Reading Challenges,  Show Notes,  Two for 22 Reading Challenge

Episode 153: Our Literary Lives of 2022

On The Literary Life podcast today, our hosts look back on their reading lives over the past year. Angelina, Cindy and Thomas each share a commonplace quote, then they each share a little about how they approach reading in a way that fits with the demands of their busy lives. Each of our hosts talks about their literary surprises, their most outstanding reads of the year, disappointing books they read, and their personal favorite podcast books from 2022. Angelina also reiterates why reading rightly is so important to us all!

Don’t forget to join us for the 2023 Reading Challenge! Get your books and Bingo cards ready!

Listen to The Literary Life:

Commonplace Quotes:

A good story isn’t told to make a point. A good story reflects the World God created. The point makes itself.

Timothy Rollins

“Blessed be Pain and Torment and every torture of the Body … Blessed be Plague and Pestilence and the Illness of Nations….

“Blessed be all Loss and the Failure of Friends and the Sacrifice of Love….

“Blessed be the Destruction of all Possessions, the Ruin of all Property, Fine Cities, and Great Palaces….

“Blessed be the Disappointment of all Ambitions….

“Blessed be all Failure and the ruin of every Earthly Hope….

“Blessed be all Sorrows, Torments, Hardships, Endurances that demand Courage….

“Blessed be these things–for of these things cometh the making of a Man….”

Hugh Walpole

I will not walk with your progressive apes,
erect and sapient. Before them gapes
the dark abyss to which their progress tends –
if by God’s mercy progress ever ends,
and does not ceaselessly revolve the same
unfruitful course with changing of a name.
I will not treat your dusty path and flat,
denoting this and that by this and chat,
your world immutable wherein no part
the little maker has with maker’s art.
I bow not yet before the Iron Crown,
nor cast my own small golden sceptre down.

J. R. R. Tolkien, from “Mythopoeia”

A Selection from “The Secular Masque”

by John Dryden

All, all of a piece throughout;
Thy chase had a beast in view;
Thy wars brought nothing about;
Thy lovers were all untrue.
'Tis well an old age is out,
And time to begin a new.

Book and Link List:

Episode 60: Why Read Pagan Myths

Episode 124: The Abolition of Man (beginning of series)

Fortitude by Hugh Walpole

The Killer and the Slain by Hugh Walpole

The Old Ladies by Hugh Walpole

Cherringham Mystery Series by Matthew Costello and Neil Richards

The Ink Black Heart by Robert Galbraith

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

The Golden Age of Murder by Martin Edwards

Anthony Berkeley

Ronald Knox

Rex Stout

Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey

Light Thickens by Ngaio Marsh

Henry the Eighth by Beatrice Saunders

The Talisman by Sir Walter Scott

Hard Times by Charles Dickens

Captive Flames by Ronald Knox

The Book of the Dun Cow by Walter Wangerin

The Most Reluctant Convert by David C. Downing

The Truth and Beauty by Andrew Klavan

The Man Who Knew Too Much by G. K. Chesterton

The Rosettis in Wonderland by Dinah Roe

Just Passing Through by Winton Porter

The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories ed. by Martin Edwards

The Mistletoe Murder and Other Stories by P. D. James

Edmund Crispin

Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman by Lucy Worsley

Dorothy L. Sayers by Colin Duriez

The Silver Chair by C. S. Lewis

The Wood Beyond the World by William Morris

The Medieval Mind of C. S. Lewis by Jason Baxter

Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

I Live Under a Black Sun by Edith Sitwell

The Dwarf by Par Lagerkvist

You Are Not Your Own by Alan Noble

Dune by Frank Herbert

The Twist of the Knife by Anthony Horowitz

The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley (not recommended)

The Witness of the Stars by E. W. Bullinger (not recommended)

The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim

Dracula by Bram Stoker

The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis

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Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy’s own Patreon page also!

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3 Comments

  • Andrea

    WOW~!! I’m so happy to have come across this podcast! I used to listen to The Mason Jar and it was one of my favorite podcasts then and I can already tell this is going to be one of my favorite podcasts now! Thanks a million for this refreshing, inspiring perspective and for ALL these amazing book recommendations 🙂

    I do have a quick question but it’s totally fine if no one has time to answer. I wanted to read the Robert Galbraith books because I’ve been reading the HP books aloud to my kids – my first reread of them since they were first released – and have just been astonished all over again at the way she puts together a story! So I started the Cormoran Strike novels this fall and really enjoyed the first two, but stalled out in Career of Evil after 15 pages because it seemed like it was going to be too scary/horror-genre leaning. SO my question is, do you think someone who doesn’t have the stomach for the first 15 pages of Career of Evil should just skip that one and keep going with the series? Or will I not enjoy the series if I don’t enjoy book 3? I really want to read the series if I can tolerate it, the first two books really pulled me in! Well, I just thought I’d ask since I’ve been wondering this anyway and both Angelina and Cindy mentioned Ink Black Heart and the series. I also have Enchanted April on my shelf and haven’t read it yet, now I can read it and go back through your episodes on it! So much to look forward to 🙂 Thanks so much!

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