The Literary Life Podcast

On The Literary Life podcast this week, Angelina, Cindy, and Thomas continue their discussion of The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. After sharing their commonplace quotes for this week, they begin talking about "Kaa's Hunting." Angelina asks Cindy about the age range for this book, which is recommended on AmblesideOnline for Year 3 students. They talk about Mowgli's upbringing and training in the...

Today on The Literary Life podcast, we begin a new series of episodes on The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling with our hosts Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins, and Thomas Banks! After sharing their commonplace quotes, each of them talks about their own reading histories with Rudyard Kipling's work. Thomas gives us some biographical information about Kipling and sets up the literary period in which he...

This week on The Literary Life, we bring you an episode from deep in the archives in which Cindy and Angelina discussed Katherine Mansfield's short story " The Garden Party ." After a great chat over their commonplace quotes, Angelina and Cindy dig into this week's story. They start with how Cindy found this story and the connections she was making to  Little Women . Angelina gives a brief biograp...

This week on The Literary Life Podcast, Angelina and Thomas are once again joined Dr. Jason Baxter, author of Why Literature Still Matters. In this episode, our hosts sit down with Dr. Baxter for a chat about a wide variety of topics, including teaching the old books, reading poetry to understand it, the delight of teaching students at HHL, their hot takes on hot takes, making reading recommendati...

This week on The Literary Life, Angelina and Thomas wrap up our encore series on J. K. Rowling's  Harry Potter: Book 1 . Angelina and Thomas begin the episode with some thoughts on their Aristotelian approach to literature as seen in this series of episodes. After sharing their commonplace quotes, they dive into their discussion of the last few chapters of the book. Some of the ideas they consider...

Welcome back to The Literary Life podcast and our series on J. K. Rowling's  Harry Potter: Book 1 . After sharing some thoughts on detective fiction as it relates to Rowling, our hosts Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks discuss chapters 8-12. Some of the ideas they share are the following: Homeric echos and classical allusions in this book, the identity quest, the significance of characters' names...

This week we are back with the second part of our remix of Angelina and Thomas' podcast series on Harry Potter: Book 1 by J. K. Rowling. This week we are covering chapters 3-7. Angelina opens the book discussion with an overview of the literary motifs used by Rowling in the Harry Potter books to help modern readers better understand these kinds of stories. One of the motifs she highlights is the i...

On today's episode on The Literary Life podcast, we bring you a special re-mix of our popular series on  Harry Potter: Book 1 by J. K. Rowling, with hosts Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks. After sharing a little on their own backgrounds as teachers and their commonplace quotations for the week, Angelina and Thomas open the book discussion with some introductory information on this book and serie...

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 b...

On today's episode of The Literary Life podcast, Angelina and Thomas continue their series on Flannery O'Connor with a discussion of her short story " A Good Man is Hard to Find ." After sharing their commonplace quotes, Angelina explains why she chose this particular story to go over on the podcast. She and Thomas then go over the characters in the family and the dynamics at play. Some of the ide...

This week on The Literary Life podcast, Angelina and Thomas bring us the first of a two-part series on the oft-requested, oft-misunderstood author, Flannery O'Connor. They begin by sharing their commonplace quotes for this week, which leads into the topic of O'Connor, the controversial mid-century southern American author. Angelina gives us a look at Flannery's early life and education, then her a...

Today on The Literary Life podcast, Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks have a much-awaited conversation all about Angelina's own literary life and education. Thomas gets to ask the tough questions and put Angelina on the spot in this episode! She begins by sharing her childhood love of books and what her favorite books were when she was young. They then discuss the turning point Angelina had when...

This week on The Literary Life Podcast, our hosts Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks are back with a new "Literary Life of…" interview, this time with their teaching colleague at House of Humane Letters , Dr. Anne Phillips. In addition to her classes at HHL, you can also find Dr. Phillips writing on Substack . Angelina starts off the conversation asking Anne about her reading life growing up and h...

This week on The Literary Life podcast, Angelina, Cindy and Thomas continue their discussion of  The Enchanted April  by Elizabeth von Arnim, on chapters 12-22. Angelina and Thomas begin the conversation sharing some thoughts on modern literature and why we don't hear of modern authors like Elizabeth von Arnim among "the academy." Cindy tells us what stood out to her most in the second half of the...

Welcome back to The Literary Life podcast with Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins and Thomas Banks. This week we are bringing you another episode from the vault, this time part one of our series on  The Enchanted April  by Elizabeth von Arnim. Thomas gives some interesting biographical information about von Arnim, and Angelina shares some perspective on appreciating the art and the life of artist. C...

On The Literary Life Podcast today we bring you a special "Literary Life of…" episode featuring author and journalist Peter Hitchens. After sharing their commonplace quotes, Angelina and Thomas dive into the interview with Mr. Hitchens, first asking about his memories of books and reading in his childhood. In this wide-ranging conversation, our hosts and Mr. Hitchens discuss such topics as the Geo...

This week on The Literary Life, we bring you a gem from the archives. In this episode hosts Angelina Stanford, Thomas Banks, and Cindy Rollins discuss  "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" by Leo Tolstoy . To start off the discussion of this short story, Thomas gives us some background to help answer Angelina's question about why this story seems so very different from other Tolstoy works. Angelina sh...

Welcome back to The Literary Life Podcast this week! Today we are bringing you a brand new episode on An Experiment in Criticism in which Angelina and Thomas revisit the ideas in this book and answer some listener questions from over the years! Angelina opens the discussion with a little background on the first series of episodes, then begins to unravel the two main areas of confusion about this b...

On today's "Best of" episode of The Literary Life, Angelina and Cindy are once again joined by Thomas Banks. They discuss the last two chapters and the epilogue of  An Experiment in Criticism .  The first topic of conversation is Lewis' comments on poetry, including the un-literary reading of poetry and the importance of the sound of poetry. Angelina highlights Lewis' take on reading "bad books,"...

This week's episode is a continuation of Cindy Rollins and Angelina Stanford's discussion of  An Experiment in Criticism  by C. S. Lewis. They start with an exploration of the difference between loving a book and evaluating a book as a work of art, followed by an explanation of Lewis' idea that works of art do not teach us. Angelina goes in depth about why it is not our job as readers to find the...

Angelina and Cindy open today's discussion of C. S. Lewis' An Experiment in Criticism with a recap of the terms that Lewis defines in chapters 5-7, starting with myth. They talk about what it means to have an "extra-literary" experience and how to cultivate the proper attitude of a good reader. Next Cindy and Angelina dig into the definition and benefits of literary fantasy versus the dangers of m...

This week on The Literary Life Podcast, we bring you the first installment of our series reprising C. S. Lewis'  An Experiment in Criticism . Join us over the next few weeks as we replay the original discussions of this book hosted by Angelina Stanford and Cindy Rollins. Then come back for a new episode at the end of the series in which Angelina and Thomas Banks will add some further thoughts and...

This week on The Literary Life podcast we are back with a fun episode all about film adaptations of Much Ado About Nothing  by William Shakespeare! Angelina and Thomas are joined by Atlee Northmore for today's discussion, and you are in for quite a ride! Atlee begins the conversation with a general history of Shakespeare works on film, and the second half of the episode covers the two main film ad...

This week on The Literary Life podcast, Angelina and Thomas are back to wrap up their discussion of Shakespeare's Much Ado About About Nothing . Today, after some introductory talk about literary criticism, our hosts cover the last two acts of this play, highlighting how Shakespeare deals with the five act structure. Once again, we see the problem of things being not as they appear in act 4, as we...

Welcome back to our series on Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing here on The Literary Life Podcast. Our hosts, Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks, open the episode with some thoughts on disguises and appearance versus reality in Shakespeare. They talk about how the eavesdropping in this play works together with the things not being as they seem. Angelina shares some clarifying ideas on discussin...