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- [00:19]
A
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 science, 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. Hello and welcome. Welcome to this very last episode of 2025 of the Literary Life Podcast. I'm Angelina Stanford and I'm joined not only by my usual Scrooge. It's Christmas, I'll call you Scrooge. My usual Scrooge.
- [01:43]
B
That's appropriate.
- [01:43]
A
The mysterious Mr. Banks. But we also have an exciting special guest today. We have dragged Cindy Rollins out from the recesses of her sabbatical. Dragged her? She was not kicking and screaming. I will not pretend she was, but we've dragged her back in front of a microphone. Cindy, it's so good to have you back.
- [02:02]
C
I'm so excited to be here. I was just saying, who am I going to talk to? What I read this year to.
- [02:08]
A
To us and all of our favorite friends. The 12 people who listen to this podcast. Our. Our closest friends, Sydney, tell us what's been going on with you and then let's chat a bit. Let's. Because everyone's missed you and let's talk about what's been going on with you and then we'll start like officially with the commonplace quotes and stuff.
- [02:28]
C
Yeah, I've just been busy. Busy with grandkids, busy with I. My. I have a 18 year old grandson and I have a new 2 baby. My son had twins and apparently twins are exponential problems in life and exponential joy. So we have just been all hands on deck with these two little boys that are just so adorable. Spent the other day at a Christmas program holding a sleeping twin, which was just awesome. And just. We move too. So it's just been a crazy time.
- [03:03]
A
You moved to another state. That's huge. Yes, I moved to another state, what, nine years ago. I feel like I'm still recovering.
- [03:10]
C
Yeah. And I have the Kentucky flu, the bluegrass flu. You have to get used to living around all these grasses.
- [03:19]
A
Same when I moved to North Carolina. I was hard.
- [03:23]
C
The grass is gorgeous, so I love it, but I wish it didn't make me sick, sneeze and get a runny nose.
- [03:29]
A
Yeah, you'll probably get used to it. I know that happened to me the first year I was in North Carolina. I didn't understand about Bradford pear trees and. Yeah, exactly. Laugh here. We didn't have that where I was from in Louisiana. And I remember being on camera teaching over zoom and. And just the. The tears coming out of my eyes, like it looked like someone had just died. I mean, I couldn't stop with the watery eyes. It was really bad. But it's not bad now.
- [03:55]
C
Yeah, apparently two years maybe.
- [03:58]
A
They say eating the local honey helps.
- [04:01]
C
Yeah, I. I do have some local honey, so we'll see. We'll see what happens.
- [04:06]
A
Well, we are thrilled to have you here to talk about your reading this year with us. Everyone misses you, and if you're an occasional listen to the podcaster. Cindy was one of the. Well, she was the founder of the podcast with me, and we did it together for many years and then got to a point where she realized that. That we were, as you put it, we were victims of our own success. Our. Our two individual businesses had grown so much that it was just too much on your. On your plate. And you have a huge family, you care for a very thriving business. At Morning time for moms and your page, I was just recommending to somebody I met who is a. A new homeschool mom interested in dipping her toes into Charlotte Mason. I said, oh, you need to go to Cindy's podcast. You need to join her patreon. That is the best place to start.
- [04:55]
C
I hope so. I hope it's a great place for people. I do try to be very true to Charlotte Mason and also be very realistic about life and what it throws at us.
- [05:07]
A
And you are, and you do. And you know, in my. In my own. If I can think back to the many moons ago in which I had small children because my youngest turned 21 this year. I mean, to talk about a milestone, right? Like your grandchild turning 18, that's a big milestone, too. But I officially have. I feel like I have. I still have children, obviously, but I have no, like, children. Right. They're all adults out in the world. And it's. It's a strange thing, but, gosh, I, I still have, like, visceral nervous system responses to thinking about when I was in the. Just in the trenches of homeschooling with three little kids and really, really struggling because I was trying to do school at home. And I remember thinking, this. This isn't working. There's got to be a different way. And I started reading Charlotte Mason, and I found your blog around the same time, way, way back in there. Like 2000, 2001.
- [05:56]
C
I don't even know when all that was. It's like a blur of dates.
- [05:59]
A
Right? But. No, but I'm not even. Just kidding, guys. I'm. I'm. This is not just Angelina giving a sales pitch for Stin. Cindy, like, finding your blog really just changed everything. And I just. I had such an epiphany that it didn't. That what happens in a school is that, you know, one. One on one teaching is the ideal, but what happens in a school is an attempt to, you know, exponentially grow. What am I trying to say?
- [06:24]
B
You, you know, increase the numbers?
- [06:27]
A
Well, there's a. There's a. There's a factory metaphor for scaling.
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B
Ah.
- [06:31]
A
You know what I'm talking about.
- [06:32]
B
Apply the factory model to learning.
- [06:34]
A
Well, yeah, like, you have to scale it up. Right. And so it didn't make sense then when I was at home teaching one child that I was then trying to copy, you know, the model for teaching 30 kids. And. And Cindy's blog really, really helped me to make that change. And. And morning time changed our lives. I feel like I went from running around trying to do all these different things to being much more centered. And we were sitting together in the morning. We're doing all of this together.
- [07:00]
B
And I see what you're trying to say. You weren't having to multitask as much.
- [07:03]
A
Right, Right. There's a. There's a term for it. I'm gonna remember it after we stop podcasting. Everyone at home is yelling it into their phone, as they should. It's scales of something. But anyway, it's an economic term.
- [07:14]
C
But you're asking the wrong people.
- [07:18]
A
I know, I know. Sorry, guys.
- [07:20]
C
Sorry you're out there is just like.
- [07:22]
A
They're all yelling it at me as. As you should, because I can't. I can't. It's on the. It's like, right on the edge of my mind. I will remember it as soon as we stop podcasting. But anyway, those were. Those were happy years, and they really went a long way. And I would say, crafting my family's literary life. We were spending huge chunks of every day just reading out loud that. Gosh, those are. Those are absolutely, without question my. My favorite homeschool memories. Reading.
- [07:48]
C
You never. I always tell moms this. You never regret those days of reading Loud. You never, ever look back and say, I wish we hadn't read aloud so much. Nobody has ever said that. Like, wow, we really messed things up. We read aloud too much. Like, you might say, we really messed things up. We did all those workbooks, you know. But you don't say that about reading aloud.
- [08:08]
A
That's right.
- [08:09]
C
And now, you know, with the Paul north book again. North. North. More.
- [08:14]
A
King's North.
- [08:14]
C
Kings. King's North. Against the machine. That's what we're talking about. This is what we. This is against the machine.
- [08:22]
A
Yep. And that's on both of our lists. So we will. We will. We will get to that. But I'm going to give two Cindy Isms that I remember from back in the day. One was, you said, reading covers a multitude of sins.
- [08:32]
C
Yeah.
- [08:32]
A
That. That changed my life because we could just read and read and read. And it really did. It really did. And the other one was one good year makes up for two bad years.
- [08:41]
C
Yeah. Yeah, I still believe those.
- [08:45]
A
All right, well, before we officially get going here, let me just remind everybody, in January is our annual Literary Life Conference. I cannot believe this is our. What is this? Is this our. Oh, this is our eighth. My goodness, time Time flies. This is our eighth Literary Life Conference. We're coming up on our eighth season of the podcast, two Eight years of the Podcast. Oh, I know. Can you believe it seems like yesterday, Cindy. I know. I do not feel like I age. My kids just got old.
- [09:14]
C
What is.
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A
What is that about?
- [09:16]
C
Yeah, I was thinking that when you said. When you said your daughter was 21, I was like, what? I know.
- [09:24]
A
She did just graduate. Now she's. Now she's, you know, finding her career and living her life. But we listened to you guys and we moved the date of the Literary Life Conference. So instead of being in the spring, it is in January, which I think I'm so looking forward to. This is my. The spring has always been very intensely hard for me because. Because I was doing the conference on top of everything else that goes on with registration and all that. So I'm really looking forward to doing it in January. And everyone's telling me this is going to be a good time, you know, when you. When you need a good vision for the second semester. And I'm really excited about this year's conference topic. You'll find out when we start talking about our books that we read, that there was a book I read that got me very excited about this idea, and I thought, this has got to be a conference topic, a theme. So the theme is the letter killeth and the spirit quickeneth Reading like a Human. And when I came up with the topic, I knew that there was. It was no brainer. I immediately texted Jason Baxter and said, would you be our keynote speaker? And he didn't even ask what the theme was. He just said, yes, we love him, but he's gonna be perfect for this. And his book, why Literature Still Matters. I mean, I. I know how he thinks and feels about these things, so this is going to be amazing. And this is going to be January 23rd through 30th. Let me just really quickly read the description of it and then tell you the titles of the talks because I'm really excited about this. 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? Quite the opposite. 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 eye 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. So let me tell you what the titles are, because I'm excited about that. And this year, Cindy, I took inspiration for what you've been doing at the Back to School conference. I asked a panel of our HHL students to speak this year and talk about. All I said is I would like you to come on and talk about what it has meant to you to learn to read like a human. I'm looking forward to that. Okay, so first up will be Dr. Jason Baxter, and his talk is called Deep Reading in the Age of Hypertexts. Doesn't that sound good? Then it will be me. I'll talk about the Great Divide Overcoming Modern Illiteracy. Then we'll have Jen Rogers on Norman Keeps and To the and the Two Towers of All Souls. Words come alive in J.R.R. tolkien's the notion Club papers. And then Thomas Banks will be giving us one of his usual fantastic historical talks, St. Paul and his Reading a Lecture on the Mind of an Apostle and His Use of Writings Sacred and secular. And then Dr. Ann Phillips, how to Read a Greek Tragedy, or How Greek Tragedy Teaches Us how to Read.
- [12:49]
C
Wow, that sounds great. Sign me up.
- [12:52]
A
Sign you up?
- [12:52]
C
All right, great.
- [12:53]
A
We have at least one person who's going to come near these talks. I'm excited. All right, Mr. Banks, would you start us with a commonplace quote?
- [13:02]
B
Yeah. Closing out the year with a quotation from C.S. lewis's letters. And C.S. lewis's letters are one of my comfort books.
- [13:11]
C
Yes.
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A
I love that you read it because you always come into my office and share some. Jim, you sometimes find.
- [13:16]
B
Yes. Sides of his mind and personality that don't come across as much in his better known published writings. This particular letter is to his goddaughter Sarah, whose last name I forget. He writes, by the way, always remember that old people can be quite as shy around young people as young people can be with old. This explains what must seem to you the idiotic way in which so many grown ups talk to you. That actually is true. I can. I can be shy around children. I've. I've noticed.
- [13:54]
A
So that's fantastic.
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C
I find myself saying idiotic things to young people and hearing myself.
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B
Yeah, I've reached that point in my life, I guess.
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C
We're all grown up.
- [14:07]
A
I'm a fuse. I'm still the child when people are being awkward around. I don't know what you guys are talking about. All right. I picked a special commonplace quote because all the time, Cindy, when we're podcasting and you're not here, I say something like, well, as I read this, I imagine Cindy saying, that's Charlotte Mason. So I picked a quote that I knew would get you to say, that's Charlotte Mason. So I think you're gonna like this quote. This is a quote from Erasmus.
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C
Okay.
- [14:35]
A
Oh, that got your attention.
- [14:36]
C
Oh, wow.
- [14:37]
B
This is new for you. Never quoted him before.
- [14:39]
A
Okay. I have no patience with the stupidity of the average teacher of grammar who wastes precious years in hammering rules into children's heads. For it is not by learning rules that we acquire the power of speaking a language, but by daily intercourse with those accustomed to express themselves with exactness and refinement and by the copious reading of the best authors.
- [15:04]
B
That's tremendous. Wow.
- [15:06]
C
That's excellent. I didn't know if you were going to do that one about eating beans so that you can buy more books.
- [15:12]
B
That was the one. Yes. I was thinking she was going to quote that as well.
- [15:15]
A
No, no, no, Cindy, Cindy, you have to say you have that.
- [15:18]
C
So, Charlotte, that actually, it reminds me of the quote I'm going to give, but. Yes, and it's not Charlotte Mason. It reminds me of George McDonald and Charlotte Mason, who often remind me of each other. Well, that's right.
- [15:31]
A
Of course, she was greatly influenced by him. All right, let's hear yours.
- [15:34]
C
Okay, I'm going to give you a little segue because my quote is talking about Christmas, and we're a little bit past Christmas, but I want to tell you about what I'm going to be doing in the Christmas future. Next Christmas I am taking, I, it looks like, there I will be leading a tour to the Christmas markets of Europe on November 28 through December 6. That's right after Thanksgiving, through the first week of Christmas. And we don't have any of the details of that yet, but I wanted to alert the Literary Life podcast listeners because you guys are so. I know you like to travel. We're going to be going to some. We're going to be going to Munich, Strasbourg, some really beautiful places where they have these beautiful Christmas markets. But we're also going to be going to some of the great libraries of Europe, monastery libraries. Also. We're going to. So it's going to be very, very Christmassy, which is me. And very, very literary, which is also me, hopefully. And, and, and it's just going to be a really wonderful chance to. To see this. The day before this opportunity arrived in my email unexpectedly, I was just praying and I was saying, well, I guess I'm never going to get to see those Christmas markets. I really wanted to, but it looks like that's not on my agenda for life. You know, I'm always ready. I've got one foot in the grave all the time. And then the next day, this came actually later in the day, this came in my email with this opportunity, and I'm like, all right, God is just laughing at me, saying that I don't know a lot. So anyway, if you want to keep up, go to Morning Time for Moms and you can sign up for our newsletter. And when, when the signups are ready, you can be on the ready. If you're interested at all in going with us to see the Christmas markets and the libraries of some of the great monasteries. The one in the library we're going to is for sure is the one that you see in. I forget the Name of the Town. I don't have the paper here, but in the name of the Rose and the one they use for the movies, which is A gorgeous library. Look it up. And I'm very, very excited for it.
- [17:56]
A
Do you see my husband turning actually green right now?
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B
Yeah. I'm glad this is radio and not television because, yes, I am turning green.
- [18:02]
A
Seriously, how we have it published next year's school schedule yet? Maybe we could rearrange and give ourselves a break. This sounds amaz. Amazing.
- [18:11]
C
No, I said I'm so excited.
- [18:13]
A
You should be. This. This sounds fantastic. I'm not. I'm not kidding. We might try to figure out a way to pack ourselves in your suitcase. But for you guys listening at home, I know that there are many of you who came to our old literary life retreats that Cindy and I used to put on, and we stopped doing that because we're human and we can only do so many events. And I have started to put my energy into our family camp for our students at House of Humane Letters. And, And. And that has been treme. And a blessing.
- [18:42]
C
And.
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A
And I'm. I'm, you know, convicted that that is definitely where I need to put my energies. But I know that some of you have expressed disappointment that we haven't done those retreats anymore, especially if you don't have kids who are taking classes. So this is a fantastic opportunity to go on a very literary inspired trip with Cindy and possibly us too, if we sneak into her suitcase. So, yeah, sign up for that. And morning Time for moms dot com. Okay. You had a quote.
- [19:10]
C
I have a George McDonald quote. And he's talking about he had a Christmas party. This is from Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood. And the pastor in this story has just had a Christmas party with all his parishioners. And they sang a lot of Christmas carols. So before we parted, I gave to each of my guests a sheet of Christmas carols gathered from the older portions of our literature. For most of the modern hymns are, to my mind, neither milk nor meat, mere wretched imitations. There were a few curious words and idioms in these, but I thought it better to leave them as they were, for they might set them inquiring and give me an opportunity of interesting them further sometime or other in the history of a word. For in their ups and downs of fortune or words fare very much like human beings. And I just love.
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A
That's good.
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B
That's so true.
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C
I love that he. He understands. He. He understands like I do. That, you know, that. That when we don't know a word, it creates a curiosity in our mind and our mind stretches towards it. We don't get rid of those words. So that we can. Everything is so clear and understandable.
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B
Yeah.
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A
No, and that. That actually fits the Erasmus quote too.
- [20:30]
C
Yes.
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A
So, you know, Erasmus saying it doesn't work to just drill rules into kids. You have to. They have to be exposed to beautiful language and. And people who are good with language in. In the great books. And I found that to be absolutely true in my. In my own life and in the lives of my children. So I went to one of these Christian schools, you know. You know, it was a fancy school and it had a good academic reputation. But their approach to, like, vocabulary, for example, was to make us take all of these vocabulary tests. And I never did well on. I mean, I was a straight A student. So when I said I didn't do well, it's not like I flunked it, but it didn't come easy to me. It was a struggle because I felt like I was being asked to memorize lists of words without any context.
- [21:12]
C
Right, right.
- [21:14]
A
Whereas if I just read, I would find myself using words in a sentence. And I couldn't necessarily define it for you, but I knew I was using it. Right. Because I had always read it in that context.
- [21:25]
C
Yeah. I just recently read an article and I. And I don't remember where. Where the guy was basically saying, because of AI. We have. We have a lot of criticism of books where we say that that needs to be edited. We don't like Dickens, you know, he rambles on and he said this. These. Some of these rambling old works are the most beautiful. And when we edit something to death, we often take out all the beauty. And I was just so happy to hear someone say that.
- [21:54]
A
No, that. That is. That is. That is absolutely. That's absolutely true. And I've also noticed the same thing when it's clear that I'm reading writing where someone has used a thesaurus. And I think, okay, technically this is a synonym, but no one uses the word like this in a sentence. It's not the right connotation. And those are the kinds of mistakes you make if you learn vocabulary outside of the context of. Of it being spoken.
- [22:19]
C
Right, right. You see it that, of course, with people who use some of these bots to write for them, they. One thing I like about words, but.
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B
Yeah, and one thing I like about older dictionaries and lexicons is that very often they'll supply examples from literature.
- [22:37]
A
Yes.
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B
Of like the oed, Like Samuel Johnson's dictionary did that. And. Yeah. And I mean, well into the 20th century, that was habitual. But yeah, like your typical Pocket College Dictionary does not do that anymore. And I think that loses something.
- [22:52]
A
Well, it fits in with the Cindy quote I gave. Reading covers a multitude of sins. You know, you get those patterns of language in you.
- [23:01]
C
Right.
- [23:02]
A
I find that you end up being a better speller and not, it's not 100% rule because sometimes there are spelling issues that have to do with some learning differences happening. But typically you have a better sense of spelling, a better sense of vocabulary, and a better sense of grammar. Like, because your ear gets trained. Yeah, we're getting on and on, but. But it fits into the idea of this is our year in reading and this is part of what it means to have a literary life is you're just immersed in this language and when you're immersed in a language rich environment, you don't have to do then all this intense grammar and all this intense vocabulary. You're picking it, you know, you're picking it up.
- [23:39]
C
Yeah. I always say, a child who's heard a lot of poetry, you know, you get to seventh grade and you say, I'm going to teach you what a metaphor is. They get it, they know what it is. They don't have to hold on to that definition. They don't even need the word metaphor. They know innately what a metaphor is.
- [23:56]
A
No, that is exactly right. And I find this to be true all the time. And when I teach good books my middle school class, because the kids coming to me are from extraordinarily language rich homes, you know, they all have morning time. They, they are immersed in stories. And so when, when they begin getting formal instruction for me, I feel like what I do is name for them what they have already seen.
- [24:19]
C
Right. And that's learning works. I mean, that's the way first you get immersed, then you, you start to, you know, organize it and try to figure out what it, what it does. And then, and then you have knowledge.
- [24:32]
A
And wisdom and we tend to go the opposite direction where we think you have to give them a bunch of rules and then it go, it goes the other way. It really doesn't though. It really doesn't.
- [24:43]
C
No, because your brain can't hold on to those rules. There's books for them.
- [24:47]
A
That's right. That's right. Alrighty. So, Mr. Banks, let's start with you. What was, and this is not a conversation we had before, so I will be just as interested as everybody else in, in your, in your answer here. How would you describe your year in reading this year?
- [25:05]
B
I would describe it as largely enslaved to my occupation. I I actually, I did not have similar. I know, I'm sorry, I. I was dreading this. But I did very little properly leisure reading this year, which I, you know, that is what it is. But I. I had a lot of. A lot of niche topics, whether for webinars or for the classes I teach that kept me reading in particular grooves and I'm fine with. In the summer, for instance, I taught a mini class on various Victorian lives. I gave a series of what, five or six lectures on George Eliot, Benjamin Disraeli, Florence Nightingale, General Gordon and Karl Marx was kind of the wild card there. So I read a number of works by several of these figures were writers themselves, so some of their principal works, books about them. Several books about the, you know, latter half of the 19th century itself. And that kept me occupied for, I'd say about a month and a half. Then I did a webinar on Oliver Cromwell and the English Civil War this fall. That was another month or so of, you know, kind of focused, almost monomaniacal reading. I now know more about. I feel I could teach a college level class on Oliver Cromwell quite comfortably now.
- [26:25]
A
A lot of Cromwell books. Yeah.
- [26:27]
B
And of the several biographies of him I read one I will recommend for general consumption by John Buchan. John Buchan, who of course is best known and rightly known as a novelist. I mean, he was a great writer of, you know, espionage fiction and the 39 Steps. Also a very accomplished biographer. He wrote Lives of Augustus Caesar, the Marquess of Montrose, and Oliver Cromwell. And the Cromwell is a classic of its kind.
- [26:53]
A
I'll just say, Cindy, I know you're a big buckin fan.
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C
Oh, yes, everybody, my whole family loves Buchan. And I have Caesar. I don't think I have the Oliver Cromwell. And I haven't read the Caesar. I've gotten, you know, I love. I've read some of his books. I've read over and over again. The 39 steps, green mantle. Love all of those. Mr. Stanfast is you have to read the 39 steps and then green mantle. But then I love Mr. Stamfast, so.
- [27:21]
A
But, but I've read the 39 steps.
- [27:24]
B
Yeah, it's part of a series, the Richard Hannay series. I think there's four or five of them. Yeah. And the 39 steps is the first, I think the first of those. Or maybe Green Mantle.
- [27:35]
C
It is. It is the first.
- [27:37]
B
Okay. Yeah, but those are really good books. Green Mantle, if you like World War I and you like thrillers, definitely read Green Mantle.
- [27:45]
C
Okay.
- [27:45]
A
Yeah.
- [27:46]
C
Most people think Green Mantle is Their favorite. But I like Mr. Sandfest, but. Okay.
- [27:52]
A
I don't think I realized that 39 Steps was part of a, of a series. Yeah, I think I, I think I read it in college. I saw the Hitchcock movie and I think I. Then I found out it was a book.
- [28:01]
C
Don't. Don't watch the hit as well.
- [28:03]
A
I. I've learned the hard way that Hitchcock.
- [28:06]
B
It's very different.
- [28:06]
A
Very loosely inspired by whatever fun movie.
- [28:09]
B
But it's very different from the book.
- [28:10]
C
Yeah, very loosely. I mean he misses a lot. But anyway, that's not. I mean he was making a movie that was what his. He took a great story, made a movie and the movie. I don't know. I guess it stands alone as a. As a good movie if you didn't know it. Was the book A Witchwood. That's one of Buckin's really good standalone novels. Yeah. There's just.
- [28:32]
B
I think which would. Is. Yeah, that's one of my favorite historical novels.
- [28:37]
A
It's my nightstand. Said I have to read it. I've really got to make a point of that.
- [28:40]
B
It's. Yeah. Sublimely scary without being graphic or anything like that.
- [28:47]
C
Be a good October book.
- [28:49]
A
Oh, we'll have to. We'll have to do it on the podcast then. A nice Halloween book. I want to say this though. I want to say two things about your comment because I'm also going to say that my reading this year is mostly for work, but I don't think anybody should feel sorry for us because I feel like, hey, I figured out a way if I really want, I'm like, oh, here's the things I would like to read this year. I'll do a webinar on it and you know, then I can get paid for all this reading. So I, I feel like it's the best of both worlds. You know, we get. We get paid to read books, but it is a challenge, I think. And when I'm trying to be more aware of. To make sure that at least sometimes my brain feels like it's off the clock with certain reading and. But you did that. And we'll come back to that because you definitely pulled out some other. Some other novels. And I also think it's good. I think sometimes people listen to this podcast and imagine us in this some kind of ideal world. We're just self disciplined readers all the time. But we're not. Yeah, we're exactly.
- [29:47]
B
Would that they knew the truth, actually. No, better that they don't. Yeah.
- [29:50]
A
But we're humans and you know, one of the things we talk about on this podcast a lot is that there are seasons when you can read a lot, and there are seasons when you can't read a lot. And so I think we're just going to be really open and honest, and perhaps you'll be encouraged to find out. You know, we also have years where we think, man, I didn't get all the reading done that I would have liked to do. So, Cindy, how would you characterize your year in reading?
- [30:12]
C
Dismal. Dismal. I've done better this fall because halfway through the summer, I think I was at 50 books. I usually am at 50 books in June. I did make a decision early in the year to read some longer books and not worry about my stats. And then my life was just very, very complicated this year. Just very complicated. And I realized I wasn't going to hit my hundred books. It's very rare that I don't hit the 100. It's probably been 10 years since when I was writing Mere Motherhood. That year I didn't hit 100 books, and I'm not going to hit that this year. I think I'll hit 80 if I'm lucky here at the end. I did decide when I read, I reread Sherlock Holmes this year, just pad my stats. I decided to do it according to volumes. It's like, six, seven volumes. So I'm counting each volume as a book to pass. That's a little bit. But I did read some very long books this year and enjoyed. I enjoyed that. And I. I liked just kind of not feeling the pressure. But at the same time, I do need a little, like, encouragement not to, you know, and I'm glad when I have, like, I don't waste time when I think, well, you know, you really need to be reading right now and you enjoy reading. So, yes, I need a little kick and I need a little discipline, but it always pays off.
- [31:42]
A
So I think it's going to be a consistent. All three of us did not have the best reading years. I also did not make 100 books. And if you recall, if you've listened to the episode we did, and Cindy was on for this episode, I think we did it two summers ago. What, what to do in the literary life feels overwhelming. And I talked about how I was starting to realize that I was consuming too many audiobooks too fast, and it was messing with me. And Cal Newport is a great one who talks about your cognitive load and, and what's happening. And so I. I have been more mindful since Then I've wanted to. And again, different seasons. Guys, I understand some of you have small kids, and I'm not saying don't read on. You don't listen audiobooks. I still have an Audible subscription. I have, actually, I have subscriptions to every kind of audio service out there. So I'm not, I'm not saying stop listening. I'm just saying where I am in my life. I was starting to feel sort of frazzled mentally. I was. There was too much, too much podcasts, too much audiobooks, and I was listening to them very fast, and I was having amazing stats, but it was doing something to me and it was messing with my ability to concentrate. And so I decided to very deliberately slow things down to read more physical books, which I knew was going to significantly lower my numbers. And I was fine with that. And I wanted to read physical books that were long. I wanted to just have that, you know, losing myself in a book experience, which I did. I did. And I read a whole. We'll talk about that in a minute. But I read a lot of very, very long books and, and loved them and delighted in them. I, I did listen to some audiobooks, but I listened to far fewer. And I started taking Cal Newport's to listen to music. I used to listen to music all the time. And then when I got very intense about, oh, I got to get my stats up with audiobooks, I stopped doing that. And, and so I went back to that. So I'm listening to music a lot more during the day instead of an audiobook. I'm going on silent walks so that my, my brain can process. I just, I just, for me, I had overloaded myself. And again, you know, like, you know, we were reading like 130 audiobooks. So, like, if you, if you're like, I listened to five this year, I'm not telling you to stop listening to audiobook. I was listening to them on, like, double speed, which my brain can handle, but it was still doing something to me. It was too much cognitive load. So I'm not necessarily listening to them slower. I'm just listening to fewer of them because I actually can't pay attention to audiobook if it's too slow. And I also had my reading focused on the extra classes. I mean, just our regular classes require a lot of reading because we're both committed to always reading what we assign and coming to things fresh. And I, I think that's actually very important that we do that. You know, we're not. I remember I would have professors in college who would come in with like the most, most like moldy yellow paper, like they're just giving the same lecture they've been given for, you know, 50 years. And, and we don't do that. And my, and my students know that's one of the reasons why they like to take the same class over and over because it's different every time because I'm learning new things. But I also had two big extra projects this year and one was the Harry Potter class for books four and book five, which I did a tremendous amount of reading on. And we'll talk about some of those titles. And they're not even books about Harry Potter, although I did reread all of the Harry Potter books, speaking of long books, in preparation for that. But you know, those classes were about Harry Potter as the gateway to the literary tradition. So I was reading all about the other books that are being referenced in Harry Potter, you know, King Arthur for example, and mythology and all that. So I did a lot of reading. It was fantastic reading. That was a lot of work, took up all my time. And then in the fall I did a, an Edgar Allan Poe webinar which people are saying it might be the best thing I ever did. I think the last Harry Potter class in the Edgar Allan Pope are kind of a new high watermark for me. And I did a lot of reading for the Edgar Allan Poe as well and really enjoyed that. And when I think about my reading this, it's very interesting. I had a, I had a really good non fiction year. Like I read a lot of fantastic non fiction books which we'll talk about. My fiction reading, I realized was almost, not entirely, but almost entirely rereads, which.
- [36:01]
B
That was true of me. Also I read a handful of novels that I had not touched before, actually.
- [36:08]
A
It makes sense, right? I'm going for the reads because it was an intense.
- [36:11]
B
No, I mean as I, as I grow older, I'm more and more making peace with the fact that I'm just never going to read everything. So I might as well spend more time rereading. So I do give a fair portion of my reading time to that. But one set of books that I had not touched before. I know I've mentioned them already. Sorry, I'm repeating myself. But the Balkan Trilogy by Olivia Manning.
- [36:31]
A
Tell us about that.
- [36:32]
B
Yeah, I read the first two of those. They're war novels, but not in the typical sense of what we usually mean by a war novel. It's war is seen by civilians who are residing in a foreign country which is very strange to them. And it's. It's set in Romania during World War II. And the principal characters are a newlywed couple, Harriet and Guy Pringle, who are very different, almost kind of oil and water personalities. They're just getting to know each other in this, you know, new marriage. And the war is revealing sides of themselves that they didn't necessarily know were there or expect to find in their spouse. And they're meeting all of these kind of strange misfits who have been thrown into this country from the various corners of Europe. And it's, it's a very tense and just brilliantly observant set of books. I've actually not finished the third one yet, but the first two are brilliant.
- [37:33]
A
You convinced me by the audio. Go ahead.
- [37:36]
C
Yeah, I also read the Great Fortune and I haven't gone on to the second one yet. But one of the things that sticks out about that book is you remember it. Like you, you can think back and say, oh yeah, they did this, you know, And I thought when you're reading it, it's not exactly an enjoyable experience in some ways. And yet it's very memorable book. Was that recommended by Christopher Hitchens?
- [38:01]
B
Peter Hitchens? Yeah, it was, yeah.
- [38:03]
A
So that was a podcast interview we did with him in what, January, February of 2025. So one of the most exciting things we've ever done.
- [38:12]
B
He made the claim that it was the best World War II book ever.
- [38:16]
A
Fictional works, definitely go listen to that episode. He made a lot of good recommendations.
- [38:20]
B
Yeah, I honestly, having read two thirds of the trilogy now I'm inclined to say the same.
- [38:26]
C
So audible suggested, after I read that, they suggested this book called the World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig. And it's actually a memoir that is very similar. I mean, but it's a true story of his kind of going all around Europe during World War II, World War I, all the way to World War II. It kind of is a really weird book. I don't know. Apparently it's very, very well known memoir. It's called the World of Yesterday. But it began to feel a little bit like you were reading Forrest Gump's biography. Like if there was a famous person, this guy just happened to run into him. Like if they were signing a treaty, he got off the train and there they were signing the treaty and he was able to be there at that exact moment. And that happens so many times in the book. I'm like, either this guy is just like phenomenal or he genuinely just made up all this stuff.
- [39:28]
B
Yeah, I've, you know, I've read some of him. I've never read that one, but now I. Now I guess I have to, because I've heard that's a. That's just a brilliantly documented book. And. Yeah, as you say, the kind of guy who seems to know everyone and been everywhere. Yeah, he was Austrian.
- [39:47]
C
I went to see my friend. I'm thinking Sigmund Freud, and I, I took Dolly to see him with me. And like, you're just like, really, buddy? I mean, you just know everybody. But he must have been quite famous at the time already for his books, so I. Maybe I'm just harshly judging him. But even like strange situations like the, the piece, you know, we pulled up into the train station and something was going on and it was just like this remarkable thing that nobody else would have been an eyewitness to, but he was like Hitler walking by or something. Anyway, it was, but it was, it was. It went very well with the Manning books because it put you kind of in the same world.
- [40:30]
B
Yeah, well, I'll have to pick that one up.
- [40:33]
A
All right, so what were some, what were some standout titles for you that were NonFiction this year, Mr. Banks? Let's start with that.
- [40:40]
B
Oh, let me see. One I had read more than once before, but I went to it again because it's a book I like is the Victorian Age by Sir Charles Petrie. Which, it's not a narrative history. It's a series of chapters on different aspects of Victorianism. And I'll just say that the chapter on Victorian women alone is worth the price of admission. Sadly, the book is out of print, but it is available on archive.org, the Victorian Age by Sir Charles Petrie. So that one stood out to me. I already mentioned John Buchan's biography of Oliver Cromwell, actually one that I picked up. And I enjoyed this even more. I don't know how many times I've read it now, but I hadn't read it for years. I didn't read the all four volumes, but the second, I think the second volume, the New World by Winston Churchill, which is the second part of the history of the English speaking peoples, that's a really fine work of synthesized historical narrative. And he works so much into that series and also he just writes really well. If you want to know what good historical prose is, read Winston Churchill. I can't recommend it highly enough.
- [42:01]
A
So that whole series is in the ambleside on.
- [42:03]
B
I know that. That keeps it in print, I'm sure. Yeah. God bless them. Yeah. I find that students tend to know those almost often before I introduce them, probably for that, for that reason.
- [42:14]
A
How about you, Cindy? What were some of the nonfiction titles? She and I might. We're about to fight over who gets to claim certain titles, I think. Go ahead. I have a lot on my list.
- [42:22]
C
Okay. So I had one I read twice this year was Interior Freedom by Jacques Philippe. That was kind of a spiritual book that really just struck me in a certain way that was helpful to me. And a lot of my nonfiction book is devotional. I read a devotional book that I just think it's now my all time favorite. Just like daily kind of reading, kind of liturgy for your own daily life. And that was called Be Thou My Vision, A Liturgy for Daily Worship by Jonathan Gibson. It's just like if I had written that kind of book that this is exactly what I'd want. It's like there's a song, there's a, there's a prayer, there's some scripture, there's some, some, some ancient writings, that sort of thing all in it like a single day. And I, I just genuinely love that. I tried really, really hard. I'm trying this thing now where when I'm reading something and I come to something like a song, and a lot of times they'll just put it as a poem, it might be a song. I don't know. A lot of the songs in his book, I didn't know. I'm looking them up on YouTube and I'm trying to like sing out loud. This is my against the Machine kind of. I'm not a singer, I don't sing well, but I'm really, really trying to sing when I can. So that was a good, that was, that was a good help in that area. And then I. In the same kind of vein, but a little different. I, I can't say that this is completely non fiction, but during Lent, I read this book called the Great Passion by James Runcy. And it was about. It's kind of a fictional account of a boy's life who's in the church when Bach is writing this St. Matthew's Passion. It's very, very good. It's a very good book. He's a young boy that lives there and he's seen all the, how they're leading up to this great day when they're going to give this, this beautiful piece of work. And I, I just thought it was excellent. I read Michael Poland's book, a book by Michael Poland on gardening called Second Nature, which was a lot of Fun. He wrote it in, like, the 80s or something. It was like, oh, an old one. But he goes through, like, people yards, like, how yards came into being and what happened to the garden and how that's changed the way we live. And it was super.
- [44:57]
A
That sounds fascinating. I'm gonna write that one down. That's right up my alley.
- [45:01]
C
Yeah, I had not. I mean, this just kind of showed up somewhere, and I thought, you know what? I read Wilford McClay's Land of Hope, which is an American history book, which we had him on the new Mason Jar, and I liked him so much. I wasn't planning on reading his book, but because I've read so much of that, but I ended up reading that and love it. He. He's just like the tradition of the wise grandpa telling stories about history, and he does such a great job. And of course, as already mentioned, against the Machine. Very, very definitely a book I will read again. And so that's basically my nonfiction. I mean, there was a few more. I read Arthur Brooks before he became a thing on the Internet, where he's. Now he has a book. Strength to Strengthen. Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life. And it was good. It was. It was fine. I read why Literature Still Matters this year.
- [46:05]
A
Oh, yes, Jason Baxter's book.
- [46:07]
C
That was my second or third reading this year, so. Excellent, excellent book.
- [46:15]
A
I have a lot to say about all of that. First, I wanted to say the history guy that you had on your podcast, Mr. Banks, found it on his own, apart from me, before I could even tell him. He found it on his own and was so impressed.
- [46:25]
B
Very impressed. No, that was a really well done interview. And again, I was green with envy. We might have to poach him from you. I mean, not that, you know, he works or anything like that, but, I mean, we'll imitate you slavishly is what I'm saying.
- [46:38]
C
Yeah, he's a great guy. I mean, he's just like someone. He reminded me of my dad a lot, so that, of course, I liked him.
- [46:47]
B
I haven't read. I picked that book up somewhere, but I haven't read it cover to cover, and I feel that I should.
- [46:54]
C
It's very fair. It's not at all, like, biased in a way. I mean, he gives both sides of a lot of stories. He'll say, well, this because he moves on into modern history, which a lot of history books, you know, have to stop before certain things. But I think he goes all the way through Reagan and. Oh, and I loved it. Because I grew up in the period of time in the 60s and 70s. And I remember like he talked a lot about the bicentennial that we had in the America's 200 years, which now we're at America's 250 this coming up year. And I remember some of the things he was talking about in the book and I was like, oh, yeah, I totally forgot about that boat parade that, you know, but I remembered, you know, being on the news and all that, that sort of thing. So that was kind of nostalgic for me.
- [47:50]
B
I sometimes feel that I should have been born slightly earlier because I've had a lot of people slightly older than myself tell me that the centennial in 1976 was one of the highlights of their youth or something like that.
- [48:04]
A
Remember it even though I would have been only four or something. Yeah, but I remember the quarter. Remember the bicentennial quarters.
- [48:11]
C
Yes, yes. Yeah, it was a, it was a big deal. It was. And it was a time when you look back, you think, wow, we were so patriotic at that point in time where now we're all like a little ashamed to be patriotic.
- [48:23]
A
I'm curious.
- [48:24]
B
Kind of amazing because that was like right after Vietnam and Watergate and like you kind of remember that as a dismal time. But like, yeah, it was kind of a beacon of optimism there for a moment anyway, which is probably good that it happened when it did. Well, you know, I guess I have to live to be 91, because if I live to be 91, I'll make it to the, the next centennial. And if we're still around as a country, then, you know, knock on wood.
- [48:44]
A
And 50th celebration. We'll have some, some things to celebrate, you know, be thankful for.
- [48:49]
C
Yeah, people are planning a lot for the 250. I think Mr. McClay is on a. I think. Didn't he say he's on a committee that's doing, they're doing a lot for the 250th.
- [49:00]
A
And of course right now it's the 250th anniversary of the birth of Jane Austen.
- [49:05]
C
Oh, that's right. I didn't know.
- [49:07]
B
Really important. 250th, right there.
- [49:10]
A
The empire that shall never end, as far as I'm concerned. All right, well, okay, so let me talk about my non fictions. I'm going to start with the one I have last on my list because I just finished it more recently. But since Cindy mentioned it, I'm going to start with that one. Paul Kingsnorth's against The Machine. So this is not the sort of book to usually be on my radar because I'm usually, you know, up to my eyeballs in literary books. Books. But everybody. Not everybody. A lot of people in the literary life Patreon was reading it, and they had a special channel for it. And I just saw it coming up, and I was getting tagged in a few things, and it was. I was just curious about it. So I thought, well, all right, let me see, Let me see. I think I was. I was. I was reading the Edgar Allen Post stuff because that webinar was in November. I was really focusing on that. So I thought, well, I have an audible credit. I'll just use it on that and I'll see. So it's. I started it and was just. It was. Every now and then, you know, you have one of those experiences where you're just sucked in from the first sentence, and you're like, this guy is speaking my love language, and we share a soul. That's how I felt about Paul King's North. I was kind of like, where does this guy been all my life? The. The beauty of his writing, the depth of his thought. I ended up stopping the audiobook and ordering a hard copy just right on the spot because I knew I needed to savor these sentences. I knew it was going to be the kind of thing I was going to reread. Again, though, the audiobook is absolutely beautiful, and the narrator is really good. I think against the Machine was the most important book published in 2020, 25. In my mind, it goes very well with Jason Baxter's why Literature Still Matters. They are friends with one another. Jason has had Paul Kings north, you know, zoom in on some of his classes at St. Benedictine College. And the funny thing is, is I didn't know that when I first started reading it. I found that out later. So I'm reading it. I'm just thinking, man, this guy's tracking with Jason Baxter. He's quoting all the same people. This is amazing. Of course, we published Casiodorus Press is our publishing company, and we published Jason's book. So I was getting very excited. Like, this guy. This guy's a kindred spirit. So I text Jason just out of the blue. Not out of the blue.
- [51:18]
C
We.
- [51:18]
A
We talk a lot because, you know, we work together. But I don't usually text him randomly what page I am on in a book, right? So I text him and say, I'm reading Paul Kingsnorth's new book, against the Machine. I'm on this page. This guy is quoting all of your people. I think you would absolutely love him. He immediately texts me back. I'm on the same page. Like, literally and figuratively. We were in the same place of the book, and he was like, yes, I. I love this guy. I. I think this is incredibly important work. I hope. I hope to be able to get him on the podcast or maybe speaking at a future conference for us while I was reading it. I will tell you that my husband, who, because he. I think you enjoy just seeing me worked up and getting a good rant.
- [51:59]
B
It sometimes gets frightening, but, yes, I do.
- [52:01]
A
So while I'm reading this, sometimes, like.
- [52:03]
B
Remove sharp objects from the near proximity of you.
- [52:06]
A
That's right. Not because I'm gonna hurt you, but, you know, I might just start gesticulating.
- [52:10]
B
Wildly stabbing the furniture.
- [52:12]
A
Exactly.
- [52:12]
B
It's been known to happen.
- [52:14]
A
Wouldn't want to do that. But he. He would just randomly, when we'd be having our morning coffee and tea, he would just randomly read a bad review to me out loud. And I was getting so mad, and I. So I kept thinking, well, maybe the end of the book is just really crazy. Maybe he's just going to say something radical because these reviews were saying, you.
- [52:32]
B
Know, like, I found one that said he was both a Luddite and a fascist.
- [52:35]
A
Yeah. There was just a lot of stuff.
- [52:37]
B
So I guess it was a weird mix of insults. Yeah.
- [52:39]
C
So I'm sorry, like Benedict Cumberbatch reads is the bad Amazon reviews. Have you seen that?
- [52:44]
A
I have seen that. That's fantastic.
- [52:46]
C
Those are.
- [52:47]
A
Those are brilliant.
- [52:48]
C
So he's.
- [52:49]
A
He would read him, and I would think, well, maybe there's going to be a bait and swish. Like, the first half of this book's really good. Maybe the second half's just going to go, you know, off the deep end. Which I have read books like that before, where the first half is really good at diagnosing the problem and the second half gives a solution. And you're like, yeah, not so much. Right. So I kind of prepared myself for that. But then I get to the end, and he's essentially calling for a human life. He's. He's basically calling for exactly what we call for in this podcast in our classes, you know, trying to live a human life resisting what Lewis and Tolkien called the machine age. He. He said. He called for the radical. Oh, how did he put it? The. The radical vision of staying at home, you know, And I was like, okay, you know, this. This guy's all in. I. I don't understand the bad reviews. I'm convinced that the bad reviews did not read the book and and simply responded to a book that exists in their minds or fears that they're having. He quoted Wendell Berry a lot. He's obviously a Windleberry guy. So against the machine doesn't mean becoming a Luddite. I feel like I'm gonna give a book review right here, but it's not about that. It's about not getting sucked into the machine, having boundaries, being aware and trying to live a human life. And he even says, you just have to draw a line in the sand and you decide where that line is. Because obviously we're all, I'm using technology right now, right, to have this podcast. And he used technology to write his book. He's not saying become a Luddite. He's saying be aware. Because these things can very, very easily move us from being tools to being our masters. And there was so much of this year, I guess I was already primed for that kind of thought, you know, because I had been thinking about that I thought all the audiobooks I was consuming was messing with me and I needed to get back to paper books. Holding a book in my hand. And I had already come to a point where I had gotten rid of all of my digital planning tools and went back to really nice paper and fountain pens and was actually shocked to.
- [54:54]
B
See the effect that that Japanese stationary enthusiast I have.
- [54:58]
A
I mean, my gosh, I'm rubbing the paper right here even as we talk. It's so beautiful. I'm even right now taking my notes on this gorgeous paper and fountain pens. And of course our. Our friend, the late Lynn Lynn Bruce was a great fan of fountain pens. And I just experience of writing with a nice pen on nice paper was very calming to me and took away a lot of anxiety. So yeah, I think that was an incredibly important book. The other big non fiction things I read were mostly related to the things I was studying. And I'm always excited. I'm the kind of person that maybe other people aren't like this. I'm the kind of person who will say to my husband, I just read such and such a book and I love his mind, right? So I loved Paul Kingsnorth's mind and here are some other guys that I love their mind. So this year I read the Sacred and Profane by Marcia Eliade and I love his mind. I love his mind.
- [55:49]
C
I knew you would.
- [55:50]
B
Yeah. I didn't recognize how much, but yeah.
- [55:52]
A
I got very excited again.
- [55:53]
B
I'm Glad he's dead because there's, you know, reasons I had to be jealous, I think, for a while.
- [55:58]
A
Yeah, it's okay. I try to keep my scholars to mostly dead because for my husband. But I ordered all of Marsha Liab's books. I read two this year, and I'm going to read the next two this coming year. Actually, we found out that Flannery o' Connor read Mercia Eliade, wrote a review.
- [56:13]
C
Of it, wrote a review of one.
- [56:14]
A
Of his books, because we started to really see a lot of his ideas in her fiction. And so that was really. That was very interesting. Kind of the. The Sacred Breaking through into the Secular. That's very Flannery o', Connor, and that's what he's talking about here. So that was a tremendously important book. He, of course, was friends, very good friends with Northrop Fry. They write letters back and forth, and you can see the. Them influencing each other if you read them side by side, which I did this year because I also read Reread the Secular Scripture for the Fellowship, and you can really see Eliade's ideas. The second of his book I read in preparation for the Harry Potter class. If you've listened to that podcast series, then, you know, we were talking about literary alchemy and the symbols of alchemy and that alchemy are. It's basically symbols for the journey of the soul. I'll just put it that way. It's not really about trying to turn metal into gold. It's about trying to turn your soul into pure gold. So I read the Forge and the Crucible by Marcia Eliade, which is on alchemy. And then I read a second book on alchemy by Titus Burkhart. And holy cow, if I thought I was in love with Marcia Eliade's mind. Titus Burkhart's mind just blew me away. I was like, I'm becoming obsessed with this guy. I wanted to order all his books on sacred art. Just really, really liked the way he thinks. You know, these guys are very much for helping us understand what. What sacramental images are and that we live in an iconographic universe and, you know, seeing past the. The flat surface materialism of our existence, that there is, you know, there's the great spiritual depths all around of us. Those were. Those were fantastic. Let's see. I also read Judi Dench's Shakespeare book on your recommendation, Cindy. I read that last January, and really, ENJ enjoyed that. And then the other book that really, really surprised me. So I have. I'M getting ahead of myself because I have a question that Are there any surprises this year? Anything you read, A good surprise or a bad surprise? In years past, I usually complain and give you my bad surprises. Right. I read this, and it turned out to be horrible. I actually didn't have any books like that this year. I had a good surprise, though. So when I was prepping for one of my classes, I discovered a new medieval scholar that I really, really like, D.W. robertson, Juice Jr. And I read his book on Chaucer, and I'm. I'm a huge fan now. I went out and ordered all of his books. I may have the best, world's best, D.W. robinson collection right now. Just. Just. What a mind. What a mind. And. And my students.
- [58:42]
B
Was he not here at Chapel Hill?
- [58:43]
A
He died here in Chapel Hill. He died here in North Carolina, although he didn't. He wasn't a teacher in North Carolina, but he retired in Chapel Hill. So Chapel Hill actually has a lot of his letters and things like that, which I might go poke around in. But I became a very intense fan. He. He's. In so many ways, he's the American CS Lewis. Like, he's trying to help modern. He's writing at the same time as Lewis, and he's trying to help modern readers really have a medieval imagination. And so, you know, I'm following his footsteps. I'm reading him, and he makes the case that the basis of medieval reading is St. Augustine, and it's St. Augustine channeling St. Paul, which becomes the basis of our conference. Okay, I don't want to give away my whole conference talk, but you'll hear a lot about that if you come to the conference. So after reading this, I decided I needed to read St. Augustine's on Christian Doctrine, which was the book that D.W. robertson said all this medieval way of reading comes from. So I start to read it on my own and then decide, oh, no, the whole Fellowship needs to read this. So we. We quickly made a change to the syllabus, and so we read it as a group. The Fellowship is my small group that of. Of students that I mentor in a special program you can find out about on our website. So we read Augustine's on Christian Doctrine and talk about somebody who's really dead. You don't have to worry about, honey, I. Plus, he was a monk, so you're fine. But I honestly kept. I kept saying, where has. Where has this mind been my whole life? And I've read Augustine before. I've read Confessions, but I had Never read this. I had never read him. Explaining this is how you read this.
- [60:19]
B
Surprised me because I find that I find De Doctrina Christiana to be one of his more difficult books that I would. I don't recommend it to students. It's very important, I mean, for understanding, you know, the way he read Scripture and any number of other things. But to someone who is comparatively new to Augustine's studies, I usually say begins somewhere else. But you really fell in love with it.
- [60:44]
A
I did. And so this is going to show you once again, I have a strange mind. And no, I really fell hard for Augustine. Really fell hard. I loved his snark, I loved the way he saw things. I, I got very excited about this book. I've been talking about it in all my classes. So I didn't realize, you know, you tell people not to read it because I'd be like, everybody's got to read Augustine. And I'm, I'm pretty sure that it's because I read DW Robertson first though, that I was able to encounter it differently, if that makes sense like it does. Because he had kept explaining like how this, you know, how this turns into Boccaccio's way of allegorical reading, how this turns into Chaucer's, this, how it turns into Shakespeare. And, and so I was very primed to sort of go backwards and see where the fruits of those, the seeds of those ideas came from. And they came from Augustine. So you will be hearing all about that in my talk. I will even in my talk be making the case that C.S. lewis is the Silver Chair is an allegory of Augustine's on Christian teaching. That's right. You heard it right.
- [61:40]
B
Bold.
- [61:41]
A
I ran this through my Good Books class and they were, they totally saw it. I taught them the Good Books version of Augustine. Yes, I did. Because this is, that's why I say I always do it new. Right. And they got so excited and just blew everything open. In fact, I was chatting with some of them the other day and they were saying how like that just ramped everything up for them. They're understanding it so much, so much more clearly. So yeah, those were my biggest, those were my big non fiction reads and I, I very much enjoyed them. Yeah, that's my surprise for the year Augustine. Did you have a book that surprised you this year?
- [62:18]
B
Yeah, actually here's one I did not enjoy and I. This is one of my favorite novelists. I got around to reading the Magician by W. Somerset Maugham and I didn't like it. It's, I knew the plot beforehand. It's the story of a group of English people living abroad in Paris who come into contact with this man who might be a real sorcerer with all the danger and, you know, spiritual, you know, peril that that implies. Or he might be a fraudulent guru of some kind. And I thought, well, this is an interesting setup and I can imagine mom handling that material really well. It didn't light my fire, for whatever reason. It's a finely written book, but the oddly anticlimactic and just not very interesting. And I've never read a novel of his that I don't like, I think, and I've read many of his. So, yeah, it's strange when one of your, one of your heroes lets you, lets you down.
- [63:16]
A
It is strange.
- [63:17]
B
But anyway, I mean, that's, that's no kick against him, you know, he still wrote of Human Bondage and the Moon and Sixpence and Painted the Painted Veil and any number of others. So I still like him a lot.
- [63:29]
A
Cindy, did you have any book this, this year that surprised you, good or bad?
- [63:33]
C
Yeah, I had two books that surprised me. Good. Both good. The one I'll do the easier one first, it's Moby Dick. I, I insisted on that was my challenge book for the year because every time I get a list of books and that's on there and I'm just like, I have never read that. I never read that. But Elaine shoot told me she, she read it and she ended up liking it. So I thought, well, I'm going to try it. And I loved was so Dickensian and it was, it was just a great story. I, I, I didn't have any problems with it. I thought it was going to be really hard, boring read and talking about the whales and so that white whale is off my back. And now it was a long book and it was that, that was one of my decisions this year to go ahead and read some of these longer books, no matter whether it, you know, messed up my stats or not. But the other book is a short book. Someone mentioned this book and it's by an author that we have gone over before, Elizabeth, Elizabeth von Arnhem. And I'd never heard of it and the title is just blah. It's called Expiation. And I don't know that I would ever picked it up because, you know, it doesn't the other book, the last book I read of hers was Elizabeth in Her German Garden, which was delightful. This book was so good. I thought this lady, whatever she writes is just excellent. This is a story of a woman who. It's going to sound bad because it is bad. And they make it. Expiation means atonement, so to speak. Her husband dies and in his will he. And this is at a time when this is devastating to someone. He doesn't. He leaves her nothing. And she had conducted a long term affair with a man and she thought her husband never knew. But in his will it becomes apparent that he did know. And she's part of a very. He was part of a very big family and has a very old matriarch who is over this whole family. And I absolutely adored the matriarch. She's the matriarch that I want to be someday. She sits in her chair and just act. Just wonders why they're all fussing about everything and couldn't they just calm down, enjoy life? And anyway, it's a really, really well written book. Fun and also quite deep in its understandings of life and atonement and. And forgiveness. So even though it starts out on a rocky. If you don't, you know, nobody likes adultery, but she really wrestles with it in a way that is very honest and beautiful.
- [66:32]
A
You know, as soon as you said expatiation, I was reminded of the book Expiation. Expiation, Sorry, atonement by Ian McEwen. Because I'm pretty sure he was influenced by her.
- [66:45]
C
Okay.
- [66:45]
A
I feel like I read that somewhere.
- [66:47]
C
I'll have to read that. I know that's on a lot of lists too. And I've never.
- [66:50]
A
I read it a long time ago. I found it at Goodwill and read it. I actually don't remember that much about it. So that's. I can't say yay or nay. I actually don't remember that much.
- [67:01]
C
But.
- [67:01]
A
But I feel like when I read when we. When we did the Enchanted April on the podcast and I was doing my research on Elizabeth von Arman, I feel like I read that he was. Is a modern author who was influenced by her. But I could be making that up. You never know. I'm an unreliable narrator. Yeah.
- [67:18]
C
Another reason I'm glad I'm going to Germany this next year, so because she's such a great German author or whatever she is. What is she? She married a German.
- [67:29]
A
She.
- [67:29]
B
Yeah. The man of Wrath.
- [67:31]
C
Yes.
- [67:33]
A
Yeah.
- [67:34]
B
Do you call me the man? Will you call me the man of Wrath when you write?
- [67:37]
A
I absolutely will not. Okay.
- [67:38]
B
No. Okay.
- [67:39]
A
You could.
- [67:41]
C
You're gonna have to be more wrathful if you really.
- [67:44]
A
You're like the man of Pedantry. I would just call you the Pedant. Capital P. Yes. The Pedant King. He corrected my. See, you just corrected me. See, but fortunately, I like it when he corrects me.
- [67:54]
B
The speaking of mean pet names that authors have for their family members, the. The Mitford sisters evidently would refer to their father behind his back as the medieval relic.
- [68:08]
A
See, now, if my kids call me that, I could live with that.
- [68:10]
B
I would be okay with it.
- [68:11]
C
I get so mad at the Medford sisters. You know, they were raised in a Charlotte Mason home, and they all became, like, extremely extraordinary. And they were also mad at their mom and dad all the time. I'm like, really? You just wanted to be ordinary like everybody else? Like, you're sad that I know.
- [68:30]
B
I feel the. I think they're both a really good and kind of a frightening advertisement for that mode of education because they're brilliant, but they also became communists and Nazis and things like that. Yeah, sure. They thought for themselves. Yeah.
- [68:45]
C
One wrote a biography of the funeral of caskets.
- [68:51]
B
Yeah, yeah. Wow.
- [68:55]
A
All right, well, okay, so how about fiction, Mr. Banks? What's some fiction?
- [69:00]
B
So I've already mentioned what I liked, what I didn't like in Olivia Manning. I mentioned W. Somerset Maugham. I'm rereading a book that I do not recommend to anyone else, but I myself really like it. Juris Karl Huysman's a rebor, which means against nature or against the grain in French. It's alluded to. It's mostly known to English readers because it's alluded to in the Portrait of Dorian Gray.
- [69:28]
A
It's the yellow.
- [69:29]
B
It's the yellow book that has a corrupting influence on Dorian. And it's a novel that really isn't even a story. It's brilliantly written, spiritually terrifying in some ways.
- [69:41]
A
This would explain why it has this low cover.
- [69:43]
B
It's about. It's about this wealthy epicurean kind of layabout in late 19th century France who doesn't really live for any purpose except to amuse himself in a variety of decadent ways. It's one of those books I definitely do not recommend to anyone below a certain age. It's still kind of a small masterpiece in its own way. So that's my. That's Mr. Banks's eccentric reading. And other than that, I reread. I kind of did what I always do. I reread some Thomas Hardy. Let me see. I spent a good deal of time with George Eliot because of that Victorian's class I was teaching. So I got to. You know, Middlemarch was. I mean, something I had to read, but also a treatment. And yeah, I. Yeah, I wish I had more titles to throw at you, but I don't.
- [70:31]
A
You did read novels, though, because I.
- [70:33]
B
Remember a fair number.
- [70:34]
A
I remember after your Cromwell, you said, I have a. I have a stack of novels I picked out to read after Cromwell. And you did, because I remember you carried.
- [70:42]
B
Yeah, let me see. And some Hugh Walpole I read. I read a new Hugh Walpole that I had not ever touched before, which is set in the Elizabethan age, which was actually almost shockingly violent. Book called Bright Pageant. Yeah. But if that.
- [70:57]
C
Are you a general fan of Walpole? Because I don't think I've ever read him. I bought. I have several of his volumes on.
- [71:03]
B
I like him a lot. Yeah, I think he's an underappreciated novelist.
- [71:07]
A
You recommend him doing.
- [71:09]
B
Yeah, the sort of Jekyll and Hyde book he wrote is the Killer and the Slain.
- [71:12]
A
That was good. I think you'd like that one.
- [71:13]
B
That one's. Yeah, that one is a page turner. And yeah, he also wrote some cathedral or church sort of church Inner life of church politics books like the Cathedral. Sort of like Anthony Trollope. That is. That was one I liked a lot as well.
- [71:29]
A
And he's another contemporary of Elizabeth von Arnon.
- [71:31]
B
Yeah, he died in 1940. So, yeah, he kind of bridges the end of the 19th, beginning of the 20th century. But, yeah, very, very interesting mind. And. And he's very good. He's a very civilized writer. But he describes dangerous and violent situations with just extraordinarily. Extraordinarily well and tastefully, I think, for the most part. But, yeah, he had a fascination with the dark side of human nature.
- [72:04]
A
All right, Cindy, how about you? What was your fiction reading like this year?
- [72:08]
C
I did read two Sharon K. Penman books. If you've never read Sharon K. Penman, I'm in the Plantagenet series that she's done very, very, very long books. But, boy, do you get to know the characters so well. You really get to know Eleanor of Aquitaine in these books and just very well done historical fiction that these books age well because I think they might have been written in the 80s, 70s. I'm not sure. I am very mysterious person. Sent me verdict of 12, which is a murder mystery. And it. It's a great story. So the ver. It goes through the life story. It takes you back through the 12 jurors on at this trial and tells about their life. And then, you know, we get the verdict at the end.
- [73:01]
A
So there's that to me too, but I haven't read it yet.
- [73:03]
C
Oh, yeah, it's very good.
- [73:04]
B
Raymond Postgate. Yeah. The author was an interesting guy. He was. He wrote mystery novels. He was a Marxist and a food and wine critic. I don't know how you can be a Marxist and a food and wine critic at the same time, but that's a really interesting set of Marxist guy.
- [73:20]
C
That gets to, you know, the Kim Philby who lands in Russia is like, huh, not what I was thinking.
- [73:26]
B
Yeah, yeah. Right.
- [73:28]
A
Before rumors get started. Before rumors get started. I should point out that Mr. Banks is the one who gave us that book.
- [73:33]
B
Yeah.
- [73:34]
A
He's like always on the hunt to find detective.
- [73:37]
C
No.
- [73:38]
A
Yeah, Detective novelist that you and I don't know.
- [73:40]
C
No, no, no. When I said mysterious, I thought that would be the giveaway obvious.
- [73:44]
A
Yes.
- [73:45]
C
But then I read a couple books that you guys had recommended over time called I Read Ruth this year. Oh, did you love it? I did love it. It was so not moralistic in a book that could have been. I just couldn't believe how much I liked that book. So that was a very devotional read for me, and it would be a great book for, like, my summer course. Except for my summer course we need a short book, and that's a very, very, very long book. But I very much enjoyed that. I read the Mill and the Floss, another one that I had never read.
- [74:25]
A
Okay. What did you think? I wrote my thesis on that it.
- [74:28]
C
Was the same as Ruth. It was like.
- [74:30]
A
Yeah.
- [74:31]
C
In my mind I was getting them all mixed up because it was the same time period and it just was so such. I mean, of course I knew it was going to be a good book. I love George Eliot, and it was a really good book.
- [74:43]
A
I've heard people complain about the Mill and the Floss and that quite. I don't know why, it's just so good. I don't understand.
- [74:49]
B
Yeah, there's one or two of her that are not on a. Like, Daniel Deronda maybe is not quite on a level with Italian one.
- [74:55]
A
She did okay.
- [74:56]
B
Romola. I've read Romola. And she knew that period really well. I mean, she. She probably could have been like, you know, Regius professor of Renaissance history. That's the level of knowledge she brings to that book. That's kind of a problem, though, right? Because, I mean, she gives all this atmosphere and background detail and almost kind of forgets to tell a story along the way. So it's not a terrible book. It's Still George Eliot. She still has a fantastic mind, but it, It's. It kind of drags. Ramola does, but. Yeah. The mill and the floss is. I don't care who you are. That book's a masterpiece.
- [75:27]
A
Thank you.
- [75:27]
B
Yeah, I'd say Adam Bede. That I love.
- [75:29]
A
Adam Bead.
- [75:30]
B
Middlemarch. Middlemarch. Silas Marner. Those are kind of her four. Like, if you. If you have time in your life, try to find.
- [75:37]
C
It was a surprise ending. I really didn't see that ending coming, but.
- [75:41]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [75:42]
C
But we won't say anything more about it.
- [75:44]
B
Go there. Yeah.
- [75:47]
C
Okay. I'm going to name one more book, and I. I do this with fear and trembling because I'm gonna maybe say something negative about a series that people are going crazy about. This is the. Of the Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lyon. I think I'll make good copy here for people that either hate us or love us. The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lyon, Volume 8. So it was suggested to me by someone I trust very much on books, and I started reading them, and at first I absolutely thought it was amazing. We had a lot of quotations, a lot of all your favorite people that she's referring to in this book. And you get tons of literary winks and nods. So there's eight of them right now, and each one gets longer than the one before. So they start. So they're this girl's diary. But after a while, they really, really start to drag. Now, like they may, if you think about. Well, what about Dickens? He wrote, you know, these serial books, and they took a long time to tell the story. And now people always say, oh, Dickens talks too much, that sort of thing. But I just had a very, very hard time. I think number eight did get. Did recover a little bit at the very end. But I did have some problems with the fact that this girl, Emma, she always has witty conversations. But. But there's a whole cast of characters that walk through the novel, and every single one of them she has witty banter with. I'm like, I've never seen anyone have this much witty banter with every single person that they meet in the world. Which is fun to read, but after a while, it's just so wearing like. It's like all you do is have witty banter with everybody. And she always meets very handsome men. And there's like half the book, more than half, three quarters of the book is her. Her ring of men that she's interacting with. And of course, you don't know who she's going to end up with. And you think this and you think that and it just. After a while, it feels almost a little bit like it's just tutu now. I don't know.
- [78:05]
B
We'll.
- [78:06]
C
We'll see if how it turns out. I did. I did read all eight volumes. I see why people like them. I just have. I can't suspend my, my brain that at. At this point to, to feel like, yeah, you know, you're such a. Are you only talking to yourself all the time? Like, if we could each only have witty banter, you know, with ourselves, then it would be great. But anyway, I. That's going to hurt some people. And I just want to say that I sincerely apologize for hurting you. And if you like the book, that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you. I realize that we all strongly desire to have witty banter with people and we don't have it, so I get it. But at the same time, it was just a little much for me.
- [79:01]
B
A book I should have mentioned earlier when I was talking about that other French book, one I liked without really expecting to love it. A Diary of a Country Priest by Georges Bernano. There's a new translation of that out from Ignatius Press.
- [79:16]
C
I thought I wouldn't like that book either. I thought I'm just going to read this. But I ended up really enjoying it.
- [79:21]
B
Yeah, I had read him before, but. And I guess this is the first, like, I think unexpurgated or complete translation of it in English. There was a earlier one that I guess left something out, but yeah, I highly recommend that. And I, like I said, I approached this book not really thinking. I thought it would be kind of a strong, bitter medicine and there is something of that to it. But yeah, it drew me in and I felt. Felt myself very comfortable in the world of this book, which is again, not a really cheerful read, I will tell you that much, but. A Diary of a Country Priest by Georges Bernano. And one of the reasons I liked it is it did better than any book. I can think of a good job of portraying what I think must be kind of a spiritual challenge to any pastor or priest. The knowledge that your flock, wherever, whenever that is, probably ignores what you say a good deal of the time. And yeah, you don't necessarily always have the effect on their lives that you want to. Maybe that's a good lesson for teachers as well.
- [80:24]
A
I'm glad. Glad Cindy put. Oh, and mothers too. Yes, and mothers. Yeah, I'm glad Cindy put her head on the chopping block because I'm about to put mine there. So we'll hold hands as we go up the scaffold. Maybe the blade will be duller because it went through your head first.
- [80:42]
C
I'll.
- [80:42]
A
I'll put my neck out second. I'm gonna start backwards. So I just finished my annual reread of the Christmas Pig by J.K. rowling. This is my third time reading it. It just gets better and better. It is Dante for kids. I is the spiritual journey of going from being lost to being found. It is a beautiful story. I'm thinking about maybe doing a webinar on it next, next December, next Christmas, because I really feel like I need to unpack all this stuff. It is. It is really, really good. One content consideration. Which is. Which didn't even occur to me, but I saw some people on Facebook talking about it. It does deal with divorce. So if that's something you want to be considerate about, you know, with your children, just read it first. It's not long, but it is a. It is. It is a delightful, delightful book. And the divorce here is used to set up feeling lost. Feeling, Feeling lost. And I'm also. Even though I had this whole year of very intense, you know, professional reading, I am closing out the year here with fun reads. Christmas Pig is one and one. I finally got around to opening a book by an author you have been talking about forever, Cindy. And I've wanted to read her. And then a friend of mine, Elise Nelson, shout out to her. She gave me both a hard copy of the Christmas Pig and she gave me this book, too. And so I finally started it, and I'm hoping to finish it over the break, but I'm reading my first Elizabeth Goudge book, Green Dolphin street, and I'm loving it. Loving it.
- [82:19]
C
I love that.
- [82:20]
A
I've been annoyed that I didn't have.
- [82:21]
C
Time to get into it, but it's so good.
- [82:25]
B
I've seen that one recommended a lot on the page. Is that supposed to be kind of her classic? Her best.
- [82:31]
A
What do you think, Cindy?
- [82:31]
C
I don't think so. The Dean's watch, I think, is considered her best. She has some really good books, though. I mean, you really can't go wrong with any of her books.
- [82:41]
A
Well, you know, you've been talking about her forever. And then, of course, when I was doing all of my research on J.K. rowling for the Harry Potter classes, Elizabeth Gooch is a huge, huge influence on Rowling. And so I became very intrigued with all the things that I was reading about. She's somebody that's also a very sacramental writer.
- [82:56]
B
What was the other book you read that? It was Dodie Smith.
- [82:59]
A
Not, well, you're stealing my thunder.
- [83:01]
C
But yes, okay.
- [83:02]
A
Yes, I kept.
- [83:03]
B
I was just setting you up here. I didn't want you to forget.
- [83:05]
A
No, it's on my list. But thank you. Thank you. Okay. Okay. All right. Well, I'll jump to that, since he said it. So I read this. I read I Captured the Castle at the beginning of the year. A lot of people recommended it. I had seen the movie and did not know that it was a book and read it and was just charmed beyond anything I can say. I just loved it. I started saying, this needs to be on the podcast. It's Pride and Prejudice with a twist. And I won't say what the twist is, but I was intrigued because a lot of people on the Facebook group struggle with the ending. And so I thought, well, let me give it a shot. Let me see what's going on. And then I saw immediately what was going on, and I saw why people are getting tripped up. It's because they don't know what kind of story they're reading. But, oh, I loved it. I loved I Captured the Castle. That was. That was really, really delightful. And Dodie Smith is. I. I mean, she's the same person who wrote A thousand and one Dalmatians 101. See, there you go.
- [84:01]
B
Did you have a childhood? Did you have a childhood? Seriously?
- [84:04]
A
Ms. Stanton, read that book. I saw the movie, so I didn't know how many zeros there were.
- [84:09]
B
I'll correct this.
- [84:10]
A
No, that's like. Honestly, that's very chaotic.
- [84:12]
B
No, I love that. The cartoon version. Brilliant. Sorry. That's one of the best. Disney's. One of the best.
- [84:17]
A
But did she write anything else, like, really adult stuff? But I found out that I captured the castle. People are going to think I had a whole J.K. rowling inspired year, but it turns out that I Captured the Castle by Dodie Smith is Also one of J.K. rowling's favorite books because it is a book about the development of the mind of a writer. Okay.
- [84:35]
B
I mean, that tracks, certainly.
- [84:36]
A
Yeah, yeah. Cindy, is your face telling me I'm looking up?
- [84:41]
C
Because I think I read a couple years ago a book she wrote about her childhood, which was very, very good, but I can't find the name of it right now, but yes. Yeah, she had a really interesting childhood, and it was very, very interesting book, but I can't. It's a memoir that she wrote.
- [85:03]
A
So, as I said, most of my reading this year was rereads. I'm trying to hit the ones that were not rereads, but I reread all of Harry Potter very long books in preparation of the class. And I also started. Well, I got a hold of the bootlegged. Should I say this? Are the cops gonna come for me? I got a hold of a bootleg copy of all of the audiobooks of Dorothy Sayers that are not available in the United States. So I got those Bred by Ian Carmichael. And so I had been listening to those as comfort reads and really enjoying those. So I haven't quite finished the whole series, but I've been working my way through that. Everything we did on the podcast was a reread for me, except for the Jungle Book and Cindy. You'll be happy to know I was completely charmed. I loved the Jungle Book. Loved it and really was like, where has this been all my life? I really, really enjoyed that. In fact, looking at the podcast list here, so we did. This includes the Best of Episodes, but we did Brave New World, Dracula, Goblin Market, Age of Innocence, Jungle Book, Harry Potter, A Good Man Is Hard to Find, the Enchanted April Experiment and Criticism, and Much Ado About Nothing. So all of those except Jungle Book were a reread for me. I think Brave New World might be one of the best series we've ever done.
- [86:16]
B
It was fun to do. Certainly. It was a book I enjoyed much more the second time. I didn't remember necessarily falling in love with it in college when I read it for the first, but. But, yeah.
- [86:26]
A
And so, okay, I had, like, I'm cringing here, but, you know, I shall confess my sins to you guys at the. At the end of last year, I had said on the podcast that I hoped this year would be a year. I knocked off a bunch of Charles Dickens novels. That did not happen. My reading went in a very different direction. I did download and start Bleak House and. But there were just so many other things I had to read for different classes I was teaching.
- [86:48]
B
That's a book that needs your attention.
- [86:50]
A
Otherwise, it needs. Exactly, exactly. I feel like I can put on the Dorothy Sayers on an audio and be somewhat distracted because I've read them so many times.
- [86:57]
B
It's one of those books you can't just keep in the bathroom.
- [86:59]
A
Right, right. So I put that aside. I did, however, reread one of the books I mentioned at the end of last year's podcast. I did reread Vanity Fair. We both did. Yeah.
- [87:10]
B
I think I did around last Christmas, but I'll count it for this year.
- [87:12]
A
Sure. Yeah, we both. And it was so good.
- [87:15]
B
Oh, yeah, we're gonna do some Thackeray because we've never done anything by him. And Vanity Fair is one of those. If you like the panoramic social novel that the 19th century produced so many of, Vanity Fair is for you.
- [87:28]
A
Okay. So I have to tell this story because this was an example of my husband realizing my wife has an amazing mind and can intuit things that turn out to be true. So I had originally said I was gonna reread Vanity Fair because I wanted to see if it was Gone with the Window because I was pretty sure those are the same books. And of course, it was. The whole time I was reading and I was yelling out stuff to. To Mr. Banks, like, this is literally Gone with the Win. I mean, down to all these little details, except, you know, two different wars. But then the longer I read it, I started thinking, this is not only Gone with the Win, I think Vanity Fair is War and Peace. So I was seeing the same thing, like this small group, this most social circle I set against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars. And. And so, anyway, Bit, you and I were driving.
- [88:09]
B
We looked at. I looked at him because I thought.
- [88:11]
A
Yeah, but we were driving somewhere. Let me tell the whole story. We were driving somewhere. I don't remember where we were going. We're on a road trip, and I was driving, and I just blurted this out. And you said, Ms. Stanford. I don't know about that. And you pulled out your phone.
- [88:23]
B
I think I said, prepare to be wrong, Ms. Stanford. And then you were correct.
- [88:26]
A
I was correct. He looked it up, and Tolstoy actually said, yes, I'm writing the Russian Vanity Fair.
- [88:32]
B
So I annoyed me. But you were right.
- [88:33]
A
Yes, yes.
- [88:35]
B
It happens with my brother a lot as well, when he and I will argue about some minute literary point, and I vainly say, like, prepare to be. To eat your words. Then I have to eat.
- [88:46]
A
Yeah, you're learning that. You can trust me, though, when I have a sense that there's a literary connection, it's almost never wrong. So I was very excited to rub it in, see that Vanity Fair was, in fact, War and Peace. Something that was not a reread. It was a new author, I discovered. I can't remember if I told you about this or not, Cindy, but I got several people reading this. So I ran across a title of a Japanese detective novel as a series, actually, but this was the first one that was called the Greatest Locked Room mystery ever. So I read that and really enjoyed it. It was called the Decagon House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji. And that was a lot of fun. I haven't gotten around to reading his others, but some of the people I recommended it to did. They went and read the other ones, so that was fun. All right. So most of my fiction reading, however, went to this other thing that I'm going to tell, which was a whole bunch of long novels. This is going to be me putting my head on the chopping block and decided. I decided to say something.
- [89:43]
C
Oh, Angelina, you said maybe the. The blade will be not as sharp. You know, when your head's on the chopping block, you want the blade to be sharp and not correct.
- [89:52]
A
I want. I'll go first. Let them kill me first so I don't have to have to have the grief of watching you be killed.
- [89:59]
B
Let's not pursue this metaphor any further.
- [90:02]
A
I don't see pitchforks outside my door right now at all. All right, I'm putting my head on the chopping block right now. And I'm gonna say that most of my fiction reading this year went to rereading the entire Corman Strike series in preparation for the Hallmark man, which came out. And I read twice. And here's why. I'm putting my head on the chopping block for that. That I have repeatedly said on this show that these books are not for everybody.
- [90:27]
B
Yeah. The Hallmark man will never appeal under Hallmark Channel.
- [90:30]
C
Indeed.
- [90:30]
A
Indeed, it should not. Although the Hallmark man was totally Dorothy Sayers. Whose body.
- [90:36]
C
Yeah, right. It was.
- [90:37]
A
Because they find a body and they don't know who it is. It was. It was Dorothy Sayers. It was. It was. Anyway, if you've been listening to the podcast for a while, you've heard me talk about these books, and so I feel like I need. I need to say something about this. I would say that the vast majority of people who've heard me talk about the books and have picked them up and read them, have read them and loved them and seen what I have seen. But there are some people who read them and do not see what I see and simply cannot keep that to themselves, shall we say? And then take to my Facebook group and rebuke me harshly for saying that. Not. I've never recommended the books. Actually, I've strongly said these are not for everybody. You should not read these. These are hard boiled. If you don't like hard boiled detective novels, don't read these. And yet there are people who don't like these types of novels, read them and then take to my own Facebook group and rebuke.
- [91:28]
B
You mentioned the pitchforks outside.
- [91:30]
A
Yes, yes. And it's a strange thing to be rebuked for liking a book because I haven't recommended it. I don't teach it in a class. We don't do it on the podcast. I've simply said that I like these books, and some people feel the need to rebuke me for that. So I want to say something about that because I think that it is connected to the idea of reading in general. In experiment and criticism, C.S. lewis says a good reader will find good things in a book and that if somebody likes a book that you don't like, y' all are probably not reading the same book. And that is what I want to say about these books. If you didn't like it and you don't understand how I liked it, we're not reading the same book. I am reading a book that is one of the most magnificent Journey of the Soul books I have ever read. I. I am blown away where she continues to go. I am blown away with her understanding of the literary tradition. I am understanding. Blown away by the symbols of this book. I am blown away that she is repeatedly in this book teaching us how to read and how not to read. I have recommended this book to many, many, many devoted and devout Christian women who have read these books and loved them. I know pastors, wives who are reading these books and loved them. If you didn't like it, if it wasn't for you, if you can't look past the language, it's fine. No judgment. I have said a million times, these are not for everybody. But I would appreciate if you did not judge me and judge the people who like it, because we really are reading. We're reading a different book. And that's something that we need to learn in the literary life, is that we are probably not reading the same book.
- [93:12]
C
Well, you know, Angelina, I read those books before you, and I actually suggested them to you years ago, but I didn't suggest them publicly. And then you were the one who drug us both out of the closet into the. The light of day. Because I really did feel like I was hesitant. I knew that people would be tripped up by, how can you read this book Book. These hardboiled books. I tend to like darker books anyway. I don't know why I like darker stories, but I know people who. Who can't read dark stories and don't enjoy them at all. Although I will say my Husband listened to them on audio. And he is definitely a guy who likes, does not like Hard Boiled. And he, he enjoyed those books, too.
- [94:02]
A
Yeah. And I mean, again, they are not for everybody. You should know yourself as a reader. And they're not something I think everybody has to read. I just have a hard time keeping my mouth shut about things I'm excited about. And I, I think J.K. rowling is the best living author, and I will say that without hesitation. And these books are just a breathtaking exploration of the literary tradition, if you know how to see it. And some people don't know how to see it, and that's fine. But, you know, those of us who do are pretty thrilled at what we're seeing. Yeah, I could say more about that, but, but, but I won't.
- [94:38]
B
I will say that, like, I'm here, I think I might be one of these people. Not that I'm offended by this particular series. I'm a person, though, as we talked before, like the limits of my literary sensibility, I find that just the mystery novel as a genre, I tend to butt my head against it even when I know I'm reading a really good one.
- [95:00]
A
You know that about. Yeah. And it's fine. It's fine. You know, it's fine for us to have.
- [95:04]
B
Some people don't like historical fiction. I really love historical fiction.
- [95:07]
A
I mean, for me, I'm drawn to the detective form because of the romance genre, you know, and, and, and also.
- [95:15]
B
Because it's a form that's obviously a form.
- [95:17]
C
That's right.
- [95:18]
A
That's right. I mean, these, these are displaced medieval romances, as Dorothy Sayers explains. These are knight errants and their journeys of the soul. And they're highly symbolic.
- [95:30]
C
But, yeah, you have to ask yourself why, like, almost every British television show is a detective show. And really that, that is a question to ponder, you know, And I know we could come up with some real trite answers, like the, the need for, you know, things to have a, a closure to them and that sort of thing. But it really is interesting how incredibly popular at the detective novel is.
- [95:59]
A
And, you know, there, there are different kinds of detective novels. There's the cozy ones. That's your Agatha Christie. Right. And then there's the hard boiled. That's your Raymond Chandler, that's your J.K. rowling. And I enjoy both of those, actually. And they, they, they operate slightly differently. But about the Hard boiled ones, they function very similarly to the way Flannery o' Connor functions that, you know, in a cozy detective novel. We have good defeating evil and order restored. But, you know, it's very neat. And in the hard boiled detective novel, it's much more like a Flannery o' Connor story. Like, it's, It's. It's showing you the evil in the world in this way that makes you very uncomfortable, and that's very intentional. And then showing that even in the midst of real darkness and real sin, good defeats evil, order is restored. The gospel shines through even then. But not everybody can handle that. And it's totally okay. And I've never, ever suggested that it's a moral failing if somebody doesn't want to read a hard boiled book. My point is simply, there are lots of Christian people who can read these books and enjoy them and see the gospel in them. And so if you choose not to read them, that's totally fine, but there's no need for you to express your public upsetness that some of us. Us find goodness there. And that is a real. That's part of the journey of a literary person is realizing that we can have different literary tastes. And. And that's. And that's totally okay. You and I have slightly different literary tastes.
- [97:30]
B
I think so. Ours overlap a lot, but they're not. They're not coterminous by any means.
- [97:34]
A
I'm a lot more comfortable with genre fiction and highly symbolic things you're much more comfortable in, like a novel of manners, which I do. I do enjoy a novel of manners. You know, I don't think that either one of us takes a superior position to the other. You know, the literary universe is. It's large, it's vast.
- [97:54]
B
A house with many mansions.
- [97:55]
A
Exactly. Exactly. Well, this has been a great treat to talk about our reading, all the ups and downs and maybe because I hid my Corman strike praise under Cindy saying something negative about the Emma Lyon books. No one will even hear that. They'll just be so. Coming for. Please go for. Send your complaints to Cindy Rollins at.
- [98:19]
C
Yeah, heads up. We'll call this episode Heads Will Roll.
- [98:22]
A
Heads Will Roll.
- [98:23]
B
It's the Christmas season, after all. Something charming like that.
- [98:26]
A
Yes. Cindy, thank you so much for making time for us. It's so good to talk to you again.
- [98:33]
C
Yeah, thank you. It's always cathartic for me to talk about my year in reading, and especially this year when I felt a bit. Bit of a failure for it.
- [98:41]
A
Well, I know everyone will enjoy it. I say it's good to talk to you. We talk all the time. I just mean officially in the podcast. Yes. So I Hope you guys have got some good literary recommendations. You can tell us on the Patreon Forum and in Discord what you've got going on with your reading this year. What was some titles that you liked? What were some wins and some maybe some some disappointments? We look forward to hearing that. And again, you can join our patreon discussion@patreon.com backslash theliterarylife life we have a full Patreon forum which is really an amazing place and has some fantastic conversations. There's a Corman Strike reading group in there and you can find out what's going on with Cindy and sign up for her newsletter@morningtimeformoms.com thank you for being with us in 2025 and I look forward to a fantastic 2026 with you guys as well. So happy New Year and see you next year. And remember, keep crafting your literary life because stories will save the world. Thank you for listening to the Literary Life Podcast brought to you by our loyal patreon sponsors. Visit HouseOfHumaneLetters.com to find Angelina and Thomas and to sign up 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.
- [100:34]
B
Spellbound by Emily Bronte the night is darkening round me the wild winds coldly blow But a tyrant's spell has bound me, and I cannot, cannot go. The giant trees are bending, their bare boughs weighed with snow, and the storm is fast descending, and yet I cannot go. Clouds beyond clouds above me, Wastes beyond wastes below but nothing drear can move me I will not, cannot go.