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- [00:01]
Podcast Host
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.
- [00:23]
Angelina Stanford
This is not just another book chat podcast. Lifelong reader Cindy Rollins joins teachers Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks for an ongoing conversation about the skill and art of reading. Well, explore the lost intellectual tradition and discover how to fully enter into the.
- [00:42]
Narrator/Announcer
Great works of literature.
- [00:44]
Angelina Stanford
Learn what books mean while delighting in the sheer joy of imagination. Each week we will rescue story from.
- [00:52]
Narrator/Announcer
The ivory tower and bring it to.
- [00:54]
Angelina Stanford
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.
- [01:34]
Welcome to the first episode, episode one of the Literary Life Podcast, the Maiden voyage. The inaugural episode, the one that will the face that will launch a thousand podcasts.
- [01:48]
I am Angelina Stanford and I am joined by my partner in crime, Scott, Cindy Rollins.
- [01:54]
Cindy Rollins
Hello. Hello. This is my voice. This is Cindy Rollins. I'm here to talk about books. Finally, finally, after all these years, I'm breaking free and I'm going to be allowed to talk about books.
- [02:05]
Angelina Stanford
Maybe. We'll see. We'll see how this episode goes. Cindy.
- [02:08]
Cindy Rollins
That's right.
- [02:09]
Angelina Stanford
She's on probation.
- [02:11]
Cindy Rollins
Please listen. Please listen.
- [02:14]
Angelina Stanford
We are so excited about this podcast. We are so excited that you are joining us on this journey together to explore all that it means to cultivate a literary life. And today in the. In the first episode, we're going to lay out our vision for the show and about what it means to have a literary life. And that's going to be a recurring theme in these episodes as we try to wrestle it. Why are we doing what we're doing? Why are books so important? Why do they mean what they mean to us? And why is it such a vital part of the human experience to engage in stories, reading stories, telling stories? Why is that such an essential part of the human experience? And why do we need that? So in keeping with that, we are going to start off each of the episodes by sharing a quote from our commonplace books. So, Cindy, would you like to share us your quote first?
- [03:02]
Cindy Rollins
Yes. My quote comes from C.S. lewis, my favorite author, and I'm so cliche. I'm sorry. From an experiment in criticism but it's a great quote. I love what he says here. And I'll just read it and then I'll say a little bit about it. He says on page three, in the very, very beginning, the first reading of some literary work is often to the literary, an experience so momentous that only experiences of love, religion, or bereavement can furnish a standard of comparison. Their whole consciousness is changed. They have become what they were not before. And I love that quote because so many times we're just going along reading something, and suddenly our life is completely changed. And I just. To me, it represents everything we don't know, each one of us. We aren't all changed by the same things, but we don't know when something is going to happen that's going to change our life completely. And we'll be talking about that quite a bit on the podcast.
- [04:08]
Angelina Stanford
Oh, absolutely. I love that quote and all of those things that he lists together. Love and grief, they're all transcendent experiences. They're all experiences that make you realize that the universe, the world reality is so much bigger than you yourself. And you feel in love, you feel part of the harmony of the universe, but with grief, you feel the opposite of that. You feel the harmony is torn, but you're so aware that there's something bigger going on than you. And it reminds me of another quote from Experiment and Criticism, and Lewis says, I, I am never more myself than when I transcend myself. And I think that's a really important part of why we read books, is they help us to get outside of ourselves and introduce us into the deeper reality. That's one of my favorite things about books.
- [04:54]
Cindy Rollins
Yeah. And that's something I always said about my family life, which I hate to get into this too soon, but books kind of saved our family from itself. Sometimes when your family life may be verging on the negative, sometimes reading aloud or getting out a good book can take you out of the toxic environment.
- [05:16]
Angelina Stanford
Oh, yeah. Oh, I love that. We'll definitely be exploring that idea. So for my quote, I went the total opposite, the opposite of the Oxford English professor. And I work with the favorite author of children's stories, Poiric column, who brought us, of course, the children's Homer and Jason and the Golden Fleece and the book about. He's got a book on Norse mythology. He's got a book on Arabian Nights. He's the great storyteller who retells all the best stories of the world. And in his introduction to the Stone of Victory and Other tales. He says this. The storyteller is one speaking out of memory, out of more than memory, speaking out of a trust left to the memory of the one speaking. And that's a really important quote to me because I do think that the act of storytelling is the act of remembering. And that when we tell stories, we are passing down the sacred trust of memories, memories of the world, memories of culture. And that's a large part. I'm sure we'll explore this over many episodes about what it means for the storyteller to be the rememberer. But for me, storytelling and the life of books is so much more, so much more than mindless entertainment or escapism. I think that it absolutely redirects us into the heart of reality. I think it harmonizes our souls with the order of the universe, and I think it helps us to remember all of the things that we forget and are so tempted to forget daily.
- [06:55]
Cindy Rollins
Well, that makes me think of two things. Number one, of course, Stratford Caldecotta. I spent about five, the last three, at least three years just exploring what he meant when he said that the trivium, the first stage of the trivium is not the grammar stage per se, but really the stage of remembering. Yes. And that there's no end to the application of that now as I've gone through life thinking about that. The second thing is, I. I didn't know. How do you pronounce? I always called him Padraic Column. And so I didn't even know who you were talking about.
- [07:36]
Angelina Stanford
Yeah, I thought about that. I thought, oh, is anyone going to know who he is if I say him the right way? And that is because I have friends from Ireland, and I had the moment where I'm like, I don't know what y' all are saying. And, yeah, so Poiric is Irish Gaelic, Patrick. So, yeah, I'm an. I'll give our readers a little tip here. Even though it's no longer St. Patrick's Day, the reason that St. Patrick's Day is St. Paddy's Day, B, D, Y and not TTY is because in Gaelic, Patrick is Poyrick, spelled P A, D, R, I, A, C. And so the shortened version of that is Patty P A D, D, Y and not Patty P A T, T, Y. So mystery solved.
- [08:15]
Cindy Rollins
Wow, that's fun.
- [08:18]
You told me this children's author, and I thought, well, I don't know who that is. And then you said it. I thought, I do know who that is. You do.
- [08:25]
Angelina Stanford
And I'm certain our listeners know who he is. And.
- [08:28]
Cindy Rollins
Yeah, excellent tales.
- [08:30]
Angelina Stanford
I chose it for many reasons, and we're going to talk about that in this episode. But.
- [08:36]
One of the things I'm so passionate about is the reminder is taking books out of the Ivory Tower. We'll put it that way.
- [08:43]
Cindy Rollins
Right.
- [08:43]
Angelina Stanford
Books are for everyone. And I love the idea that in the introduction to a children's book is a deep and profound understanding of stories. And.
- [08:53]
This is for everyone. It doesn't have to be the Ivory Tower with the guardians and the gates and locking you out that you can find this kind of wisdom. It's very accessible to us if we know where to look. So I think this is a good time for us to talk a little bit about how it is that we know each other. And.
- [09:14]
Cindy Rollins
Well, I know that if the people who know me and I know our audience will be broader than that. But the people who know me know that I always talk about how I was in a group of women and how I was like, I was just sitting at their feet, and they were so much smarter than me, but I learned so much from them, and I was kind of able to take that and translate it for the other people, you know, that.
- [09:40]
That those women were just so intelligent. Well, Angelina was also a part of that group. And so we've known each other for, however, hundreds of years. We've been on that email list.
- [09:52]
Angelina Stanford
Gosh, it might be close to 20 years. I was thinking about that the other day. It's been a long time.
- [09:57]
Cindy Rollins
It has been a long time. It definitely is. I was thinking that, too. It's definitely getting on. Close to 20 years that we've known each other. We've listened to each other talk. We've. We've heard each other's ideas and we've. And we've been in fellowship with other people. Some. One of the cool things about our email list was that we. We learned early on, and this was a shock to me when I first joined it, that it was okay to disagree with each other and that there was a way to do that. And it was. It wasn't dangerous to have where you, you know, you said you approached something one way and I approached it another, and it was okay. We could talk about that, not be threatened by each other. That. That was a tremendous growth thing for me because I just felt like I had to fight everybody who disagreed with me, you know, really, really defend my position. But we could defend our position, but we could do it with love and have a good time.
- [10:56]
Angelina Stanford
Yeah, well, that was one of the rare things about you talking about 20 years of women on the Internet and no fights.
- [11:04]
That's probably unheard of these days, right?
- [11:07]
Cindy Rollins
Well, you know that I never thought about that, but you are absolutely right about that.
- [11:17]
Narrator/Announcer
I hope you're enjoying this best of episode of the Literary Life podcast. The episode you're listening to was recorded several years ago, so I thought I'd let you know about some of the stuff we've got going on right now at the House of Humane Letters. The biggest thing on the list is right now is our annual Christmas sale where everything in our store@houseofhumaneletters.com is 20% off. All those classes and webinars and mini classes and past conferences that you've been eyeing, you can catch them right now at a great discount. So head on over to the store and start perusing all of our items. We also, for the first time this year, we went ahead and put all of my conference talks available for individual purchase. Many of you have reached out to us to say that you wanted to share these talks with other people and wanted to have the option of just sharing one talk instead of a whole conference, and so we made that available for you. Speaking of conferences, we moved the date of the annual Literary Life conference this year. It is going to be in January again, in response to something you guys asked for. So right when we're in that sort of, you know, midwinter doldrums, it's almost February. This I hope will be a great pick me up as we face the second semester of school. So this year's conference will be from January 23rd to January 30th. It's much longer, it's got more things, but it's the same low price. And the theme of the conference is the letter killeth and the spirit quickeneth Reading like a human. I think this is going to be a very, very timely conference, an important conference as we face so many challenges right now in culture. Here's what I wrote for the Our culture is obsessed with literacy. We track literacy statistics and data. Schools hire literacy coaches and specialists. Literature class has been replaced by literacy class. But has this obsession resulted in greater understanding of the written word?
- [13:17]
Angelina Stanford
Quite the opposite.
- [13:19]
Narrator/Announcer
All around us is the evidence that we are existing in an almost post literate age. The popularity of AI tools to summarize reading into talking points for us is simply one small example of our inability to decipher the written word. We need machines to read for us because we can no longer read like humans. To understand how we got here we have to cast our eyes to the other side of what C.S. lewis calls the great Divide, the invisible curtain that separates us from the past. For the seeds of our current crisis were planted a long time ago, and the path of renewal starts in the same place. Looking back before the machine age, we can learn to recover a more human way to read and therefore to live.
- [14:04]
So this conference will have talks by Dr. Jason Baxter, who is our keynote speaker. I'll be speaking, Thomas Banks will be speaking, Dr. Ann Phillips will be speaking, and Jen Rogers will be speaking. And we will be exploring what it means to read like a human. We're also going to include this year a student panel who will be sharing their experiences of what it has meant to them to learn to read and live like a human. So let me just tell you about these conference talk titles.
- [14:31]
Angelina Stanford
I'm so.
- [14:32]
Narrator/Announcer
I'm just very hyped about this. I think this is going to be really important. Dr. Jason Baxter is going to kick us off with a talk called Deep Reading in the Age of Hypertexts. I'll be following up with a talk called the Great Dividend Overcoming Modern Illiteracy. Jen Rogers is up next with On Norman Keeps and the Two Towers of All Souls. Words come alive in JRR Tolkien's the Notion Club papers. Mr. Banks is next with St Paul and his Reading, a lecture on the mind of an apostle and his use of writings sacred and secular. And Dr. Anne Phillips is batting cleanup with how to Read a Greek Tragedy or How Greek Tragedy Teaches Us how to Read. Then we'll have our student panel on Friday night, followed by closing remarks from me. So please join us for that live or later, January 23rd through 30th. And while you're perusing in the store, signing up for the conference and picking up all of our on sale items, which, by the way, our Christmas sale doesn't stop at Christmas. It goes all the way to the end of the year, December 31st. But you want to pick up a live registration. Dr. Ann Phillips is going to give us a fantastic webinar on December 29 called Abiding in the Spenser Milton and the Pastoral Poetic Tradition. She is going to be tracing the world of shepherds as it appears in the nativity narrative, in the Gospels and in classical poetry and and trace its influence on works such as Edmund Spencer's Shepherd's Calendar and William Shakespeare's pastoral plays such as as yous Like It, A Midsummer Night's Dream and A Winter's Tale. That's going to be fabulous. So join us for that. And lastly, don't forget that the amazing, wonderful Dr. Michael Drought, his brand new book published on Tolkien, published by Norton of all things, is rising to the top of the charts. I still pinch myself that he wants to be involved with us here and he will be sharing his expertise next semester in a 16 week class called Viking and Old Norse Culture. Guys, this is your chance to take an actual college class with a world class professor for a fraction of the cost. So join us for all of that fun stuff we've got coming up and I hope to see you guys at the conference in January. Now back to our program.
- [17:08]
Angelina Stanford
I want to say this though. You know, when I started first, when I first started homeschooling, I had come out of a school environment and I made the mistake so many people made. I tried to replicate school at home. I think a lot of us made that mistake. I mean, just so ridiculous. I was filling my days from 8am to 3pm with a kindergarten and a first grader. I don't even know what we're doing all day long. But with my were sitting dutifully at their desk, pen in hand all day long because that's what I thought I was supposed to do. And I was really not enjoying it. I was frustrated. They were frustrated. And the funny thing is I had completely lost sight of why I had wanted to homeschool in the first place. I was drawn to homeschooling because I could craft a life around books with my children at home. And somehow, just when I jumped in, I lost my vision. There's so many voices. There's even more now, so many competing voices telling you what it is you're supposed to do. And I completely lost my way. And what got me back on there was you and your blog and morning time. And I just absolutely captured my imagination to think, okay, this was why I'm doing this. This was the life I wanted. And so we scrapped all the workbooks and the work pages and the desks and we went to sitting on the sofa and I had a stack of books and we just read and read and read everything. Shakespeare, Plutarch, poetry, children's literature. And it was just the best. I mean, in my mind that was like the golden age of my homeschooling when we were having those wonderful moments. And it really did reorient us and it helped us to create a family culture centered around books, which I think has been very important for a lot of the same reasons that you were talking about earlier. Books can be books and the shared language of books and the shared medicine. I felt like we had a lot of book inside jokes.
- [18:55]
Cindy Rollins
Yes, yes.
- [18:56]
Angelina Stanford
Which pulled us together as a family. Whereas when you have pop culture references, oftentimes that fragments the family because it's so peer oriented. The kids don't get it, the mom doesn't get it, you know, but books as sort of a cultural reference for your family kind of transcends all of that other stuff. So that, yeah, that was all part of that.
- [19:16]
Cindy Rollins
That makes me really, when I hear things like that, I always feel like, well, my existence is just, I can, I can die in peace.
- [19:25]
Angelina Stanford
But really you saved my life. And I know I'm not the only person who feels like that.
- [19:30]
Cindy Rollins
Yeah, I don't. You know, it's just so amazing. One of the things I'm going to, I'm going to talk, I'm going to be speaking this weekend. So people won't hear this before then, thankfully. But I think about the moment when I was walking in the bookstore. My husband had given me money to buy a high chair for the baby and I had a four year old.
- [19:51]
Like a one year old, and I was pregnant. And I walk in this bookstore and my hand I see on the remainder table and I have money because I'm supposed to buy this high chair. And of course, the first place I go to, even back then 30, 33 to 32 years ago, was the bookstore. And I see this book called for the Children's Sake. And I look at it and the COVID is really pretty and it looks just like all the kind of thing I might like. And I see myself reaching down and picking up that book and it almost feels like a lightning bolt is striking at that place because it absolutely changed everything about my life. And here I am 30 something years later talking about books, talking to you about morning time right now, talking about a life of books, which is really what morning time is. And it's. I didn't know at that moment what was happening. I didn't have a grand plan. I didn't, I didn't, you know, I wasn't masterminding, masterminding a great idea. I was just picking up a book at a bookstore and it has changed my life. It gave me a vision and that vision turned into morning time and that turned into just a life where I've read so many books to my kids that I feel like no matter where, how things fall out, nothing that cannot be taken away. And I think we both can look back and say, I don't regret any of that time I spent reading aloud, I don't regret that for a second. And really, there are some things we did that, you know, who cares? Who cares if we didn't quite complete Latin like we should have? You know, I love Latin, I think it's awesome. But I don't feel that way at all about reading aloud. It was something we will always have. Nothing can take that away from us.
- [21:46]
Angelina Stanford
Oh, absolutely. And I know you've told a lot of stories about being surprised at the way that books have made their way through your children's lives, you know, in unexpected ways. And I'm having the same thing with my children. And books are still a very significant part of the adult lives of my children, which is fascinating. I mean, my two older ones who are the ones that are grown, I have a 22 year old son and a 20 year old daughter, and then I have a 14 year old daughter at home. But my son is an English major in college. But that was very, very unexpected. And we can talk about that story later. But that was very unexpected. So books have just turned out to be a very central part of his life and he sort of had his awakening with those later rather than sooner. But my daughter, who's on a complete different track, she's in EMT school to figure out if she would like a career in the medical profession. Just like a totally different track. She's got her library card, she walks every day to the library, she's always got her stack of books. Just having that life of the mind and books as a central part of their lives have just been something that they've absolutely needed as part of their just existence as a human being, which I know is one of the things that we really want to talk about. So, you know, as we've already kind of hit on a lot of the things about why is this podcast a thing and what is it that we, we hope to do? And we do want to explore all the aspects of a literary life. And what fascinated me about the idea of doing a podcast with you is that we represent sort of two different poles. So, you know, I did come out of the university system. I have a master's degree in literature. I was well on my way to getting my PhD when I dropped out and decided to have a baby at homeschool instead. You can well imagine how that would work. But I've always been a bit of a rebel. But I did that for very specific reasons.
- [23:40]
And we, yeah, we can get back to that. But you have come from the perspective of a self Learner. And I just love. Whenever you and I talk about books, I love how your approach to literature has always come from love and delight and joy. It has not been this formal thing for you. I love the idea of us being able to talk through books together and offer these two different perspectives. And even though I do come from. From the university world, in the scholarly world, and I have, you know, trained under some really big names.
- [24:15]
I walked away from all of that for a number of reasons. One is I became extremely disillusioned. You know, I wanted to get a PhD because I wanted a literary life. I wanted a life that was centered around books where we all spoke a common language, and that common language was books. I had all these grandiose imaginings of what my life was going to look like as a college professor. And then the more time that I spent with colleagues, the more that I dawned on me that that was never going to happen. That the last place that that was going to happen was in a university. I was with people who, to my utter shock, would not read the books. They're too busy. Too busy writing scholarly articles, I guess, being critics, to bother reading the books. I was in love with these books and couldn't get enough of the great books. And they could not be bothered. They all just had their little pet projects and we could go on and on about the politics and all of that. But I walked away in disgust, just utter disgust, and heartbroken and disillusioned. And I went and homeschooled my children. And, you know, when homeschooling starts, it's apple. So it wasn't exactly the great books, but I held on to this dream that if I could not have the literary life in a professional setting in a university, that maybe I could make it in my home. And I kept holding on to that dream that one day they're going to not be a apple anymore. We're going to read the good books. And eventually that came, and Shakespeare and poetry and all the. All the great stuff, and we were able to do that. But the really unexpected thing that happened, and this is one of the reasons why I'm passionate about books, are for everyone, and you have to take books out of the ivory tower.
- [25:57]
When I was getting my. When I was taking my oral exams for my master's degree, so this panel of professors sits there and asks you a bunch of hard questions to prove that you have mastered the material. And we were talking about Victorian literature. That was my specialty. And they asked me a question, and I answered it by discussing Some Elizabeth Gaskell books. And they were just. I remember this so clearly. They were stunned that a graduate student knew who Elizabeth Gaskell was. I mean, honestly, no one. No one at school read, you see? So this was not something that was, like, on the syllabus, and she's a minor Victorian author, and I knew who she was, and they were very surprised, and they commented to me, but they were super surprised that anyone knew who Elizabeth Gaskell was. Now, this was in a university with grad students. They were shocked at that. So fast forward.
- [26:47]
What, a decade later, 15 years later, I'm at a homeschool conference, and I'm sitting at a table, lunch table with a bunch of moms who are talking about that they have read this Elizabeth Gaskell novel, and they're just going on and on about how much they loved it. And I am sitting there with my mouth dropped open, remembering that my professors thought it was the rare student who knows Elizabeth Gaskell. And here were these homeschool moms reading it. And I was like, you guys read Elizabeth Gaskell? Yes. Well, who else do you read? And we're talking, and they're telling me everybody they've read. And I. I almost cried at the table because it struck me that I had walked away from the university in utter disgust, that no one wanted to read, and God had given me back that life I wanted. And there it was with homeschool moms who were eager to read. And I started talking to them, and I remember so clearly, one of them turned to me and said, well, what are some other minor Victorian writers you could recommend to me? I was just like, is this happening? Is this really happening? This was my Cinderella has come to the ball moment. I was so excited. And this is why I have this passion for encouraging the homeschool mom and what she's doing. Because when I talk to them, they always feel like they long for the literary life, but it's out of reach. You always hear them say things like, well, I didn't go to college, and I don't know the critics and I don't know the scholars, and I'm. And I'm out of touch, and there's no hope for me. The gulf is too wide to cross. And I just want to say over and over, from the perspective of someone who's been there and walked away, you are not that far away. It is not out of reach. You are pursuing the literary life more than the academics are. The academics are nothing more than their pet projects. They don't have a love of this stuff. But the homeschool and I know we, I know we're of like mind on this. I firmly believe the homeschool mom is the last reader in America that they're single handedly keeping bookstores open. No one reads anymore. Certainly no one reads those books. No one's reading Elizabeth. There's no run on Elizabeth Gaskell novels at Barnes and Noble. Okay, take me to your Modern Victorian Writers section, please. But homeschool moms are reading the things that homeschool moms will bravely jump into. It's just, it's so admirable to me and so exciting to me. So, you know, if there's anything in my academic background that can make it easier and more accessible to get into these books, then I am going to kill myself to try to do that. But what I want is for every homeschool mom to just pat herself on the back right now. This seems like, like, shame, shame. I'm shamelessly throwing myself to the homeschool mom right now. But it's true. You just, you just do not know from my perspective that you guys are the golden age. You are the last readers. If there's going to be a renaissance in this country, it is going to be because homeschool moms read a bunch of books that nobody else wanted to read.
- [29:39]
Cindy Rollins
That is absolutely true. And it makes me think of the whole how the Irish Saved Civilization and Joseph Pieper and His Leisure, the Basis of Culture. And I always say this and it kind of makes my laugh, but it's as if moms are the last leisured class.
- [30:00]
Just because we have this mad rush for people to pursue utilitarian and monetary careers, that there is no such thing as a leisure class anymore. A class of people that are highly educated or that have time to better themselves and read. And yet we have these moms here at home who are doing that very thing. They are reading with their children. And that is enough, I'm telling you, that is enough to boost you from an uneducated person to an educated person because you are taking the time you have, which is at home with your children, homeschooling them. And because of the nature of homeschooling, you're able to use that time to read and make yourself better educated. So I love, I love that concept. We, and I really, you know, we all have been. We all are repairing the ruins. We all are repairing our education that we got. In some ways, Angelina is repairing the ruins that she got in her education. Some of us are repairing the ruins that we got. Because we never got to go on to a higher education, or we were cheated out of it by a very poor.
- [31:20]
Early education. But all of us have this. Homeschooling is giving us an opportunity to change that. That's why I really like when homeschooling moms are at home a little bit. I mean, we have so many opportunities now. But I think there's something to be said for also having those days at home where we're homeschooling at home, and we can. Mom can be reading along with the kids if you don't. If you can't read on your own, because life is crazy. And I had about 10 years like that where I couldn't even think of reading. So I read to the kids. And in that. In those years, I read quite a bit, and it was all interesting and wonderful to me. And when I reread those books now, I'm never bored. I never think, oh, I've already read this. I love reading.
- [32:05]
Angelina Stanford
Absolutely. Absolutely. And another thing is, I think the homeschool mom focuses so much on her deficits, which may be very real. We all have our deficits. I'm not teaching anybody physics.
- [32:19]
But they fail to realize that while there may be deficits, they also are bringing some genuine gifts to the situation that other people are not. And one of those things is, when I was in college, I noticed that there were two kinds of teachers. There was the one teacher who just would say to you, these books are the greatest delight you will ever have. Come with me, and we're gonna go in here and delight in this book together. And then there was the other teacher who acted like the guardian at the gate, and you can't get in. And it's so great on the other side, if only you were good enough to get in. And that happens even in academia a lot. I find that the more insecure the professor, the more that they act like what they know you could not possibly attain. And it's their teaching then becomes all about their ego and wanting their students to say, oh, you're so brilliant. Instead of the other teacher who you say, oh, this is so easy to understand. This is so accessible.
- [33:09]
Cindy Rollins
Right?
- [33:10]
Angelina Stanford
They don't make it about their own ego. They make it about the story. The homeschool mom, every time she reads to her children and says, I don't really know what's going on here, but it's something wonderful. They're the good kind of teacher. They're the ones saying, there's some delight in here. We're going to Go in there together and find it. And that is such an advantage. That is such an advantage over some expert holding you at bay and making you feel inferior. That happens in the classroom all the time. And I also think that because a certain type of education can lead to pride, that the homeschool mom doesn't realize the great gift, her humility is that when she reads and says, I don't understand everything that's happening, that means that we're all supposed to have that as our starting place. I mean, some of these books I've been reading for 20 years, and I've researched to pieces, and there are still parts of the book about which I say, I don't know what's happening here. I guess I need to learn more. I mean, these books are going to be opening up forever and ever and ever. So, yeah, so that's my spiel about why instead of focusing so much on what we cannot offer, I think we should be focusing on what we can give our children.
- [34:22]
There are studies that say that it is not whether or not a parent reads to the child that makes the difference, it's whether or not there are books in the home. I believe that that's true. And I think one of the reasons is when you own books, you have sent the message to your children that this is valuable. And when the homeschool mom buys books with the grocery money, as we all have done unrepentantly, when we have books in the home, when we value books, when we say, I don't know what's in here, and I can't explain it all to you, but I know there's something good here, and we're going to wrestle with it together. You are sending an invaluable message that the literary life is worth cultivating.
- [35:02]
Cindy Rollins
Yes. Yes. Amen. I think that is something that our children take away, like you said. Or you could get on Wayfair, as we saw today.
- [35:13]
And you could just buy a bunch of colored books to go on your bookshelf so that you could create this atmosphere in your home for $850, and you don't even have to lift those books up. Or you could be like me, where the books. You get rid of all your books, and then not all of them, but I got rid of a lot of my books. And now it's. There's something about the books on the shelf. They. I think they mate, and then they. They grow, and then. And then you need another bookshelf, even. Even though you call and you call and you call something's going on, and I don't think it's right.
- [35:47]
Angelina Stanford
No, I love that idea for the fertility of books. That's going to be my new freeform poem coming up.
- [35:53]
Cindy Rollins
But.
- [35:53]
Angelina Stanford
But so, oh, gosh, all the things want to come out of my head at once. So this is the basic idea behind why we want to do this podcast. We want to encourage anyone that the literary life is for them. No matter how deficient you think you are, it's for you, too. And we want to help you and encourage you to delight in these books. And we also want to offer you some guidance and maybe help to elucidate the things that seem like there's something good here, but I don't really get it. Maybe we can work our way through those things and begin to have some understanding about what's going on.
- [36:29]
So the show is also obviously literary life. The show is structured around literature, but it's also structured around the fact that we all have lives and despite our best wishes, cannot sit around listening to podcasts all day and keeping up with impossible things. And I think both Cindy and I feel very strongly that in no way would we ever want to be one more voice that makes you feel behind. And so with that in mind, we have decided to structure the podcast and I think a really interesting way, and you can give me some feedback on that if you think we're making a terrible mistake. But we are going to talk about books. We're going to do series where we slowly read through books and talk about what they mean and explore, you know, the whole, the whole literature thing. But we are not going to necessarily do those back to back. We're going to balance those and mix those up with one off episodes so that we can be sometimes looking at some specific chapters of a book and other times flipping off and doing one off topical things. So, you know, picking a good summer read or how to get over a reading slump or reading at different seasons in your life, because it's not. You're not the tortoise, you're the hare. Sometimes we're tearing through books and sometimes we're in a dry spell. And that's just the reality of everyone's reading, reading life. So we'll be exploring all those kinds of topics. We'll also be doing some interview episodes. We'll be interviewing people from a huge cross section of life and experiences in different seasons to talk about what their literary life is like. When did they fall in love with books? What does it mean to them to have a life cultivated by Books. So our hope here is that as we go through books and we can have one off episodes in the midst of that, that that'll give everyone time to keep up with the reading but also allow good book discussions in between.
- [38:17]
Cindy Rollins
Yeah. So I'm excited about the format. I think it's a good format. We're not going to tax you by wanting to get through.
- [38:28]
A book so quickly. We're going to start with Gaudy Night when we.
- [38:34]
Our first book that we will read slowly and. But the thing I love about Dorothy Sears, when Angelina was talking, the first person I thought of was Dorothy Sears. She's someone that the first time you read, you like the story and you get it. And then as you grow and grow and grow, you start saying, oh, oh, she's making jokes and so you start to catch a few of those and she's winking at people and she's, she's tweaking people and she's just having a really jolly good time writing these books. And then you realize.
- [39:07]
If I really understood all that she understands, this book would be amazingly, even more wonderful than it already is. And so hopefully we can catch some of the jokes and some of the winking and some of.
- [39:22]
The nods that she gives to academia and Latin and some of these things that she does in such a light hearted, fun way.
- [39:33]
Angelina Stanford
And I also love. Well, Gaudy Night is my favorite of the Dorothy Sayers books. And those of you who know me from other, other scenarios know that I'm a huge fan girl of Lord Peter and we'll be talking about why that is. But Gaudy Night is such a great book for us to start with because not only is it just a Lord Peter swoon fest, but Dorothy Sayers is in this book exploring the relationship between women and education. And what does it mean, mean for a woman to be a wife and a mother, but also a human being with a mind that needs to be cultivated and she wrestles with these in a detective novel. It's just fabulous. So it's just a ton of fun. But there's also a great deal of depth to explore and really important issues for us about what it means to be a woman with a mind who also is our have family obligations and how do you balance all that and what does it look like? So I'm super, super excited about that. We're both just so pumped up for these episodes and excited to jump in. I know you guys are excited to get started, so. Yeah, we're just, we're just pumped about this.
- [40:41]
Cindy Rollins
Yeah, we are really excited. So we hope. We hope you'll. You'll join in and you can start reading Gaudy Night if you want. Right now. I think it'll be our third episode or fourth episode. Fourth episode.
- [40:53]
Angelina Stanford
The next episode. So episode two is going to be the interview episode where Cindy and I interview each other about the history of our literary lives and what those look like. And then episode three where we'll explore one of our favorite genres, the detective novel. Let's talk about how a detective novel works, what the form is, why it's been a lasting and popular form, why we're drawn to it. Spoiler alert. I do not think it's escapist, mindless fiction. I actually think it speaks deeply to our soul's longing for the true, the good, and the beautiful. So we'll explore that. And then episode four, we'll start part one of Gaudy Night, which will be chapters one through seven. It's a longer book, but it goes very fast because it is a detective novel. And I think you guys are gonna really enjoy this.
- [41:38]
Cindy Rollins
Yeah, it's always fun. Detective novels are. You can't put them down a lot of times because you do want to know who done it. And that keeps you going.
- [41:49]
Angelina Stanford
Absolutely, absolutely. So I gotta find where I am in the outline here. So I suppose the last thing we'll say is that Cindy and I are hosting an online conference on May 4, the Literary Life Conference, where we will be exploring some of these same ideas. How do you craft literary life, and what does that look like in your home? And if you're interested in finding out about that, you can go to my website, Angelina stanford.com, click on the conference and it'll pull up a schedule and a description. It's online. So Cindy and Cindy. Okay, so this podcast and this conference were both Cindy and I's attempt to meet the needs of homeschool moms. We know exactly what your life looks like because it's our life, too. And we kept hearing people express to us disappointment that, oh, we can never travel to go and hear you talk. And so we just looked at each other and thought, well, why don't we bring the conference to them? So that's what we're doing. And if you want to watch it in your pajamas with your messy bun, go for it. And if children burst in and want your attention, as they are prone to do, everything's recorded, and you can watch it in your own leisure, quote, unquote leisure in your own. During nap time. Right. In those moments that you have here and there. So we hope that you'll be willing to check that out.
- [43:07]
Cindy Rollins
Yeah, I'm excited about that. I'm going to be talking about the books that changed my life and the genres of those books and how that's played into the life of my family and just how unexpected it was that a life of reading could produce something. But it does, because ideas have consequences.
- [43:33]
Angelina Stanford
Amen to that. So one of the things about the way we have structured this podcast is we're going to start each episode with a quote from our commonplace books, just to get a sense of, you know, the literary life and the things that we read. But we're also going to end each episode with a special treat. At least I hope it's a treat. As some of you know, I am engaged to be married. I'm getting married in June, and I am marrying an actual poet. Yes. Pinch me. Life could not get better than that. And so each episode is going to end with my future husband, Thomas Banks, reading a poem for you. And I think you're gonna really enjoy his dramatic reading of poetry. So that's our special gift to you. At the end of each podcast, you get the bonus of a poem.
- [44:21]
Cindy Rollins
And I'm telling you, these are beautifully read. I have a thing about voices. My husband has a beautiful voice, and I love listening to British, you know, people speak. And these poems are so beautifully read that you're gonna. It's gonna be a treat. Yes.
- [44:41]
Angelina Stanford
I kept telling him I was a little nervous about leashing him into the world.
- [44:46]
Everyone's gonna see how great he is.
- [44:48]
Cindy Rollins
He might have a career as an audiobook reader.
- [44:51]
Angelina Stanford
Well, there you go. I wouldn't mind that. In addition to being my luggage handler, of course.
- [44:57]
But. So we thank you so much for joining us on this first episode and we hope you'll stick around for. For the other things that we've got going. And we just look forward to exploring what it means to craft a literary life together with you guys.
- [45:11]
Cindy Rollins
Thank you. It's been fun.
- [45:23]
Angelina Stanford
Thank you for listening to the Literary Life podcast brought to you by I, our loyal patreon sponsors. Visit HouseOfHumaneLetters.com to find Angelina and Thomas and to sign up for our newsletter with podcast schedules and more. And keep up with 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.
- [45:53]
Narrator/Announcer
And get.
- [45:53]
Angelina Stanford
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.
- [46:09]
Podcast Host
The truisms by Louis McNeice. His father gave him a box of truisms shaped like a coffin. Then his father died. The truisms remained on the mantelpiece, as wooden as the playbox they had been packed in, or that his father skulked inside. Then he left home, left the truisms behind him, still on the mantelpiece. Met love, met war, sorter, disappointment, defeat, betrayal, till through disbeliefs he arrived at a house he could not remember seeing before, and he walked straight in. It was where he had come from, and something told him the way to behave. He raised his hand and blessed his home, and a tall tree sprouted from his father's grave.