Episode 309: Our Literary Lives of 2025

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For this final episode of the 2025 season on The Literary Life Podcast, we bring you a special year-end conversation with Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins, and Thomas Banks all about their year in reading. Thomas talks about how most of his reading was tied to classes he taught. Cindy and Angelina talk about the reasons they didn’t read as many books as they usually do in a year. They share some of their favorite non-fiction reads of the year, books that surprised them, and fiction highlights. In the course of the conversation, our hosts also make several points about reading in the literary tradition and avoiding public judgment of other people’s choices in books.

The House of Humane Letters Christmas sale is still on! Head over to the website to peruse the discounted webinars and mini-classes on sale, already discounted, no coupon code needed.

Don’t forget to check out this coming year’s annual Literary Life Online Conference, happening January 23-30, 2026, “The Letter Killeth, but the Spirit Quickeneth: Reading Like a Human”. Our speakers will be Dr. Jason Baxter, Jenn Rogers, Dr. Anne Phillips, and, of course, Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks.

Finally, you can also sign up now for upcoming classes like “Abiding in the Fields: Spenser, Milton, and the Pastoral Poetic Tradition” taught by Dr. Anne Phillips, or Dr. Michael Drought’s “Viking and Old Norse Culture.”

Commonplace Quotes:

By the way, always remember that old people can be quite as shy around young people as young people can be with old. This explains what must seem to you the idiotic way in which so many grown-ups talk to you.

C. S. Lewis, from a letter to his goddaughter Sarah

I have no patience with the stupidity of the average teacher of grammar who wastes precious years in hammering rules into children’s heads. For it is not by learning rules that we acquire the power of speaking a language, but by daily intercourse with those accustomed to express themselves with exactness and refinement, and by the copious reading of the best authors.

Erasmus

Before we parted, I gave to each of my guests a sheet of Christmas carols gathered from the older portions of our literature, for most of the modern hymns are to my mind neither milk nor meat, mere wretched imitations. There were a few curious words and idioms in these, but I thought it better to leave them as they were, for they might set them inquiring and give me an opportunity of interesting them further, some time or other, in the history of a word, for in their ups and downs of fortune, words fair very much like human beings.

George MacDonald, from Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood

Books:

Against the Machine by Paul Kingsnorth

Why Literature Still Matters by Jason Baxter

Oliver Cromwell by John Buchan

The 39 Steps by John Buchan

Greenmantle by John Buchan

Mr. Standfast by John Buchan

Witch Wood by John Buchan

The Balkan Trilogy by Olivia Manning

The World of Yesterday by Stephan Zweig

The Victorians by Sir Charles Petrie

The New World by Winston Churchill

Be Thou My Vision by Jonathan Gibson

The Great Passion by James Runcie

Second Nature by Michael Pollan

Land of Hope by Wilfred McClay

From Strength to Strength by Arthur Brooks

The Sacred and The Profane by Mircea Eliade

The Forge and The Crucible by Mircea Eliade

Alchemy by Titus Burckhardt

A Preface to Chaucer by D. W. Robertson

On Christian Doctrine by St. Augustine

The Silver Chair by C. S. Lewis

On Christian Teaching by St. Augustine

The Magician by W. Somerset Maugham

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Expiation by Elizabeth von Arnim

The Killer and The Slain by Hugh Walpole

The Plantagenets Series by Sharon Kay Penman

Verdict of Twelve by Raymond Postgate

Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell

The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot

The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion by Beth Browser

A Diary of a Country Priest by George Bernanos (trans. by Michael Tobin)

The Christmas Pig by J. K. Rowling

Green Dolphin Street by Elizabeth Goudge

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thakeray

The Decagon House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji

The Hallmarked Man by Robert Galbraith

Spellbound

by Emily Brontë

The night is darkening round me,
The wild winds coldly blow;
But a tyrant spell has bound me
And I cannot, cannot go.

The giant trees are bending
Their bare boughs weighed with snow.
And the storm is fast descending,
And yet I cannot go.

Clouds beyond clouds above me,
Wastes beyond wastes below;
But nothing drear can move me;
I will not, cannot go.

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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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