.
- [89:41]
Cindy Rollins
In case anybody was wondering if I take stories deathly serious, I don't take myself seriously, but I do take stories seriously and really honestly. Studying this stuff and seeing, seeing how much just understanding the personal cost to Lewis and Tolkien for the positions that they took, it really. Lewis never got the promotion at Oxford, ever. They pushed him out. He made too many enemies there because he stood for things that matter. And that has, that has really lit a fire in me where, where I might just roll my eyes or keep my mouth shut. I'm. I don't want to do that anymore. I want to stand up for things that matter and are true and, and these things matter. So thank you all for being here with me and thank you guys for listening and we hope you got lots of ideas of books to read for this coming year and I'm looking forward to going through our books in 2023 with all of you. Stick around. Mr. Banks has a poem for us. And until next time, keep crafting your literary life because, and I mean this stories will save the world. Thank you for listening to the Literary Life podcast brought to you by our loyal Patreon sponsors. Visit House of Humane Letters to find Angelina and Thomas and to sign up for our newsletter with podcast schedules and more. And keep up with Cindy@morningtimeformoms.com 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.
- [91:37]
Angelina Stanford
A selection from The Secular Masque by John Dryden. All, all of a piece. Throughout thy chase had a beast in view. Thy wars brought nothing about. Thy lovers were all untrue. Tis well that an age is out and time to begin anew.