The Literary Life Podcast

This week on The Literary Life podcast our hosts give an update on their progress with the "Two for '22" Literary Life Reading Challenge. Angelina, Cindy and Thomas share their commonplace quotes, then begin going over each category and talking about their progress and the various books they have chosen so far. Scroll down in the show notes for all the book titles mentioned and affiliate links to...

Welcome back to this long awaited return of The Literary Life podcast and a new "Literary Life of…" interview episode with Angelina, Cindy and their guest Jone Rose. Jone is a "super-fan" of the podcast and is a homeschool mom living in North Carolina. Today Angelina starts off the interview asking about Jone's childhood reading life and school experience. Jone shares how her own adult literary ed...

In this week's episode of The Literary Life, our hosts wrap up their series on The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. Angelina, Thomas and Cindy talk about these final chapters of the book, covering some key ideas such as the siren song of the Sea Rat, Toad's inability to see himself rightly, the echoes of Homer's Odyssey , examples of bad discussion questions, and what makes this such a last...

On The Literary Life podcast this week, our hosts are joined in their discussion of The Wind in the Willows by Kelly Cumbee. Angelina, Cindy, Thomas and Kelly talk about chapters 7-8, focusing special attention on a section of this book that presents a potential problem for some readers. Angelina opens with background on the Enlightenment and Romanticism, the concept of "the Numinous," and the pop...

Today on The Literary Life podcast, our hosts continue their discussion of The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. Angelina, Cindy and Thomas kick off the book discussion by clarifying some confusion over the definition of a picaresque novel. They share some thoughts on the how stories communicate to us in a unique way that cannot easily be expressed in any other way. Other ideas brought up in...

Grahame. Angelina, Thomas and Cindy set out to introduce this book in its historical and literary context, as well as address a few of the challenges people may have on their first reading of The Wind in the Willows. They also discuss some other pertinent topics such as Edwardian cultural concerns, the form of this novel, the rebirth images in the opening chapters, and the echoes of this book in o...

Our Literary Life podcast hosts are back this week, along with Atlee Northmore, to wrap up their discussion of The Enchanted April with some thoughts on the various film adaptations of this enchanting book. After expanding on their commonplace quotes, Angelina, Cindy, Thomas and Atlee start the film talk with the "dreadful" 1935 RKO version. Then they move on to dig in to how En chanted April was...

This week on The Literary Life podcatst, 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 our hosts begin their discussion of The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim, covering chapters 1-11. Thomas gives some interesting biographical information about von Arnim, and Angelina shares some perspective on appreciating the art and the life of artist. Cindy highlights the fact that...

On The Literary Life podcast today, our hosts are bringing you another "Literary Life Of" interview episode. This week's guest is Kay Pelham, a lifelong reader, veteran homeschooling mother, and accomplished pianist. After sharing their commonplace quotes, Angelina, Cindy and Kay dig into their conversation about the journey of Kay's reading life. She shares a little about her family of story-tell...

On today's episode of The Literary Life, our hosts wrap up their series on The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis. Angelina kicks off today's conversation about chapter 3 with more exploration and clarification of the concept of "the Tao." Cindy talks about the importance of respect for the past and how much we have lost by letting go of that. Thomas highlights the fact that so many education theoris...

On The Literary Life podcast this week, Angelina, Cindy and Thomas continue their series of discussions on The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis. They open the conversation with their commonplace quotes and give us a working definition of debunking. You can also read a fantastic post on debunking from Kelly Cumbee's blog here. Other topics of this conversation include "the tao," objective reality, u...

On The Literary Life podcast this week, our hosts begin a much-anticipated series on The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis. Angelina, Thomas, and Cindy share their commonplace quotes to open the discussion, then they give some background on this particular work. They talk about the ideas behind the "new criticism" approach to literature and why it is so problematic. Angelina and Thomas expand on the...

Our hosts are back on The Literary Life podcast this week with another fun episode in our series "In Search of the Austen Adaptation." In this episode, Angelina, Cindy, and Thomas are joined again by Atlee Northmore to discuss the several film versions of Jane Austen's Emma . To start the conversation, Angelina highlights the challenges of adapting Emma to film. Atlee outlines the major film adapt...

This week on The Literary Life podcast, we are bringing you another Literary Life of interview episode. This week's guest is Timilyn Downey, and together with hosts Angelina Stanford and Cindy Rollins dig into how Timilyn became a lifelong reader. Timilyn shares about the incredibly literary childhood education that she had without even realizing it at the time. She also tells the story of her tri...

On The Literary Life podcast this week, we will wrap up our series on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream . Our hosts, Angelina, Cindy and Thomas walk through the last two acts of the play, sharing their thoughts on the structure and ideas presented here. Angelina talks about why she thinks Shakespeare resolves the different conflicts the way he does. They discuss the importance of the play wi...

Today on The Literary Life podcast, we continue our series on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream with coverage of Act 3. Angelina talks about the pacing of this act and the importance of the characters' madcap, lunatic behavior. She also highlight's Shakespeare's wrestling with the relationship between the imagination and art and reality. Thomas highlights the structure of the play as reflect...

Welcome back to The Literary Life podcast and our series on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream . After kicking off the episode with their commonplace quotes, Angelina, Cindy and Thomas start digging into the play itself. Thomas brings up the importance of the timing of this story being midsummer. Angelina gives a little background into the names and characters in this play as well as some of...

Welcome to this new season of The Literary Life podcast! This week we bring you an introduction both to William Shakespeare and his play A Midsummer Night's Dream . Hosts Angelina, Cindy and Thomas seek to give new Shakespeare readers a place from which to jump into his work and more experienced readers eyes to see more layers in his stories. Cindy begins with some perspective on how to start cult...

On this week's episode of The Literary Life podcast, Angelina, Cindy and Thomas share a wrap up of their year in reading–their favorite books of the year, their most hated books read in 2021, and how they each did with covering the categories of the #LitLife192021 Reading Challenge. They also talk a little about how they will be approaching their reading for next year. Download the Two for '22 adu...

"Two for '22" Literary Life Reading Challenge! This coming year Angelina, Cindy and Thomas are challenging us to read books in 11 categories, but choose 2 books in each category, with a bit of a twist. In today's episode they briefly go over each category and give a few examples of books would fit into those categories. They also take us through the Kids' "Two for '22" Reading Challenge topics. Ne...

This week on The Literary Life podcast we have a fun episode for you to kick off a fun series of episodes that will come up from time to time, "In Search of the Austen Adaptation." This week our hosts Angelina, Cindy and Thomas are joined by Atlee Northmore, and together they are debating which film version of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is the best. Atlee shares some of the history of the P...

This week on The Literary Life podcast, we are excited to bring you a much anticipated interview with Dr. Carolyn Weber, author of the popular memoir, Surprised by Oxford . She is also currently a professor at New College Franklin. To keep up with Carolyn, visit carolynweber.com or follow her on Facebook . Angelina and Cindy kick off the conversation by asking Carolyn about her childhood and how s...

Welcome to the final episode in our series covering Mansfield Park by Jane Austen here on The Literary Life podcast. Angelina, Cindy and Thomas dive right into the book chat today in order to cover as much as possible as they wrap up Fanny Price's story. Angelina brings out the parallels to Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene . Cindy talks about how Julia and Maria's upbringing is instructive for paren...

Welcome back for another installment in our series covering Mansfield Park by Jane Austen. Angelina, Cindy and Thomas share their commonplace quotes which leads them into discussing Fanny's character in contrast to the heroine of a gothic novel. They talk about what makes a good marriage in the Regency period and Jane Austen's own personal life, as well as the contrast between the household of Sir...