Welcome to The Literary Life Podcast and a new series featuring the book The Age of Innocence. Our hosts, Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks introduce us to American Gilded Age author, Edith Wharton, the "First Lady of American Letters." They also share their own experiences with reading Wharton's stories, novels, and letters, as well as some background on the time period and cultural context in which she was writing. In discussing the first several chapters of this book, Angelina and Thomas point out small details and subtleties that Wharton uses to give us hints about the characters and situations she presents.

Visit the HouseofHumaneLetters.com to sign up for all the upcoming and past mini-classes and webinars taught by Angelina, Thomas, and their colleagues!

To view the full show notes for this episode, including book links, commonplace quotes, and today's poem, please visit https://theliterary.life/289.

On today’s episode of The Literary Life podcast, Angelina and Thomas will be talking about the milestones of a reader’s literary life. This episode developed in response to the many questions they’ve received over the years about challenges people face throughout their reading lives. They begin by thinking back to childhood and recalling the first time they each chose a book for themselves and fell in love with the story, as well as the feeling of getting their first library cards as children. Thomas asks Angelina when was the first time she found herself arguing with a book, and he answers the same question himself.

Other milestones they discuss are changing your mind about a book on a re-read, learning to see past the imperfections of a book to see the underlying truth, distinguishing the work of art from your subjective reading experience, as well as separating the life of the author from the work of literature. They also answer other common concerns such as “Help! I dislike all the characters in this book!”

Be sure to come back next week as we open our next series on Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence in which we will be covering chapters 1-8.

Visit the HouseofHumaneLetters.com to sign up for all the upcoming and past mini-classes and webinars taught by Angelina, Thomas, and their colleagues!

To view the full show notes for this episode, please visit https://theliterary.life/288.

On today’s episode of The Literary Life podcast, Angelina, Cindy, and Thomas wrap up their discussion of The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling with the final Mowgli story–“Tiger, Tiger.” Before beginning to talk about the story, the chat a little about Kipling’s other works and his place in literary history and what sort of writer he was. In this section, Angelina points out the parallels to the first story, as well as the mythic qualities of the whole tale. Together they cover the various ideas in this section, including the ideas of belonging, freedom and boundaries, and heroism.

Join is next week for an episode on “Literary Milestones” in the life of a reader. After that we will begin a new series on Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence.

Over at House of Humane Letters, a new webinar is now available for registration. It is taught by Heather Goodman and is titled “Coleridge’s Imagination: Restoring the Chain of Being.” Also, check out this year’s Back to School Online Conference, “Educating the Freeborn,” over at MorningTimeforMoms.com to get registered and hear all of this year’s amazing speakers!

To view the full show notes for this episode, please visit https://theliterary.life/287.