Episode 256: Our Literary Lives of 2024
Welcome to our year end wrap-up episode here on The Literary Life podcast! Today Angelina and Thomas are rejoined by Cindy Rollins to chat about all the books they’ve been reading throughout 2024. They start out sharing some overall thoughts about what each of their year in reading looked like, then share some highlights from this year in books. They also share some of their least favorite reads of the year, including a few books they wanted to throw across the room. They also talk about the ways they are trying to slow down and disconnect from the digital world in different ways.
If you are looking for a reading challenge for the coming year, you can look back at our catalogue of previous challenges and pick your favorite one to follow in 2025!
You can check out Cindy’s Christmas sale at MorningTimeforMoms.com. This is the time to purchase any of the pre-recorded classes you’ve had your eye on at HouseofHumaneLetters.com because the Christmas sale is on now through December 31, 2024. For those who want a way to keep track of their HHL webinars, conferences, and mini-classes, here is a handy spreadsheet to help you out! Just copy the document into your own files, and you can edit it as you please!
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Commonplace Quotes:
How can you govern a country that has two hundred and forty-six varieties of cheese?
Charles de Gaulle, from “Les Mots du Général”
In other words, we are pain that we cannot describe or even comprehend the wonder we’re beholding, and we’re aware that this is because there is something in us that is unable to behold the glory in full. Yet at the same time, we are overwhelmed because there is also something in us that suspects we were made to exist in such splendor. This response of pain joined to passion, this holy discontent joined to astonishment, is the power of the sublime.
Russ Ramsey, from Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart
And so for us literature is not a pastime. We’re not readers because we like books. Of course, we might sometimes simply read for entertainment, as Eliot relaxed by reading detective novels and Lewis relaxed by reading sci-fi and my high school daughter relaxes by picking up her siblings’ fantastical tales. But inspired by the vision I have articulated here, when we read with a sense of urgency, we are not reading primarily for entertainment. Rather, we are engaged in a deep reading in which we find our hearts quickened, our spirits moved, and our souls enlarged. Those who are haunted by joy would never describe their pursuit of the Eternal, in prayer, in liturgy, in love, in literature, in music, in painting, as entertainment. Rather, we hunger to eat what Dante called the bread of angels. And yes, while we are at it, we might look a little mad-eyed, as Wilbur put it, if we’re found reading introductions to medieval literature on the beach. We read to close the gap between the beauty out there and in here, and when we have experiences like this, especially if we have them often, and we start to get good at them, then we do, of course, begin to enjoy our reading.
Jason Baxter, from Why Literature Still Matters
Book List:
Amazon Affiliate links below
Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart by Russ Ramsey
Rembrandt is in the Wind by Russ Ramsey
Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis
Becoming Elizabeth Elliot by Ellen Vaughn
Being Elizabeth Elliot by Ellen Vaughn
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis
Karl Marx by Isaiah Berlin
Napoleon (French Edition) by Jacques Bainville
Stolen Focus by Johann Hare
The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
Deep Work by Cal Newport
Slow Productivity by Cal Newport
Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport
The Victorian Cycle by Esme Wingfield-Stratford
Odes by Horace
Queen Victoria by Mona Wilson
The Spirit of Early Christian Thought by Robert L. Wilken
For the Life of the World by Alexander Schmemann
My India by Jim Corbett
Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall
Remaking the World by Andrew Wilson
The Story of Britain by Rebecca Fraser
The Sacred and The Profane by Mercia Eliade
Tartuffe by Moliere
Howards End by E. M. Forster
That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë
The Honjin Murders by Seishi Yokomizo
Sleuth by Antony Shaffer
Amadeus by Peter Shaffer
How Doth the Little Crocodile by Antony and Peter Shaffer
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante (not recommended)
The Man with the Golden Typewriter: Ian Fleming’s James Bond Letters edited by Fergus Fleming
Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench
Much May Be Done with Sparrows by Karen Glass
The Secrets of Ormdale by Christina Baehr
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens
American Notes for General Circulation by Charles Dickens
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
The Warden by Anthony Trollope
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
There is No Frigate Like a Book
By Emily Dickinson
There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry –
This Traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of Toll –
How frugal is the Chariot
That bears the Human Soul –
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Connect with Us:
You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/
You can find Cindy Rollins at MorningTimeforMoms.com, over on her podcast The New Mason Jar, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/CindyRollinsWriter. You can also check out her Patreon for additional content.
Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let’s get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB
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