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The Literary Life Podcast
Episode 310: "Best of" - What to Do When The Literary Life Feels Overwhelming (Ep. 231)
01:37:55
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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to the Literary Life Podcast. We've grown quite significantly since our debut in 2019, and we've had many requests to highlight older episodes that new listeners may have missed, as well as revisit listener favorites. To honor that request, I present to you this episode of the Best of the Literary Life Podcast.
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B
This is not just another book chat podcast. Lifelong reader Cindy Rollins joins teachers Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks for an ongoing conversation about the skill and art of reading. Well, explore the lost intellectual tradition and discover how to fully enter into the great works of literature. Learn what books mean while delighting in the sheer joy of imagination. Each week we will rescue story from the ivory tower and bring it to your couch, your kitchen and your commute. The Literary Life is for everyone because in the words of Stratford Caldecott, to be enchanted by story is to be granted a deeper insight into reality. Join us for an ever unfolding discussion of how stories will save the world. This is the Literary Life Podcast.
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C
Foreign.
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B
Welcome to the Literary Life Podcast. I am Angelina Stanford and today I am not here with the mysterious Mr. Banks. He's ever more mysterious and he has mysteriously disappeared. Instead, I'm here to talk about a topic today that has been on my mind for a long time and I'm very excited to talk about it. We're going to try to answer the question today what to do when you are feeling overwhelmed and discouraged by the literary life. And to help us answer that question today, I have brought back two of our most popular Literary Life of Episode guests. We have Emily Rabel and Joan Rose. Emily and Joan, welcome to today's Episode.
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D
Thank you for having us.
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E
Yes, thank you so much. Glad to be here.
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B
And since the mysterious Mr. Banks has mysteriously disappeared, I had, I had no, no other options but to send up the bat signal and beg and plead for someone to take a sabbatical from her sabbatical. And she is here today. The crowd goes wild. Cindy Rollins, welcome back to your podcast.
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C
Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. I have missed being on the podcast, even though it's. I definitely needed a sabbatical.
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B
Yes, I know better because I know what's going on in your life to say, how's the sabbatical going? Because then we'd have to. We have to stop and pray for you. I guess all we'll say is that it was a very providential moment that you, you felt God prompting you to take a break and then you quickly discovered why, why he was telling you to take a break.
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C
It's been a ride so. So yeah, looking forward to the days when it's not quite so exciting around here.
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B
Well, I am very, very happy to have you here today. Feels good to be back with you and chatting with you on the podcast. This year's Literary Life annual online conference has moved to January, so it's right around the corner January 23rd through 30th. We moved it to earlier in the year because you guys requested it, and I think it is going to be the perfect kickoff for the second semester of school. I think this is shaping up to be one of the most important conferences we've ever done and certainly it's very, very timely. The theme is the Letter Killeth and the Spirit Quickeneth. Reading Like a Human 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 word. We need machines to read for us because we can no longer read like humans. To understand how we got here, we have to cast our eyes to the other side of what C.S. lewis calls the Great Divide, the invisible curtain that separates us from the past. For the seeds of our current crisis were planted a long time ago and the path of renewal starts in the same place. Looking back before the Machine Age, we can learn to recover a more human way to read and therefore to live. This year's keynote speaker is Dr. Jason Baxter and he is going to be speaking on Deep Reading in the Age of Hypertext. I'll be following him with a talk called the Great Overcoming Modern Illiteracy. Jen Rogers is up next with On Norman Keeps and the Two Towers of All Souls. Words come alive in J.R.R. tolkien's the Notion Club papers. Next will be the mysterious Mr. Banks with a talk called St. Paul and His A Lecture on the Mind of an Apostle and His Use of Writings Sacred and secular. And Dr. Ann Phillips will be bringing it all home with a fantastic talk called how to Read a Greek Tragedy or How Greek Tragedy Teaches Us how to Read. And this year we have something brand new we'll be introducing on the last day of the conference we have a student panel of House of Humane Letter students who will be talking with us about their experiences learning how to read and therefore live like humans and Then I'll end things with closing remarks right after. As I said, I am very excited about this conference, really hyped. I think it's going to be incredibly important, incredibly timely, and I think you're going to find it just a great boon to everything that's going on in the culture right now and will inspire you and encourage you. So again, that's January 23rd through 30th. Everything's live or later. The sessions will be recorded and you can watch them as your leisure. We'll have a discussion forum where you can interact with the speakers as well. I look forward and I hope to see you guys January 23rd through 30th. You can register@houseofhumaneletters.com and lastly, don't forget that the amazing, wonderful Dr. Michael Drought, his brand new book published on Tolkien, published by Norton of all things, is rising to the top of the charts. I still pinch myself that he wants to be involved with us here and he will be sharing his expertise next semester in a 16 week class called Viking and Old Norse Culture. Guys, this is your chance to take an actual college class with a world class professor for a fraction of the cost. So join us for all of that fun stuff we've got coming up and I hope to see you guys at the conference in January. Now back to our program. And Cindy, now that you're on the podcast, I can tell you a story that I've been wanting to tell you. I think I may have actually boxed you this story. I can't remember, but I know I didn't say it on the air, so I'll, I'll say the story on the air, but it's an example in my mind, I think of how so many of our educational goals you get there sort of indirectly. And so much of our modern mindset is we think if I want to get to point A, I need to have a whole bunch of steps that will, you know, build on each other to lead me to point A when, when really you have to take a much more whole. It's like nutrition, you know, like there's a lot of indirect benefits from eating healthy over time. And it's hard to just, you know, I know we could be like, my eyes are bad, I'm eat a lot of carrots. It doesn't exactly work like that. But, but, but you know, you've talked before about you never taught your kids formal writing. And then they went on and not only did very well in college and writing, but some of them are like becoming professional Writers and, you know, they spent a lot of time writing and didn't ever have that formal training. And that's why you feel so strongly that narration is enough. So I have a similar interesting story that I know is going to tickle you. So my son, who, you know, was homeschooled, is now starting his second year of teaching. And just as I expected, he's a total natural. He loves the kids. He's doing such a good job. But he called me up at the end of the school year to say that the other staff and the principal are just like, they're just falling over themselves telling him what a good job he is doing. And he's such a natural, and the kids love him. And, you know, test scores are up and everything's amazing. I mean, this is. He came home and left with just a stack of books. He went. He's teaching third grade. He left with my Delare's Greek myths. He brought them all. And he has a lot of flexibility in his schedule. Like, so he read them the Greek myths. He's like, mom, I'm retelling them dramatically. The Odyssey and the Iliad. Like, he's just filling these kids. He's doing a fantastic job, and the school is very, very happy with him. But he said, but they keep asking me, mom, you're homeschooled, so how do you know how to teach a class? And that just made me laugh. That just made me laugh. And I said, you know, Eli, this just proves everything we're saying, like, to learn to teach, you don't have to take classes on how to teach. Right? I said, you only need two things to be a good teacher, and you have both of those. I said, you love your subject matter and you love those kids. That's it. You know, everything else is just nonsense. So I think it's the same sort of thing, you know, that you're talking about, like, you get there indirectly. He didn't have to take classes in how to teach or even how to manage the kids.
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C
Right, Right.
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E
Well.
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C
And I think a lot of teachers would develop those things naturally, but we immediately put them in a box, and they're unable to. To do that. So it's very frustrating all the way around. But when you have someone coming from outside the box in. They don't, you know, maybe know they're locked in a box, and they. They act accordingly. And, oh, surprise, surprise. And actually, my commonplace quote, I think, is going to hit a little bit on that concept.
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B
Okay, Exciting, exciting. You know what I'm thinking? While you're talking that. I think. I think one of the ways that he's able to manage the class so well is that he takes those kids out at recess and he plays soccer with them, and I think he just runs them. Runs them to bits, right?
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E
Absolutely.
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B
You know, gets them outside, gets them moving around, and they can sit down and pay attention better. So, yeah, he's. He's thinking outside the box, and I just. I'm so delighted. The whole school is beside themselves with how great he is and, you know, no formal training, so there you go again.
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C
I'm hoping that happens. So my son Alex is starting his first year of teaching high school English this in August. So we'll see. Hopefully, I'll come back next year and tell you how amazed everybody is with that.
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B
Oh, this is so exciting. I remember when I met him for the first time. What was he, 16, 17? And we were in your. In your dining room. And I remember later you told me, like, I'm so shocked. I had no idea. And he turned to me and he said, oh, I want to be an English teacher, too. And you were like, this is news to me.
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C
My kids try to hide everything from me. So I usually hear from the grapevine of these things.
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B
I love it. I love it. All right, now that we've gotten that out of the way, it's been so good. I mean, it's so good to just chit chat with Cindy on the podcast. I might have to tell Joan and Emily to take a rain check. We're just going to chit chat about our kids for the next hour. No, no, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Let's go ahead and get started with our commonplace quote. Cindy, we're dying. We haven't had a Cindy commonplace quote in ages.
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C
I know. And I just realized that I gave this commonplace quote before, so now I'm like, okay, should I get a different one, or should I just go ahead?
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B
Encore. An encore commonplace quote.
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C
Yeah, and I think it's good enough that it's going to hold up. So this is Charles Kingsley, and this is what he says about analysis. Now, you must remember, whenever you have to deal with him, that analysis. And he's using analysis as a hymn, like fire is a very good servant, but a very bad master for having got his freedom only of late years or so. He is like young men when they come suddenly to be their own masters, apt to be conceited and to fancy that he knows everything, when he really knows nothing and can never know anything, but only knows about things, which is a different matter.
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D
So good.
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E
I like that.
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B
Yes.
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E
I think it's still stands up.
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B
Yes. Lonely knows about things. Well, that goes back to even what we were just saying about teaching. Some people spend all their time trying to learn about teaching, and other people just lear subject matter.
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C
Right, that's what I was thinking. And he goes on to say later, no doubt he can analyze any matter of things, but he will keep forgetting that he cannot analyze their form, their essential nature or essence. And our kid, you're saying your son had that essential nature or essence, and he didn't have to get it through the analytical way that, you know, we try to teach everything.
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B
Exactly. Exactly. All right, Emily, what do you have for us in the way of commonplace quotes?
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D
So my commonplace quote comes from the book Yvain, the Night of the Lion. I've been on kind of a King Arthur trip lately. I've read, I read Idols of the King for, I think, like the third or fourth time. And then I was looking for something else, and I happen to have a signed copy of Burton Rafel's translation of Evane. So that's where this comes from. So this is a different character named. And he's talking to Guinevere right before he's about to tell this story. And he says, words can come to the ear like blowing wind and neither stop nor remain just passing by like fleeting time. If hearts and minds aren't awake, aren't ready and willing to receive them, only the heart can take them in and hold them and keep them.
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C
Oh, that is so good.
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D
Yeah, I, I, I chose that because I felt like it embodied kind of the attitude or the posture that is sort of essential to a thriving literary life, you know? Yes. Reading literature and literary criticism and all these other things, it's very cerebral. But I feel like if we don't have active and attentive hearts and if there is no joy in that pursuit, then those literary lives can't grow.
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B
No, that's, that's a great quote. That's what I was thinking, too. I was like, nailed it. Okay, well, thanks for listening, and goodbye. No, you did. You just, you said it all right there. We'll spend the next 90 minutes pushing that out.
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C
Yes, that's what I mean. That's just Charlotte Mason in a nutshell. That's what she says.
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B
That's what this podcast has been missing the last couple of months. I try. I just randomly throw in, that's Charlie Mason. Yeah, I try. I try. All right, Joan, let's hear. Let's hear your commonplace quote.
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E
Okay. Mine is from GK Chesterton from Tremendous Trifles. It's actually from the essay that has the same title as the book. I have my doubts about all this real value in mountaineering, in getting to the top of everywhere and overlooking everything. Satan was the most celebrated of alpine guides when he took Jesus to the top of an exceeding high mountain and showed him all the kingdom of the earth. But the joy of Satan in standing on a peak is not a joy in largeness, but a joy in beholding smallness and the fact that all men look like insects at his feet. It is from the valley that things look large. It is from the level that things look high. I'm a child of the level and have no need of that celebrated alpine guide. Everything is an attitude of mind, and at this moment I am in comfortable attitude. I will sit still and let the marvels and the adventures settle on me like flies. There are plenty of them, I assure you. The world will never starve for want of wonders, but only for want of wonder. I picked up, similar to Emily, the a lot of what we were talking about. This is not about crushing some goal, getting to the top of the mountain, looking down on things, owning anything. It is something that we look up to, that we look across at, that we wonder at, that can fill us with joy, but not if we're.
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C
Not.
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If we don't have the right posture, like Emily was talking about.
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B
So, absolutely, that's another good. That's. That's a great series of essays.
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E
Really, really good.
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B
Some excellent stuff there about fairy tales and kids. All right, well, my quote. So in. Oh, gosh, I don't even remember. Oh, October. It's in October, because we're doing it for Halloween. October, we are going to be covering on the podcast the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. It's going to be the first extended poem we've done on the podcast. Mr. Banks. Look at that. If you could see the glee on these women's faces. They're so excited. So in preparation for that, I bought Malcolm Guy's book on the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. And of course, Mr. Banks was also very excited. It's huge. So I've started dipping into it already. I had to take a break with all my Harry Potter research, though. But one of my fellows, Heather Goodman, has also been dipping into it, and she's been teasing me with quotes here or there that I can expect. As I get a little further into the book, she's. She's keeping me going. Plodding through the book. So this is one of the juicy tidbits she sent me. This is a quote from Coleridge. He has a lot of snark about what he thinks about the bad teaching of his day. Oh, everybody's face just perked up. Oh, what's he gonna say? And. And get ready. I'm gonna call it. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Cindy's gonna say, that's just Charlotte Mason. Because, of course, Coleridge was a big influence on Charlotte Mason, right?
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C
Yes, he was.
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B
Okay, so she would have been reading these things and being very influenced. Here we go. And prodigies with a vengeance have I known. Thus produced prodigies of self conceit, shallowness, arrogance and infidelity. Instead of storing the memory during the period when the memory is the predominant faculty with facts for the after exercise of the judgment, and instead of awakening by the noblest models the fond and unmixed love and admiration which is the natural and graceful temper of early youth, these nurslings of improved pedagogy are taught to dispute and decide to suspect all but their own and their lecturers wisdom and to hold nothing sacred from their contempt but their own contemptible arrogance. Boy graduates in all the technicals and in all the dirty passions and impudence of anonymous criticism.
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C
Wow.
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B
Wow, Right? That's some fire.
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C
Now, Wordsworth has a passage sort of like that about the boy prodigy. That's so who basically, you know, thinks he knows everything and knows nothing. So I wonder who. Who kicked off of who.
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B
It almost sounds like they knew a lot of people.
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C
Like, that's true. Oh, yes. I. I have never met anyone like that.
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B
Oh, yeah, definitely. I definitely didn't, like, write names of people in the margins and names of curriculum that I think are schools that produce exactly this kind of student, as if this is the ideal. They do nothing.
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C
You know, when you take a long view of education that we have taken, like, over a long period of time, seeing a lot of homeschool kids, a lot of classical school kids, a lot of public school kids, you do start to see that pattern. And you. You get a look. And that is where with age, you get a little confidence in saying some things that you suspected before. But now, you know, and. And maybe it comes across as we think we know something, but we have seen the results. And honestly, you. You know, we are trying to help the people that come behind because we have seen these prodigies.
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B
Absolutely. All right, well, now for the task at hand, which, of course, we've been hinting at this whole time. What to do when you're feeling overwhelmed and discouraged by the literary life. So the idea behind this particular episode is that I have observed a certain pattern when somebody gets excited about what we're doing on this podcast. And I can almost predict the timing of these. These Facebook posts because it's so. You know, it is. It's just completely predictable. They follow this pattern. So they discover the podcast, they get very excited. Like the whole world they've eyes to see. They're so exciting. They jump in, they've got all this zeal, and then they have this moment where they realize. They start to learn just enough to realize, oh, there's so much more that I don't know, that I didn't realize. I didn't know. I knew I didn't know, but then I jumped in and I really didn't know. It's kind of like the podcast all of a sudden shows you that you have this tiny little cup and you thought you were happy your cup was full, right? And then you exchange it for a huge cup. And that's really exciting because you're like, look at this big cup. But then you start to realize that you have just, like the most the symbol full of liquid in this cup. And all you can think about is how empty the cup is, and I'm never going to be able to fill it. And I'm overwhelmed and I'm discouraged, and everybody else has figured out how to do this, but they're so far ahead of me, I'm never going to catch up. And they bottom out. And usually that results in a very panicked Facebook post in our group. And so I wanted to just jump right in. And these three women with me and I include Cindy in this are just, I think, the absolute models of people who have just. I was going to say master, but you both shake. You'd all shake your heads and say no. Who have fully embraced self education and have absolutely had these moments and worked past them. So I want to just open up the floor. I have thoughts about this, too, but I really just want to open up the floor to you guys to talk about. Well, why don't we start off by just acknowledging that moment when you get overwhelmed that all of us do. Me too. I should say this. And, Mr. Banks, in case you think you look at us and you're like, oh, they've got it all figured. Oh, please. I live with Thomas Banks. You think I don't daily feel like I am never going to be able to read all the books in the world. This man Knows everything. Okay. And I know nothing. Yeah, Try living with him if you think, you know, not that he ever, ever tries to discourage me. It's just, you know, I'm constantly. The more I know, the more I realize there is to know. And it's every single day, every single day. So I don't think that I get discouraged by that anymore. I think now I get exhilarated by it. But, you know, I certainly had those moments. All right, so I'm going to throw up in the floor. Ladies, talk to us about this.
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D
Well, just, you know, starting out with the, I don't know, you know, Cindy's book. If, if you guys haven't read her new book, read it right now. It was the first thing I read this year. Actually ended up reading it alongside.
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B
Muir's.
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D
Book about his first trip to the Sierras. And those two books were talking to each other, and it was amazing. But when. When Cindy said that about hitting, I don't know, and that being the place where everything begins, that put into words something that I had actually felt for a long time. And it turned those words, I don't know, from a negative statement into the. The most positive statement and where life. Life starts. And I had that long time where I was comparing myself to this person, I was comparing myself to that person, and I was like, I'm behind. I'm never going to catch up. I was. I just started so late. And once, you know, like Angelina just said about the cup, once I realized that that cup is my cup, it's not someone else's cup, it's just mine. And I can fill it with whatever I want. I can study whatever I want. I can read whatever I want. And then it was just. I just sort of hit the ground running from there.
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E
Yes.
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B
One of my all time favorite quotes that anybody has ever said on this podcast is you, Emily. You know, I quote this all the time. She's turning red. I quote this all the time. In your literary Life of Emily Rabel episode, when you described your. Your journey, you said that as you read, the world had gotten much bigger, but you could also touch more of it.
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D
Yeah. I mean, and that's still. That's still. Every. Every time I pick something up and read it, it just. I feel it stretch and, And I get bigger, but everything else gets bigger with me. It's, It's. I'm not this giant. I'm not this amazing person. I'm just. I'm fitting into the world that God put me in and feeling more myself than. Than at any other point.
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B
How about you, Joan? What are your thoughts about this question?
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E
Oh, I was just going to say, yeah, the I don't know thing. And realizing that you don't know that was a problem for me at first because I thought I wanted to know and foolishly thought that I should somehow or something. So I had to realize that saying that I didn't know something was not a reflection on my intelligence or me in some way, that it's a realization that had to be made. I mean, how hubristic is that a word? I don't know. Maybe I just made something up. How hubristic of me to think that I should know everything in the first place. And then I was like, no, wait, that. That's not even the right place to be in. So being able to realize that that was actually a good place and a starting place, that was. That was huge in Turning Point because we. Thanks modernity for messing that up in my head. So it was good to. To see it from a different perspective and to realize, no, it's okay to say that I don't know and that I want to know and that I can, you know, move forward and I can. I can know more, I can expect growth, and I can look for things. And looking at my cup, I. I was like. I told Emily, it's like, I want a Mary Poppins cup. Just keep filling it. All the good stuff, it's not ever gonna get full. Just keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going. So I have room for all the stuff that I want to put in it and see that as a positive thing, not as a negative thing. That. That there doesn't seem like there's much in it just means there's just all kinds of room for more and more and more and more stuff. So that. That helps me to. To not get too caught up in any comparison or whatever, because that's never a good place to go. So I try to avoid that. I'm not always successful, but I do try to avoid it.
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B
Maybe it'll be helpful, too, to sort of just reorient the question a little bit, because when we were talking, you know, over the last few weeks about what we wanted to talk about today, you both made this point that part of the problem, part of why we get overwhelmed, is we think of this as a checklist or some goals to crush or a line we're going to finish. Even in my adult how to Read literature class, I try to make the point to them as we end the class that this is not you're not going to master this. I have not, quote, unquote mastered this. Thomas Banks has not, quote, unquote, mastered this. That's. That's not what this is about. This is a. I mean, this sounds so cliche, but it's a journey of seeing, right? You're entering into a way. The literary life is not a book list to accomplish, so there's no race to finish it. It's a way of being. It's a way of interacting with the world of ideas and having eyes to see and you know how to be a human. And so because of that, you don't have to put all this pressure on yourself, right? You don't. You don't have to set goals that you have to crush and then feel like, well, I have kids, are. This is a hard season. Are we moved or I've been ill and now I'm behind. Well, no, because now it's. What does the literary life look like when you have a baby? What does it look like when you moved? Right.
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E
It.
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B
These. These are not good to crush. Yeah, go ahead.
- [29:10]
E
Yeah, I was just gonna say that part of the key of that is that it is a light. It's not a. It's not a destination. It's not some point we're going to get to. It's not. It is a life. There's ebbs and flows in life and there's ebbs and flows in everything and including your literary life. It's a part of what your life is now. It's not a. It's not something you tack onto the side. It just sort of changes all of the aspects at the same time. It is new and it is different. The same way, if you start to try to. To eat differently, it's not a diet that you'll get to some point and then you'll stop eating and go back to the way you ate before. It's a new way of eating or it's a new way of being and it just continues and it flows out of that. But you're not, you're not going to arrive. I'm. I'm just hoping for growth. That's. I hope that, you know, every once in a while if I happen to look behind me, which can be a dangerous thing if you're not careful that. I just see that maybe I've grown some from where I used to be, but I'm. We're not ever going to get there. There isn't a there to get to. Yes. It's just there to get to there's not there to get to. It's just. It's just a life. You just keep going. Stuff happens, and you may get waylaid a little bit. You just sit down and spend a little time on this bench at this overlook for a little while and just get back up and keep going down the path with whatever the next thing is without being concerned about. I mean, nobody's. I said this. I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna use the teeth. So we're talking about this. And I was like, okay. So it feels like some people are concerned. It's like being concerned about when your permanent teeth are gonna come in. So you pull all your baby teeth to try to speed that process, but it's not gonna work that way. The permanent teeth come in when they're ready to come in, and it's gonna be different for everybody. There's sort of timeframes and windows and things, but none of that is it. They just come in when they come in. And pulling the baby teeth out early is not going to help that. It might even hinder it a little bit. So it's just. It's one of those things. There's a timing to it. You've heard Angelina talk about when she read a book. Read it again, Cindy. The same way. There's a timing to those things, to seeing, to not seeing, to what you will see. And you can't rush that as much as you want. I kind of fell into that, trying to feel like. Because I was way late in the game, and I was like, I have all this stuff and I haven't read anything, and I need to read it, read it, read. And just. No, it didn't work. It just. It fell apart. I was trying to catch up, and I was like, it doesn't work. Doesn't work. There's no microwave, quick fix, shortcut kind of thing. You just start reading and you just keep reading. And as long as you don't stop reading, then there'll be. I'm going to keep using growth. I don't want to use progress. There'll be growth. There'll be growth as long as you just keep reading. Just gotta have to keep going. If you stop and get out, then, you know, maybe not, but.
- [32:05]
B
Cindy, what are your thoughts about this? Yeah, I think not only in your life, but I know you hear this from moms, too.
- [32:12]
C
Yes, absolutely. And I think for me, this is something that reoccurs. Like, I get. Oh, I realize, like, I. I feel like I'm a little bit ahead of you guys maybe 10 years or seven, eight, nine years ahead of you guys in some ways or more. And I get victory over this, so to speak. And then, like, I'll be on my treadmill, and it's right in front of my bookshelf. And I had to move my treadmill because the whole time I'm just looking at, oh, my goodness, I have to read this. No, I'm going to read this. No, I'm going to. And I was literally becoming just overwhelmed with which book I was going to read next because I was. Had my treadmill right in front of all these books, and it was driving me crazy. So our libraries themselves can. Can cause us anxiety when we look at them. But I also think it goes back to. To do what I do best over spiritualize something. The end of the thief comes to steal and kill and destroy. He tries to take something good that we have. We're made in the image of God. God created out of He. He gave us this excitement about ideas that when we get one idea, Charlotte Mason said mind to mind, we get excited, we have other ideas. And this produces, you know, creativity and joy and all the good things that we get in life and in our human existence with one another in relationship to ideas and relationship to one another. But the enemy, of course, does not like that. So if he can't get us to just, you know, only binge on Netflix, then he's going to have to get us to take this good gift and ruin it by feeling like it. It itself is some kind of weird treadmill that I have to keep up with. And that just steals everything. And it's stealing a really good thing. And so we have to be on the alert for that. When we see that anxiety creeping in, that's a sign that something's off in the way we're approaching it. Not that reading is off or ideas are off, but the way we're approaching it, our attitude toward it is off.
- [34:19]
E
Oh, that's very, very, very good advice.
- [34:22]
B
So let's circle back from. From yet another. Another angle. Because I think one of the other things that happens too, when they are ready to throw in the towel, because they hit that and again, it's inevitable. Please don't hear them. This is not like a personal flaw. Every person goes through this. Every person does. So you're just at the point where everybody has been, and you. And you. You just kind of want to throw up the towel because all it feels like is so much effort. And I think it becomes difficult to believe that there is a payoff. And I also think you start to think it's always going to be this hard, and it's not. Neither one of those. And I've actually been weirdly hyper focusing on all these books about how the brain works and what we have done in terms of technology and apps and screens to our brains. And I've become quite fascinated with this. But I've been reading a lot about how the brain is a muscle and that our modern life has basically made our brain atrophy. We can't concentrate. We can't focus. So all of these things are so hard. But I also have been reading that you can fix that, like any other muscle, the brain can be retrained to concentrate. So it's not always going to be this hard. And I think so. I think because it is a. The brain is a muscle that you actually can make a lot of very legitimate analogies to working out. Like, we all have the. We're like, okay, that's it. I'm tired of being a couch potato. I'm going to get in shape, right? We. Every single human does the same thing, right? We're going to go run or we're going to go to the gym, and then the next day we feel worse, right? We feel worse than we did before, and then we're like, why did I even do this? I can't move. I'm so sore. I'm nauseated. I'm going to die now, right? And of course, we're tempted to give up because we feel worse. And so the same thing happens when you start your reading life. You will get to that. I feel worse, but it's. You're not always going to be there, right? You're going to get stronger, and then it's going to be pleasurable, and then you're going to be like, wait, I could climb the stairs today when I wasn't out of breath, right? And you have these small victories, and you just. You just build on that. And it's the same with the literary life.
- [36:28]
C
You.
- [36:29]
B
You will build. I remember, Emily, on your episode in particular, that we talked about this because one of the things you were struggling with early on when you were getting discouraged in your literary life was thinking that plotting meant everything, was, like, kind of point by point, and it was building on each other. And, like, there was always going to be this, like, steady little, you know, this, then this, then this, then this. And you're like, I'm just gonna. This is crazy. How can I just let the rest of my life be Trying to inchworm my way through this. And then you had this epiphany. And I remember I had told you that I said, it's not like you think when you. When you're going to have this burst where things about books and the world of books are going to make more sense, you're going to realize that every book you already read is now going to pop into place, and it makes sense. And I remember when you had that moment and you were so excited and you realized, okay, it's not going to be this, you know, kind of. Kind of grinding it out every moment, that it's leaps and balance. Suddenly. Suddenly everything popped into place.
- [37:25]
D
Yeah. And I mean, I. I think I told you this the other day. That's. That's my drug of choice now. I. I am constantly just chasing the connections. I'm just reading because I'm like, what is this going to connect to? And I can't wait to read it. And. And so that, you know, that grinding mentality sometimes, you know, like Cindy says, you have to plod. There are things that I applaud through, but I still get a lot of joy out of them. And, you know, listening, like I listened to Boswell's Life of Johnson. It took me a year to listen to that. And I would just dip in every now and then if I was on the tractor or if I was cleaning or doing something. And then after I finished that, I read this other book, and I was like, I would not have known any of the names in this new book if it had not been for that year spent in. In Life of Johnson. And. And I had no idea that was going to happen. That just. That wasn't on my radar at all. And I. I really want people to. To have fun doing this. It does seem like, you know, it does seem like big brain stuff. But also I read this stuff. I joke around and say this, but I read it so I can understand the jokes. You know, you'll. On TV and other books, even in comic books. My son brought me his. Calvin. No, not Calvin Hobbs. It was. It was Get Fuzzy. And he was like, isn't there a book you read about three men in the boat? And I was like, yeah, why are you asking me that? And he was like, it's in this comic strip. Someone gave this book to somebody for Christmas. And he showed it to me and he was. He wouldn't have known that if. If I hadn't read it and talked about it and everything else. But it just connects so many, so many things. And I just want people to. To really have fun and enjoy it and read as your whimsy takes you. There's not a. You know, there's not a list you have to read. And if you read these 20 books, then you will be literary. It's just this long pursuit of following what interests you and what excites you and. And you have no idea where you're going to end up. And for me, who's got pathological demand avoidance? I don't like being told what to do. I really like to just do what.
- [40:04]
B
I want to do.
- [40:05]
D
I will do anything that Cindy and Angelina tell me to do, though my husband knows that. He's like, if I want you to.
- [40:12]
C
Floor Emily, mop the floor.
- [40:15]
D
Yes.
- [40:17]
B
I think of you and Joan as.
- [40:18]
E
As love.
- [40:19]
B
And I've always thought this about Cindy, but y' all just. So you strike me as fearless, and maybe you're going to tell me that's not true, but you have always struck me at that. Like, if I. No matter what class you've been in of mine, if I reference some obscure thing, you buy it, you read it.
- [40:35]
D
I think that might be stupid. Not fearless.
- [40:39]
B
At least for me.
- [40:43]
C
You read these books, they reference other books. So obviously something you're reading, that person, that author, understood this other book. So you just feel like, well, oh, I'm going to understand that book too, like you. I mean, I started that way with Little Women. Little Women was a big. It opened my eyes to all these other books that I, you know, even the Mysteries of Udolpho and, you know, strange books. But I. I didn't think. I thought, well, Louise May Alcott knew what these were. And, you know, I didn't think of her as vastly different from myself then. I can handle this, too. I can read Pilgrim's Progress.
- [41:23]
B
And you. Are you at the point where it's fun and a delight and you feel like you're getting more out of it than.
- [41:31]
E
Oh, yes, oh, yes, we got. Once I was able to. To drop some of those things, to not realize, to not try to read everything everybody else was reading, to find things that I was interested in and to read those and to realize that. So we're talking about literary life, which means all of literature. So that's everything from Dante to Kidnapped and everything. Like, we were talking about how it's not a. We talk about a golden age of children's literature and refer to children's literature, but not because it's, like a lesser quality. It's still literature as long as what you're reading is literature. Everything that's in there is valid. CS Lewis talks about how if it's good for a 5 year old, it's good for 95 year old. If it's a good story, it's a good story. And so realizing that reading some of those stories is, is just as valid and a good thing to do. And sometimes that's where my brain needed to be to read a good story. I didn't have the myths and I didn't have the fairy tales. Read those two. Read, read all the things and not be worried about what's going to connect and what isn't going to connect. Like Emily was, it's not a linear thing. If you had read the book that Emily read and then read the book afterwards, you're not going to see connections that she saw. They're still there. You're just going to see different ones. And so it's not like, oh, if I read this and then I read that and then I read that, then I can. Building blocks obviously are going to help but you can't always tell exactly which ones that might be. So in that way it not being linear is a good thing because you can just read whatever and it's going to connect to whatever and it'll circle back around and it'll get to. And because of that you don't have to read this one first and then read that one second. Like Angelina talks about in CS Lewis. It's all a big story. It's all a big world. If you read this story first and then you read that story second, those.
- [43:17]
B
Connections are still be there.
- [43:18]
E
You just make them in the other direction than somebody who read them the other way around. So it's not a, it's not a thing to map out on a list to make and a point by point. It's just if you read there will be connections. And as soon as you have, you do have to read a few more things to start to see more connections. But then as soon as you've got a few things under your belt and you've read some things, then the connections are just going to always be there. You have more to connect to. It would make sense there's going to be fewer connections that you'll see when you've only read two things or three things. But then when you've read 20 things there'll be more connections. So it's not a. Yeah, and definitely enjoyment and being joyful in reading whatever those things are and not stressing about is this going to connect to Something else, just knowing that it will at some point. Usually not during reading, usually after reading, you get all the way through with the story and you'll go on and be like, oh, wait.
- [44:12]
C
Yeah.
- [44:12]
B
So I think it's also important to, to say this. All of this research I've been doing on the way that the brain works and how much we have destroyed our ability to focus and concentrate, made me in the books were not about the implications of this on your reading life. I just kept thinking about that the whole time.
- [44:31]
C
And.
- [44:33]
B
A lot of what, a lot of this, this conversation is going to depend really on, for lack of a better phrase, how out of shape your brain is. And again, this is not a personal attack because these books are showing how everything about our culture has been atrophying our brain. Okay? So, you know, unless you were just this remarkable person who was somehow not living in the culture and you weren't affected by this like the Banks fan, I swear, that's it. Okay. They're just time travelers. Don't. It doesn't apply to them. But if you're like the rest of us, you have been affected by this. And so even though, yes, this is big brain stuff, we also have to remember though that this was also entertainment for the regular common person.
- [45:16]
E
Right?
- [45:16]
B
So Charles Dickens was the Netflix of his day. It was serials and people read them out loud to the entire family. Like somebody would go work at the factory and come home in the evening and relax with the latest installment of David Copperfield. Right? This was regular people entertainment. Shakespeare was regular people entertainment. So one of the things I found myself thinking about a lot as I've read these books on the brain is that a lot of times we'll have a Facebook post and, and it'll be something like this. I started reading Book X. I'm a few chapters in. It's not drawing me in. Can I just quit? And then a bunch of well meaning people will post something like, not every book is for every person you can quit and blah, blah, blah, and everything in me is screaming. There are way too many variables here for you to be able to say, yes, just quit. It's not for you. Because it could be that this is the first time you have read a book with such long sentences, such long paragraphs, and your brain, like you tried to get off the couch and run a 5K in one day. Like you can't, you can't do it and you're out of breath and you feel like you're going to throw up. So it could be that you just need to work up to that. That you just can't focus on it, and that's why it's pulling you in. I have a lot of thoughts about this from all these books I've been reading, and I'm sure we're going to get emails after the show. What books are Angelina reading? And I can actually put a list of that together, but that's really been on my mind a lot. So I was. I was looking at some stats for the Harry Potter research, and I know Cindy and I have talked about this a lot, that if you have a steady diet, let's say you're a reader, but you read just mostly modern fiction. Are you. Are you reading modern books with your kids? Those have more simple vocabulary, fewer words per sentence, shorter paragraphs. Like, it is written in a way to basically just like. Like a series of tweets or Instagram. Right. It's contributing to your brain's inability to deeply focus on something. So the Goosebumps books, remember how popular those were for kids back in the day? They have, on average, eight words per sentence. Yeah. Let that sink in. Eight words. Percent the Hobbit is something like 56 words per sentence. Okay.
- [47:33]
E
Can't make that leap without that leap. That's it.
- [47:35]
B
You can't make that leap. And I have actually seen that with my students. So if they have a foundation of reading old books or having older books read out loud to them, they can much more easily make the jump into the harder literature in high school because their brain is ready for it. But I've also seen homeschool kids who read nothing but modern books cannot make. They can. Let me say it again. They cannot make the leap. I've seen it. I've also been a consultant with schools where they said our kids can't make the leap from our elementary program to our high school program. And when I looked at what their reading lists were, it was all modern historical fiction. They were doing that ages and stages thing. So they were reading, you know, modern books about ancient Rome. And I said, they can't make the leap because of the vocabulary, the sentence structure, the paragraphs, all of those things. Okay, so. So you. There might. There could be a lot of reasons why, quote, unquote, this book isn't drawing me in. And it might just be that your brain is out of shape, but the good news is it can be fixed. And so this. I want to start with this conversation because the problem could be that you're getting discouraged because you tried to jump into the deep End before you learned how to swim. And here's where I think having kids and having my time so limited that I couldn't just pull off every big heady book off the shelf, but I actually had to spend my time reading out loud children's literature, golden age children's literature. I think that was really good for me. Right. So maybe the first thing we can say is start with the good books before you jump in with the great books. Right.
- [49:09]
C
But just reading children's literature is a great. I mean I think many homeschooling mom from the past. That's where she found out reading life could be exciting and different through reading aloud to her children. And I will also say that if you are in that tough spot where you can't. You're reading a book, you're not enjoying it, then you could try reading it aloud, even just to yourself to get through the sentences. They'd help me with Plutarch to start reading it aloud because I could not make head nor hair of what was going on in Plutarch. But once I got it and it didn't take that long, then I loved it. Then it was like so much fun. I was just tripping over these complicated words and my brain was really engaged. But when I first started it wasn't. But hard books like some of the children's books that are a little bit harder. Treasure island, the Robert Louis Stevenson has very complicated sentence structure. We know people give up easily on the Wind in the Willows when the kids don't struggle with that as much as the parents often do. So. So there you do. You can start with children's classic children's literature and get up to speed.
- [50:22]
E
I think that's one of the. We were. Emily and I were talking about how that's one of the benefits of starting there is that it can help with the joy because Robert Louis Stevenson writes a rip roaring great story. So you can just jump in and it can be fun from beginning to end. And so you're enjoying it as you are working on the muscles so it doesn't feel difficult or dry or like a is at. It's not that kind of a level of a thing. You are reading good literature. But it's extremely enjoyable. So it helps you to be able to. To keep the joy even while you're reading. You don't have to like I said before, it's not a lesser thing. It's going to be equally as enjoyable while it works the muscles to be able to, you know, read Paradise Lost later or whatever.
- [51:07]
C
And you don't have to understand everything you don't have. You can kind of wash over the sail and the, what the Mizen mast is doing. And you know, there might come a time when that stuff makes sense to you, but if it doesn't, he, he writes such a great story that your mind is picking up little clues for the future. But you don't quite get why it mattered that, you know, Jim was here and not over here.
- [51:34]
E
Exactly. That was, that kind of goes back to the, the, I don't know part. The, the thing where I. You feel like you have to understand everything about a story. I think sometimes, and I think sometimes it happens in the Facebook page because it's connected with the podcast. And so on the podcast, Angelina is teaching a book to us and walking us through and showing us all of these things. But even she says, and I know I don't, she doesn't do that with every book that she reads. Some you're just reading. And so for people who are not trying to prepare a book to teach it to some other people, you're just reading to enjoy. And you may see connections. Sometimes you'll be reading along and all of a sudden something will just jump off the page to and you're like, oh my gosh, I just like saw an image of something and I wonder what's going to happen. But a lot of times it won't happen until you're past the point of the, like the other end of the connection and everything or even at the end of the book. And then you'll all of a sudden see something clear from the beginning. So it's not a one to one. You're going to see certain things or any of that kind of stuff. You just read the stories and just keep going and then you'll see things. But you don't have to think that what you ought to do to every book you pick up is what Angelina is doing on the podcast. She's just teaching us how to read and then we'll. You'll see better and you'll see more as you get, as you get better at the seeing and you're not going to do it all.
- [52:56]
B
What's happening when they listen to the podcast is they're learning about the different literary forms which would help them then understand any book. And that hopefully I'm modeling the sorts of things that you could be thinking about when you're reading, but not that you have to be thinking about these things all the time. I, like you said, I, I don't I'm not approaching every book that way. I do think that I'm trained enough to think a certain way. That even if I'm just reading something very quickly for fun, I am going to pick up on some low level things. You know, it's always going to be right there. I'm not necessarily stopping the book a lot. Sometimes I am depending on the book, I might stop and say, Mr. Banks, listen to this. And you know, but, but I'm not always like, you know, going full scale teaching the book to myself because I've trained myself that way. But I also want to say, how about, how about a hot take? Let's start out something spicy here, because I'm telling y', all, reading these books about the brain has made me think a lot about education, okay? A lot. None of those books were about education, okay? They were just simply about the fact that as a culture, we have lost our ability to focus on anything for any extended period of time, full stop. And that it's destroying our workflow. I mean, like just huge implications, okay? Creating all this anxiety and despairness. One of the things I've seen happening in education, so this would be homeschooling and in regular private school education or even public school education is for and, okay. And we're not even going to get into whether or not the ideological and political reasons, reasons behind this are good or bad because it's irrelevant, okay? For certain reasons, there have been a. Has been a push to get rid of old books and bring in new books, okay? What no one who's pushing the new books talks about is whether or not the newly written books are having the same effect on our mental capacities as an older book, okay? I'm not talking about themes. I'm talking about sinus structure, paragraph vocabulary, right? And I've even kind of seen people around the ambleside online world, some newer parents saying, well, I don't understand why we have to work so hard to read these old books when we could just read a bunch of easy new books. And it doesn't matter what you're reading, you're just reading. It does matter what you're reading. It does. In terms of what's happening in your brain, on the brain level, it matters. And if you are reading Steady diet, I'm not saying you can't ever read a quick beach read, okay? We have a whole defense of light reading on the podcast with G.K. chesterton's A Defense of the Penny Dreadful. I'm not saying there's no room for light reading. I'm saying a steady diet of modern books written in short sentences, simple vocabulary, which the average modern book is written at a fifth grade reading level. Okay, Short sentences, short paragraphs. The whole book is shorter. That is doing something to your brain. It is atrophying your brain. It's making your brain harder to concentrate on more difficult tasks that require focus. So there, there are just huge implications. So I just, there's going to be a terrible, again, ripple effect. So the kids who are reading these older books have much, much less difficulty jumping into the heart of books. And so that's just been on my mind a lot. That part of the frustration is there's, it's really. It is like going to the gym and they tried to run and they got the stitch in their side and they feel sick and they're like. And then. But then what I see them concluding is, this must just not be for me. Well, would they really need to see it as a sign of, wow, my brain is even more out of shape than I thought. But I can't, I can get there. And I'm going to say this too, and I don't fully have all my conclusions here. Okay. But I think some people might be encouraged to hear what I've been going through in 2024. Inspired by Cindy, who for years has read books in the hundreds, I started doing audiobooks and speeding them up. And my ADHD brain was really happy with the speeding up and I was hitting three figures quite easily each year. At the beginning of 2024, I felt like something was going on inside of me and I could no longer concentrate on the audiobooks. That's actually what led me down this hyper focus rabbit trail on books about the brain. I got to a point where I thought, I am listening to these books and nothing is sticking. It is just pouring through my ears like water. And also I had a lot of anxiety and I wasn't enjoying them anymore. And I was like starting books and listening to a few chapters and then abandoning. I'm just thinking, I can't find anything I'm getting into. And finally I just said, I think it's my brain. I think it's my brain. So I stopped. You want to know how hard this was for me? I stopped speeding up audiobooks. I also stopped keeping a list of how many books I was reading because I realized I was putting a lot of pressure on myself to hit three, three digits. So, you know, I'm making myself very vulnerable here. AUDIENCE okay, I struggle with this too. I was comparing myself to Cindy. And I was pushing myself and I was, I was not enjoying reading. I. So I put the audiobooks away. I forced myself to read slowly some physical books where I was holding the book in my hand and it was very hard for me at first. And that's when I thought I have done. I have hurt my brain. I have hurt my brain somehow. And that's when I started looking at these books. And sure enough, one of the things that many of the books read, I read, all agreed on is that this was fascinating to me. There are physical limits to how much information a brain can process in a single day. It is a. You can't. And if you try to push past that, you will crash. Okay. And basically things will leak out. And so because like we're getting the 24 hour news stream and the Twitter and the Facebook, we hit that limit very, very early in the day and you can't push past that. So that's, that's the short version. I mean I think he said something like, you know, we used to have one newspaper full of information a day and now the, because of the news cycle and social media, it's something like 14, 18 wheelers worth of information our brain is trying to absorb every day. Like it's an ins insane amount. And I mean I even read about like what's happening to your adrenal glands because cortisol gets pushed up because of all like it has physical effects, mental, it's a mess. Anxiety, depression, we're basically on information overload. So I decided to guard my brain really hard. And so I'm not reading social media. I don't want to know what's going on the news. And I decided I'm going to protect that brain space and be really, really deliberate about what I'm giving my brain attention to. And so I stopped speeding up audiobooks because I realized it was hurting my brain. And the funny thing is I mentioned it to several close friends and they said the same thing was happening to them too.
- [59:40]
C
I didn't speed up my audiobooks until you started talking about that. And then I thought, well, wonder why I never thought about that. Because my goal of reading 100 books a year is to. Is is a goal to keep me from wasting time when I can be reading and I'm not. And I like, I'll come to the end of the day and I'll just be like, oh, maybe my brain's filled up like you're saying. But I'll just be like, I'm just going to watch this Stupid show. And, and sometimes I think you have to do that because your brain does need just to like, stop. But I've noticed that lately too, that I can't. That I wasn't enjoying the books as much. And I made a kind of goal for myself this year to not worry about the numbers, but to try to read some longer books that I had put aside because, you know, I can't read through 100 books a year if I'm going to read Warren Peace and Moby Dick and these big giant books. But yeah, so I, I found that too. So I did stop. I also stopped putting the. So when you had mentioned that, I, I tried that. And I do think that when I pick up a book and read it on my own with the physical book in my hand, not an audiobook, I do read fast. I do read faster than the regular audio. But when I'm listening, I get more enjoyment out of the book when I'm not having it on, you know, at least not above 1.2. Sometimes 1.2 seems to be a sweet spot for me, but depends on the reader.
- [61:09]
B
Some of them, they were just painfully slow.
- [61:10]
E
Oh, yeah.
- [61:11]
B
I'll say this because I know I made a big deal about if you're neurodiverse, you need to be. I have an auditory processing disorder. That's why I was speeding up the book books. Because if it was too slow, I couldn't pay attention. I just honestly couldn't absorb it. I had to speed it up to absorb it. I don't necessarily think that was a problem. I think what I did was if I was going through an audiobook twice as fast, then I was reading twice as many audiobooks. And I think that's what did it to me.
- [61:39]
C
Right?
- [61:39]
B
That's what did it to me. So I started thinking, no, like, if I need to listen to it faster for my brain to process, that doesn't mean I have to fill it up now with all these new audiobooks. Right? So I, I, well, I took a break from audiobooks and then when I started reintroducing them, I had the physical book in my hand and, and if I, and I do need to put it on two speed to be. For the audio to match up how fast I actually do read. But something about holding the book, physically turning the pages, and then when I would put the book down, I tried not to think of it in terms of like, efficiency. Well, like, I went through it faster. Now I can read twice as many. I just said, no, there's only so many books In a day my brain can handle and I'm going to put this, this aside and I'm not going to feel like I have to accomplish more. And so what is happening now is I'm regaining my focus. I can pay attention now. Like I was starting to realize that I had an audio book in my ears constantly and I was no longer able to pay attention to it. So taking the break and then coming back. So I'm here we are, it's June, well, July when this airs. And I. And I'm listening to a book on Winston Churchill right now. And I'm listening to it on, I think I can't Remember if it's 1 or 1.2. It feels dreadfully slow and it's hard because those, you know, you know, you get like a 56 hour book, you want to speed it up. But then I'm like, it's not a race. I'm just going to take my time. And so I just listen to it a little bit each day, then I pause it, I talk about it a little bit. You know, I guess I'm trying to be more Charlotte Mason. I'm reading a little bit, I'm letting it process, I'm narrating it well, that.
- [63:13]
C
Is also the other technique that comes in here is the idea. And when I started listening to more audiobooks and faster and trying to get more books in that way, I did stop doing what I do really well, which is read a little bit out of a bunch of books over a long period of time. And when I'm doing that, that fits me perfectly. Like If I have 10 books going, I wake up in the morning, I read a little bit of this, a little bit of this. I might read three or four books in the morning and then I sit down at lunch and read a little bit in each one of those. My brain stays fresh and, and I don't get tired. But if I'm listening constantly and all I'm doing is listening to audiobooks one after the other, I don't have that variety going. And I do think I can still read a lot of books during the year, do with that. You know, reading a bunch a little bit out of a bunch of books. Books. But anyway, I just found, getting back to that when things kind of fell apart and I finally, my life finally, I finally had the ability to just stop and, and read a little bit out of physical books that I keep, you know, by the bed or by the table in the living room. I did, I did feel more myself. I felt like oh, yeah. This is who I am. Not just racing through an audiobook because I have a podcast or I have to do something or I have to be somewhere.
- [64:43]
D
I. I remember hearing Cindy and Thomas talk about dipping into books, and I. I had not ever really done that, and so starting to do that. Like Cindy said, I've. I've probably got about 10 going at. @ any given time, and I have. I have morning books, I have afternoon books, I have audiobooks, I have nighttime books. I have a Kindle so that I cannot stab myself with pencils and pens because I lose them in my bed at night, and I can't make notes in the dark. So I have my Kindle that I can make notes in and do all that stuff. And it's backlit. It's like the paper white, though, so it doesn't. It's not super bright, but just having that balance and that rhythm of. This is what I'm reading right now. This is what I'm listening to. You know, I like to. Before I go to bed, I'm. I just started knitting, and so I knit and I listened to the Fairy Queen. I don't particularly have any business reading the Fairy Queen on my own. I don't always know what's going on, but I know enough. And it's a really pretty story, and it's read so pretty, and so I'm just listening to it, and I'm going to get what I get and what I don't get this time I'll get the second, third, or fourth time I read it, because I'm sure I'm going to read it that many times, if not more, and it'll probably take me the entire year to finish it. And I like to try to pick at least one book every year that's going to take me the entire year because it's. It's not a.
- [66:20]
E
Race.
- [66:21]
D
And. And I. I also have Cindy in my head all the time saying, sometimes you need to go outside and not have your headphones in. And I'm like, okay, so I'll, you know, if I'm on the tractor, I can have my headphones in because it helps protect my ears. So that's okay. But if I'm going out to garden or, you know, feed the ducks or whatever, it's like I just need to leave the phone in the house, leave the headphones in the house, and just go outside and listen to them quack angrily at me and listen to the birds and. And everything else. But just trying to. Having a literary life, it the literature. The literature doesn't take over your life. And it doesn't. It shouldn't consume it. It should just get. It should be part of the warp and wolf of. Of your life. And it's just threaded in. In there and, and that's how you can, you know, help, not get overwhelmed. And you. You can't be behind because this is your.
- [67:24]
E
Life. I was thinking their connections with what Emily and Cindy were saying, with how Cheryl Mason talks about it being a feast. So you can. You can only eat so much, and then your body has to take time and digest it. The same way with your brain, it has to take time and think through what you've read and process it and do something with it and do the things that it needs to do, work through it and deal with it before you're ready to move on and read more things. And with the idea of the feast, the idea that there's a whole bunch of stuff out there and so you can eat over here for a little while and eat over there for a little while and eat some of this and eat some of that. And if you're not sure what you want to eat, look at a book list that can say, oh, hey, look, this ham is fantastic, but there's steak over there. Get a piece of that or something. If you're trying to figure out where you might want to go next and what you want to read next, and I like keeping that in mind, that it's the variety that helps and you need all of those different kinds of things of faster reads and slower reads and deeper things and, and less deep things and, and all of that works together to feed our imaginations and feed our brains and give us something to chew on when we're not beasting something.
- [68:46]
C
Else. The efficiency, the efficiency of it all, of modernity that is stealing from us, the ability to enjoy these.
- [68:55]
E
Things.
- [68:56]
B
Yep. Actually, my comment fits exactly that. That. Another thing that I think is happening that causes people to feel discouraged is that it's not just that the modern books we've all been raised on, you know, are written at this simpler level. It's also that the way modern books are constructed requires a different way of interacting than an old book does. I'll give you an example what I'm talking about. I've noticed that somebody will pick up an old book and say, I'm two chapters in. I'm confused. There's too many characters. I can't keep track of them. Blah, blah, blah, this is just too hard. And put it down. Okay, that that is, you're making a modern mistake. There you are thinking that you have to master every step sentence of the. There you're all nodding, right? That will lead you into insanity land if you think that is what you're supposed to do. And I see people do it. I see people pick up Northrop fry and they're like, I don't understand this sentence on this page. And it's always like, stop trying to understand that sentence. Keep reading. Keep reading. Like, Kelly had to have this long talk with me about medieval writing and that one of the reasons that moderns pick up a medieval book and are so confused is because they're trying to master, like, every single sentence and paragraph, whereas the. The person who wrote it, wrote it with this much longer view. Like, you're going to take in my whole argument and something that maybe you don't fully understand on this page, 400 pages later. It's going to make sense. And you just have to take the long view and take it all in. So I think, because again, we're moderns, we have had everything dissected for us and analyzed for us, and we think everything. Step one, step two, step three, that's how we're approaching these old books. That is going to make you so frustrated. It's going to make you so frustrated. Don't try to understand everything. It's okay if you're a little bit confused at the beginning. You'll get past that. I mean, I will. Maybe this will surprise people. I'm always, always confused at the beginning of a new book. Right. There's so many characters to keep track of. And apparently at one time that was not hard for people to keep track of. All the people in War and Breeze, I have to pull out an index card and make a little flowchart of who belongs to who. Because I'm confused. Right. That's okay. It's okay if you're not really sure what's going on. Because a lot of times the authors are just sort of. Well, they could be world building and creating ambiance and all these other things, but they're also doing a lot of foreshadowing that is not going to make sense in the scene by itself. It's going to make sense later when you're like, oh, that's what he was trying to point to later on. So it's not a factory. It's not this, then this, then this. And now you have a.
- [71:20]
C
Widget.
- [71:22]
D
Right. I remember a long time ago, Angelina, you were talking about reading contextually and not Looking every word up. And I think it was, I think you were actually talking about Shakespeare in that, in that particular incident. But instance. But, you know, just, I hit a word, I don't know, but I try to figure out what's the context of this last paragraph or this last stanza or whatever it is. And can I figure out enough to keep moving so I don't take myself out of the story completely, but just keep going. And then if I get to the end of the act or the scene and I'm like, I still have no idea what that was, you know, then you can go back and then you can look at it and see if you can figure it out. But even with homeschooling my youngest, I would be reading something out loud to him and he would say, what does that word mean? And I'd be like, well, I'm, you know, what do you think it means? Does it sound like a happy word? Does it sound like an angry word? Does it sound like something good has happened or something bad is happening? And he would kind of talk it out and then, you know, I'd say, okay, well, we'll figure out at the end of our reading what, that we'll talk about what that word actually means. But just trying to, like C.S. lewis and Northrop Fry, say, just accept the story as a whole. We have to just take in a lot and then try to figure out what's going on instead of saying, well, I don't know what's going on yet. Well, you're not supposed to know what's going on yet. You're not supposed to know who done it at the beginning of the book. You're supposed to figure that out at the end. And just trying to be patient is hard for moderns. We're not patient. We want everything quick, fast, and in a hurry. And this. But, but in good literature, it is so worth the wait. It's the weight is the thing. That's, that's how you get the whole story. So I just, I want people to be patient with themselves and be patient with the books because the payoff is, is.
- [73:30]
C
Great. Amen. I think with so many modern books we have, I, I've, I said this on the building blocks of story on the new Mason Jar. But so much of the reading for young children, all the way up now, adults too, is didactic. Even the stories are just, you know, barely hidden moral messages that, whether it's a Christian moral message or, you know, a left wing moral message, or everything in between, every single thing that comes at Us, with this very simple sentence structure is to, to really to socially engineer us into the kind of people somebody wants us to be. And that isn't really what Angelina talks about, the tradition. That's not what it's there for, what it's going for. It's something much more complex. It's something much more in tune to the way we were created to, to deal with ideas and to enjoy God's.
- [74:34]
B
Creation. And, and we get confused too because of course there are so many benefits from reading, but those are indirect and secondary benefits. And we hyper focus on and, and then we, you know, I keep thinking about how Charlotte Mason says it's a feast. And we struggle to understand that because as a culture, we don't know how to feast. We don't know how to have a long, leisurely eight course meal where you're dipping into a little of this and a little of that. Right when we pick up an a book and an older book and we're just like, you know, am I understanding this? What's the argument he's making? You know, what's happening here? I'm confused. This would be like sitting down to a feast, taking a bite, you know, of a steak and being like, is this rebuilding my muscle tissue now? Do you think it's. Can you see? Is it happening? Is beta carotene coming to my eyes right now? Like, that's what we, that's what we're doing. We're being given a feast to linger over this beautiful eight course meal. And of course, of course there are indirect benefit, of course there are nutritional benefits that come from eating. Okay, but that's not what feasting is where, you know, we're pulling out our little macro app, trying to keep our macros in balance while we read like, you know, this is that, that's not what it means to feast. But we really struggle as a culture to know what it means to.
- [75:53]
E
Feast. We do. I think sometimes we think all you can eat buffet. And that's not the same thing as beast. It's not. It's a completely different mentality. It's not the same thing at.
- [76:02]
C
All. Or worried about whether we agree with the author or not. Like, that comes up a lot like, well, I don't agree with this. And how do you know whether you agree with it when you haven't heard the whole story? You don't even know where the person's going with this story and you're already trying to pick a.
- [76:18]
E
Side.
- [76:19]
B
Right? Exact. Exactly. I like to make fun of that. A whole lot in my Good Books class. And I will tell them. I was like, you know, there's not a day that goes by in the Facebook group that we don't get some version of. I'm on chapter two. None of these characters are likable. Why am I reading this? This seems like this is going to have a mad message, you know, and I'm just screaming at the top of my lungs on the other side of my computer, like, everything about this statement is wrong. Because if you're two chapters in, why do you think everybody's. What kind of story is this? I'm two chapters. Everybody's likable. It's wonderful. And then, you know, I'm sorry, are you unaware that there's a. A story has to have a.
- [76:53]
E
Conflict?
- [76:54]
B
What. What do you think stories are like? Maybe they just watch too many Hallmark movies. There's no conflict. Everybody's happy. There's tension for, like one second. No, it's fine. We're still best friends. But I make fun of that in my Good Books class to. To try to show them what is the mistake they make. And here's the example I always give. I said this would be like somebody who reads the first two chapters of Voyage of the Dawn Treader and says this used, I thought C.S. lewis was a Christian. The main character in this book is a stinker. I don't want my child reading this. What if he becomes Eustace? Right? And they all just laugh because they know you have to wait. You have to wait. Eustace is going on a journey. Eustace is not going to stay use of. Of course, Eustace is unlikable. That is the point, right? Because you're supposed to read it and realize, I'm Eustace, I'm the stinker. I need to change.
- [77:44]
D
Right? Or you read something like Northanger Abbey and you've got Isabella and John Thorpe. And so I taught that in my high school class and in my co op last year. And I. We were a few chapters in and, and I said, so, guys, you know, how did the reading this week go? And. And this boy in the back raised his hand and he said, I don't know everything that's going on, but I know two things. I don't want to be John Thorpe and I don't want to date his sister. And I was like, you just won.
- [78:19]
B
Class. Yeah.
- [78:20]
E
Exactly. Oh, that's.
- [78:24]
C
Cute. That's so.
- [78:25]
B
Cute. Exactly. You know.
- [78:27]
E
You. But you.
- [78:27]
B
Do. You have to take that long view of the story. And I, I do Understand that culturally we're at this point where we simply just do not know who to trust and we're afraid. But you can trust old books, books that, you know, time has said or edifying for you. You, you, you can put down your, your, your, your shield, and I'm not saying you have to put it on your shield forever, but you can put down your shield and hear the whole story before you decide what you think about it. And you're not going to know what you think about it in the first chapter or the first hundred. If it's a Dickens story, you better read 250 pages before you even have all the characters introduced. So you don't know what this story is.
- [79:06]
E
About.
- [79:06]
B
Right? You have to get, you have to get to the end. And, and there sometimes I see this real fear. Like, like, you know, if I'm not fighting this author for a thousand pages, maybe at the end he's going to turn me into something, you know, I don't want to be. And I just keep saying, no. What this is, is you have to, this is basic love your neighbor type stuff. You have to hear what he's saying before you jump in with your reply. You're cutting him off before he said everything he's wanted. Just let him have a say. I'm not saying turn off your brain. I'm not saying accept and believe ideas you don't agree with. I'm saying do the man the courtesy of hearing him out before you decide what you think. So, yeah, I think there's a lot of different things going on, why they get discouraged. A lot of it has to do with just overcoming our own modernity and our expectations. But we, you know, we definitely want to hit the point, though, that it is, it's worth it. It's worth it so much that once you're sort of, you know, in the flow and really, you know, feasting on the stuff, and you'll start to think, oh, I could never go back. I can't believe I thought this other way was edifying. And you just, you get so much growth and you feel, you feel, you feel bigger and it does. It stretches you and it, and it grows you. But, and, and that I think. Well, first of all, I think that's going to be painful in some part for all of us. Us. And for some of us, it might be more painful than others, but it's not going to be painful forever. And it's. And it's worth it. And it's worth it. But I, I think we've Hit on a lot of good things here about how to think about it. And I really do think so much good comes from just reading out loud to your kids. Because the people who wrote the great books started off with the good books. You know, like Shakespeare started off with fairy tales, fables, myths, legends, Bible story. Like, you, you can start there too. You know, maybe we need a couch to 5K program for the literary life, you know, but that, that's, that's what happens, you know, like, it's like on the podcast, I'm like, marathon running is great. And everybody's like, I'm gonna marathon run. And you just get up and try. Like, well, that was terrible. That must not be for me. Well, it's not for you today, like that, you know, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta build up. So, you know, it is easy to get discouraged. And I think we, we all feel that way.
- [81:37]
E
But. Yeah, it's. Go ahead. I was just gonna say that, that it's, it's easy to get discouraged when you look at others around you or you look at where you were and you start to think about where you could have been if things had been different and maybe if I had done this thing differently 30 years ago in my life or whatever. But you can't change any of that now. Now you are where you are. You have found this new life. You have found a door into the world of literature, and the only thing that you can do is either step into the door or not, but you can't change when you found it or where you are in it. You just are so accepting that. And then moving forward with where do I go from here? Is part of how you, I think part of how you can avoid some of that discouragement because you, you can't. You, you can't fix, if you want to call it that or undo where you are. You just, you just are where you are. Accept that and then we can move forward and enjoy what there is to come. But if we're constantly thinking back and going, well, if I'd done this differently, you don't even know. You don't even know if you've done that differently, if it'll come out any different. And so getting, just accepting and moving forward, I think helps with that and not comparing where you think you should have been or could have been or whatever, because that's not going to be.
- [82:50]
C
Helpful. Okay, well, it's just like with homeschooling, I used to. I finally got to the place of, with my large rowdy family saying, did we learn today? Maybe we didn't learn according to the plan, maybe we didn't learn, but was this a day of ideas for our family and thinking and growing? And if it was, then that's a check in the right direction and that's how we each are. We only have 24 hours in our day, and we want to put it in the best places if we, if we can. But we, we don't want to steal that from ourselves by, by, like you said, looking around at other people getting discouraged, thinking I have to read too many books at all at the same time, which just ruins it all. It just steals all the fun out of.
- [83:39]
B
It. I'm gonna let each of you give up a final comment before we say goodbye and, you know, maybe some. An admonition and encouragement to people, but no. We just came back from our House of Humane Letters family camp, and one of the things I heard over and over from these families was that they were almost shocked at how crafting a literary life had enlivened all these other areas of their, their lives. That, that, you know, that's. We can't hit that enough. I think it's worth the effort because it's not just, well, I'm not a reader, so who cares? Like, I had all these people, we had 200 people there, and I had a steady stream of people all week coming up to me in tears. This has changed my life in all these ways. I'm more alive, I'm more human. I feel like I understand reality better and the world. And I'm not just. Just, you know, randomly wandering around, a victim to all these forces. I feel like I understand things. Life is more manageable for me. It's more alive and full and holy. I mean, really, it was amazing to hear all of those stories. So this is about much more than, well, some people read, some people knit, some people, you know, make model planes. This reading is not a hobby for most people. It has been a fundamental part of what it means to be a human being. And we have cut ourselves off from that, just like we have cut ourselves off from so many things we need to be a human, like, you know, nutrition, nutrient rich foods. Like, there's a. There's a lot we could say about that, you know, you know, pure water, pure air, you know, just fundamental things that we have really meddled with in a terrible way. And we're all suffering from and we, we. I think some people know their suffering and they find the Life podcast and they're like, oh, yes, this, this is what I've been looking for. And other people don't know that they're suffering. And then find the left podcast and like, oh, this is. This is what. What is wrong with me? And that's a big part of modernity. Like, I was reading these books about stress, and I kept thinking, oh, this isn't me. I don't have stress. And then I got to this part of the book where she said, if you're thinking to yourself you're not stressed, it could be that you're in such a constant state of stress, in such a constant state of fight or flight that you don't know what it is to be not stressed. And I thought, oh, that's me. That's. That's me. You nailed it. Okay. I'm so stressed that I think I'm not stressed. And so some of us could be so starving, we don't feel hunger pains anymore. But that doesn't mean you don't need food. You need it more, actually, than the people who feel that they're hungry. So I hope that today we've given some very practical steps on how to deal with the discourage. First of all, you have to expect it, right? You have to expect that it's going to come, and it's not going to come just once. Like Cindy said, it's going to come in cycles. Absolutely. Because that's how life is, Right? We keep thinking that we can get just the perfect planner and then a life will go smoothly. That is not.
- [86:49]
C
Life. Life.
- [86:51]
B
Right? You have to learn how to live in the ups and downs and the interruptions. And that includes, you know, what, what role reading plays in that. And so of course, you're going to have seasons of more intense and then less intense. And you know, that that is, that is life. And I kind of always just want to hug the people who post something like, I had a baby and I haven't read anything. I'm like, oh, honey, stop that. You don't need to be putting that pressure on you right.
- [87:15]
C
Now.
- [87:15]
B
You're. You're trying to just, just make it to the shower. It's okay to go through seasons, right? That's, that's. We're all learning how to live actual human lives, not theoretical human lives. And that's gonna be ups and downs with energy and things. So I hope people are encouraged. Emily, you have any final thoughts for, for the Emily's out there who are listening to us right.
- [87:37]
D
Now? Just, you know, just embrace this. There's not a checklist. There's not a Right or wrong way to do it. Do, do this the way you want to do it. Make it work for you. Don't, don't get it twisted where you're trying to conform yourself to something, make it conform to you and just, and, and have joy in it. It's supposed to be life giving. And if we structure it, if we're writing everything in pen, you know, our reading lists, I write all my reading lists in pencil because I know full well that what I want to read in January is not what I will have read in December. And that's so fun to me. I love the flexibility of that. So please have fun. Please don't let it rule. You are embracing this and, and that, that, that's my, that's my biggest thing, is I want people to have fun. You can't be behind, because there isn't anything to be behind.
- [88:50]
C
Here.
- [88:50]
B
Here.
- [88:50]
E
Joan, I just, I second a lot of what Emily was saying. You can't. You're really going to shoot yourself in the foot if you think of it as a hole you have to dig your way out of. You're not in a hole. You're not in a race. You're not behind. You just. You are where you are. It's a wonderful world. And if you're willing to just step in it and live in it for a little while and allow the books that you do read to talk to other books that you read and listen into this conversation, then it's going to be wonderful and amazing. But you can't. You're not in a place. You're probably not going to be in a place ever to really judge how that's happening or force that to happen. You just have to let that happen and, and just keep stepping into the world. Just keep picking up the next book. Just keep reading. Just don't stop. It's. You may slow down. There may be times. Brand new baby, a loss, a huge, major stress thing. That kind of stuff happens. I have found sometimes when that kind of stuff happens. So, like family camp, big stress got back from that. And for two or three days I was just exhausted and I couldn't read anything because my brain and everything was just tired and I couldn't do anything, but I knew that I wanted to, so I didn't take that as a I shouldn't ever read anything again because I'm tired right now, but just, I'm too tired right now. And then I knew that I missed it. And then I could pick up some stuff and I could start reading again after that so you go through times like that, and it's, that's not a detriment to you. My, my body and my brain needed to recover because that's how we're made. Because we're humans. We're not computers, we're not machines, we're not go, go, go 24 7. And we can't do that. So we just need to allow ourselves to be human beings, to read and to enjoy at the pace that can work for us and not compare it to anybody else. Like Emily said, you're not behind because there's nobody else on the path with you. In that sense, it is your path and you're going on it, and where you are is where you are, and you just keep going and there will be growth. And all of that is good. And you don't need to try to stop and judge any of it or make any kind of statements about yourself or allow any of.
- [91:14]
C
That. Cindy yeah, I think, going back to what Emily said that I said about we all stand at the place of I don't know, and we're all there together. We don't know different things, but we are together in community. And it isn't there's no such thing as behind, like Joan said. And I think we talked about children's books being a good gateway to some of this. We don't have to resort to some of these beach reads. I did to to help us read more, because they actually don't help. I somebody gave me a beach read this year and I thought, well, I'm going to read this. I've been in a lull. I'm going to pick this book up. I couldn't get through the first page. It was so terrible. And I was, I was shocked because I have been able to read inferior literature before, but I thought there are really good light books that you can start with that are not on that level there. And they're even good murder mysteries. We've talked about that before, ellis Peters and PG PD James and Dorothy Sayers. But we also have PG Wodehouse and Ms. Reed. And there are people that were writing with this superior sentence style that we're talking about or vocabulary use that that are light reading, that you don't have to be reading something. You don't have to start with Dante. There, there's light reading in children's literature. There's light reading in adult literature that is superior. So just wake up this morning, every morning, just be very, very excited that today you get to take a few steps into that Realm of things you don't know.
- [93:00]
B
Yes. I think that that is a very, very good thing to end on. I guess I'll just. Just leave us with one maybe kind of corny metaphor. I'm. I'm 52 years old, so I'm at a stage in my life where I'm reading a lot of books about how to age well. Right. Because I plan on living a really long time. And you're right, I don't want to be 90 years old. You know, with osteoporosis, I want to be able to age well. And one of the things that they keep saying in these books that I really, really like is don't think about. You're trying to be 20, right? Don't. Don't have this vision of a person in your head that you're trying to become. Just think in terms of, am I getting stronger? Am I making choices right now so that in 40 years I'm going to be happy with where I am? And I really think that's the long view we've got to take about all these parts of my life. You're not trying to master the literary life in the next six months. You're thinking about the whole rest of your life. What do you want to be like at 80 years old? What do you want your life to be like? What do you want to be thinking about in the nursing.
- [94:06]
C
Home?
- [94:08]
B
But. But seriously. But seriously, right? And so I think we have got to take the long. The long haul here. The long. That's one of Cindy's long haul approaches with everything. We started off talking about the long haul approach with education and educating our kids and homeschooling and all the indirect benefits. And I think you have to do that. That's everything. And being in the modern world makes it very, very hard, but it is so worth.
- [94:33]
E
It. Yep, it's worth.
- [94:36]
B
It. So please be encouraged. Please hang in there. If you want to tackle the occasional hard book, we really do recommend. This is what the podcast is for. It's free and it's basically a free college class. And just follow along and we'll teach you a few things about books that will help you. But don't be so quick to throw in the towel. It just might be a sign that you need to take a little weight off the bar this round. Right. It doesn't mean it's. It's not ever going to be there. All right, well, thank you, Emily and Joan, for coming back today. And thank you, Cindy, for carving time out of your very, very full and busy Life for coming back. I know everyone is so excited to hear your voice and that you're.
- [95:18]
E
Back. Fun to be.
- [95:20]
B
Here. I've missed you terribly on the podcast and I know that everyone else has, so I'm It's a real treat to have you here today and I won't take up any more of your time. So stick around till the end of this podcast. Mr. Banks will have who knows what kind of poem he's going to pick for this. Something good, I hope. I'll make him pick a poem about how to strengthen your brain like a muscle. No, I'm kidding. So once again, thank you guys for being here today. Thank you guys at home for listening. And until next time, keep crafting your literary life because stories will save the world. Thank you for listening to the Literary Life Podcast brought to you by our loyal patreon sponsors. Visit HouseOfHumaneLetters.com to find Angelina and Thomas and to sign up for our newsletter with podcast schedules and more. And keep up with 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 podcast, the New Mason Jar and the well Read Poem. And now for a poem read by poet Thomas.
- [96:44]
A
Banks from Il Penseroso by John Milton but let my dew feet never fail to walk, the studious cloisters pale, and love the high embowered roof with antique pillars massy proof, and storied windows richly dight, casting a dim religious light there let the pealing organ blow to the full voiced choir below in service high and anthems clear as May with sweetness through mine ear Dissolve me into ecstasies, and bring all heaven before mine eyes. And may at last my weary age find out the peaceful hermitage, the hairy gown and mossy cell where I may sit, and rightly spell of every star that heaven doth shew, and every herb that sips the dew, Till old experience do attain to something like prophetic strain these pleasures melancholy give, and I with thee will choose to.