Episode 278: The Literary Life of Natalia Testa
On this week’s episode of The Literary Life, Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks chat with their student Natalia Testa about her literary life. She is a rising homeschool junior living in Houston, Texas. She enjoys researching obscure manuscripts, classical languages and all things Lord Peter Wimsey. Angelina kicks off the conversation asking about Natalia’s childhood reading memories and how she became interested in ancient history and literature. They also discuss how the research bug bit Natalia, as well as her thoughts about reading books that seem “above” a child’s level. Other topics of conversation is how Natalia found Dorothy Sayers and fell in love with detective novels, how she started taking classes with House of Humane Letters, and how she deals with a reading slump.
Please visit HouseofHumaneLetters.com to check out all the past and upcoming classes, conferences, and webinars mentioned in this episode.
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Commonplace Quotes:
She did not like to be left too long in conversation with a single individual in case the gaps in what she knew became obvious.
Roger Fulford, from Queen Victoria
Women geniuses don’t get coddled, so they learn not to expect it.
Dorothy Sayers, from Strong Poison
As soon as the mind of the Maker has been made manifest in a work, a way of communication is established between other minds and His.
Dorothy Sayers, from The Mind of the Maker
Sonnet from Gaudy Night
by Dorothy L. Sayers
Here then at home, by no more storms distress,
Folding laborious hands we sit, wings furled;
Here in close perfume lies the rose-leaf curled,
Here the sun stands and knows not east nor west,
Here no tide runs; we have come, last and best,
From the wide zone in dizzying circles hurled
To that still center where the spinning world
Sleeps on its axis, to the heart of rest.
Lay on thy whips, O Love, that we upright,
Poised on the perilous point, in no lax bed
May sleep, as tension at the verberant core
Of music sleeps; for, if thou spare to smite,
Staggering, we stoop, stooping, fall dumb and dead,
And, dying so, sleep our sweet sleep no more.
Copyright 1936, Dorothy L. Sayers. Poem reprinted here for educational purposes only.
Book List:
Amazon affiliate links included below
Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers
The Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear, illus. by Jan Brett
Tales from the Odyssey by Mary Pope Osborne
The Magic Treehouse Series by Mary Pope Osborne
50 Famous Stories Retold by James Baldwin
The Oz Books by L. Frank Baum
The Complete Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen
Grimm’s Fairy Stories by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place Series by Maryrose Wood
Strong Poison by Dorothy L. Sayers
The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay
The Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Arnim
To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis
The Collected Stories of Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne
Queen Victoria by Lytton Strachey
Dorothy L. Sayers by Barbara Reynolds
Comic Latin Grammar by Percival Leigh
Comic English Grammar by Percival Leigh
Emma by Jane Austen
Lilith by George MacDonald
The Faerie Queene, Book 3 by Edmund Spenser
The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, 1905-1931 by C. S. Lewis
Dorothy and Jack by Gina Dalfonzo
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You can find Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/
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