Episode 76: The Literary Life 19 Books in 2021 Reading Challenge

Today on the podcast, your hosts Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins and Thomas Banks take a deep dive into the Literary Life 19 Books for 2021 challenge! This episode is full of ideas and book suggestions to help inspire your #LitLife192021 reading, so be sure to scroll down in your podcast app to view the comprehensive book link list! They not only give reasons behind each category and suggests for the adult reading challenge, but many titles for the kids' version of the challenge, as well!

Also, don't forget that our Literary Life Commonplace Books are now available to order via Amazon! These high quality journals are perfect for recording what you are reading, as well as all your favorite quotes, and we have both adult and children's versions. Our publisher, Blue Sky Daisies, is providing us with a fun giveaway, so head over to their Facebook page, our Facebook group, or our Instagram to find the social media image to share and find all the details!

Cindy's List of Literature of Honor for Boys

Cindy's List of Books for Fortitude linked at The Redeemed Reader

Commonplace Quotes:

In anything that can be called art, there is a quality of redemption.

Raymond Chandler

The right teacher would have his pupil easy to please, but ill to satisfy; ready to enjoy, unready to embrace; keen to discover beauty, slow to say, "Here I will dwell."

George MacDonald

It is difficult for a moneylender to grow old gracefully

David Mathew Christ's Nativity

by Henry Vaughan

Awake, glad heart! get up and sing!
It is the birth-day of thy King.
Awake! awake!
The Sun doth shake
Light from his locks, and all the way
Breathing perfumes, doth spice the day.

Awake, awake! hark how th' wood rings;
Winds whisper, and the busy springs
A concert make;
Awake! awake!
Man is their high-priest, and should rise
To offer up the sacrifice.

I would I were some bird, or star,
Flutt'ring in woods, or lifted far
Above this inn
And road of sin!
Then either star or bird should be
Shining or singing still to thee.

I would I had in my best part
Fit rooms for thee! or that my heart
Were so clean as
Thy manger was!
But I am all filth, and obscene;
Yet, if thou wilt, thou canst make clean.

Sweet Jesu! will then. Let no more
This leper haunt and soil thy door!
Cure him, ease him,
O release him!
And let once more, by mystic birth,
The Lord of life be born in earth.

Book List:

The Simple Art of Murder by Raymond Chandler

A Dish of Orts by George MacDonald

The Great Tudors ed. by Katharine Garvin

The Oxford Book of English Verse ed. by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch

The Classic Hundred Poems ed. by William Harmon

The Top 500 Poems ed. by William Harmon

Letters to An American Lady by C. S. Lewis

Selected Letters of Jane Austen ed. by Vivien Jones

Lord Chesterfield's Letters ed. by David Roberts

The Habit of Being by Flannery O'Connor

The Iliad by Homer

The Odyssey by Homer

D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths by Ingri and Edgar D'Aulaire

Mythology by Edith Hamilton

Metamorphoses by Ovid

Heroes by Stephen Fry

Mythos by Stephen Fry

From Dawn to Decadence by Jacques Barzun

The Educated Imagination by Northrup Frye

Silas Marner by George Eliot

The Warden by Anthony Trollope

Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Hard Times by Charles Dickens

Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell

Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell

The White Company by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Leaf by Niggle by J. R. R. Tolkien

The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad

The Shooting Party by Anton Chekov

Kristen Lavrensdatter Trilogy by Sigrid Undset

The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell

Milton by Rose Macaulay

Chaucer by G. K. Chesterton

Churchill by Paul Johnson

Napoleon by Paul Johnson

The Enchanted Places by Christopher Milne

Joseph Pearce

The Narnian by Alan Jacobs

Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev

Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin

The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy

A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

The Awakening by Kate Chopin

My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok

The Chosen by Chaim Potok

The Natural by Bernard Malamud

The Brothers K by David James Duncan

Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott

A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman

The Imitation of Christ by Thomas Á Kempis

Edmund Burke

Journey into Fear by Eric Ambler

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

Characters of Shakespeare's Plays by William Hazlitt

The Lays of Ancient Rome by Thomas Macaulay

Imaginary Conversations by Walter Savage Landor

Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg

P. G. Wodehouse

Gerald Durrell

A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle

Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson

A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

How the Heather Looks by Joan Bodger

The Long Walk by Slavomir Rawicz

Paul Thoreau

Travels with a Donkey by Robert Louis Stevenson

The Lawless Roads by Graham Greene

The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene

Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell

What I Saw in America by G. K. Chesterton

The History of the Second Boer War by Winston Churchill

The Heroes by Charles Kingsley

A Wonder Book by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Tanglewood Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Children of Odin Padraic Colum

Diane Stanley

Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling

Men of Iron by Howard Pyle

The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson

Kate Douglas Wiggin

E. B. White

Betsy-Tacy Treasury by Maud Hart Lovelace

All-of-a-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Opal Wheeler

American Tall Tales by Adrian Stoutenberg

Black Ships Before Troy by Rosemary Sutcliff

The Children's Homer by Padraic Colum

The Golden Fleece by Padraic Colum

The Tale of Troy by Roger Lancelyn Green

Tales from the Odyssey by Mary Pope Osborne

Encyclopedia Brown series by Donald J. Sobol

Boxcar Children series by Gertrude Chandler Warner

Detectives in Togas by Henry Winterfield

The Adventures of Tin-tin by Hergé

The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle

The Adventures of Robin Hood by Roger Lancelyn Green

King Arthur Trilogy by Rosemary Sutcliff

Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare by E. Nesbit

Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at https://cindyrollins.net, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

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