On The Literary Life podcast today, our hosts look back on their reading lives over the past year. Angelina, Cindy and Thomas each share a commonplace quote, then they each share a little about how they approach reading in a way that fits with the demands of their busy lives. Each of our hosts talks about their literary surprises, their most outstanding reads of the year, disappointing books they read, and their personal favorite podcast books from 2022. Angelina also reiterates why reading rightly is so important to us all! Don’t forget to join us for the 2023 Reading Challenge! Get your books and Bingo cards ready! Commonplace Quotes: A good story isn’t told to make a point. A good story reflects the World God created. The point makes itself. Timothy Rollins “Blessed be Pain and Torment and every torture of the Body … Blessed be Plague and Pestilence and the Illness of Nations…. “Blessed be all Loss and the Failure of Friends and the Sacrifice of Love…. “Blessed be the Destruction of all Possessions, the Ruin of all Property, Fine Cities, and Great Palaces…. “Blessed be the Disappointment of all Ambitions…. “Blessed be all Failure and the ruin of every Earthly Hope…. “Blessed be all Sorrows, Torments, Hardships, Endurances that demand Courage…. “Blessed be these things–for of these things cometh the making of a Man….” Hugh Walpole I will not walk with your progressive apes, erect and sapient. Before them gapes the dark abyss to which their progress tends – if by God’s mercy progress ever ends, and does not ceaselessly revolve the same unfruitful course with changing of a name. I will not treat your dusty path and flat, denoting this and that by this and chat, your world immutable wherein no part the little maker has with maker’s art. I bow not yet before the Iron Crown, nor cast my own small golden sceptre down. J. R. R. Tolkien, from “Mythopoeia” A Selection from “The Secular Masque” by John Dryden All, all of a piece throughout; Thy chase had a beast in view; Thy wars brought nothing about; Thy lovers were all untrue. 'Tis well an old age is out, And time to begin a new. Book and Link List: Episode 60: Why Read Pagan Myths Episode 124: The Abolition of Man (beginning of series) Fortitude by Hugh Walpole The Killer and the Slain by Hugh Walpole The Old Ladies by Hugh Walpole Cherringham Mystery Series by Matthew Costello and Neil Richards The Ink Black Heart by Robert Galbraith The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer The Golden Age of Murder by Martin Edwards Anthony Berkeley Ronald Knox Rex Stout Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey Light Thickens by Ngaio Marsh Henry the Eighth by Beatrice Saunders The Talisman by Sir Walter Scott Hard Times by Charles Dickens Captive Flames by Ronald Knox The Book of the Dun Cow by Walter Wangerin The Most Reluctant Convert by David C. Downing The Truth and Beauty by Andrew Klavan The Man Who Knew Too Much by G. K. Chesterton The Rosettis in Wonderland by Dinah Roe Just Passing Through by Winton Porter The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories ed. by Martin Edwards The Mistletoe Murder and Other Stories by P. D. James Edmund Crispin Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman by Lucy Worsley Dorothy L. Sayers by Colin Duriez The Silver Chair by C. S. Lewis The Wood Beyond the World by William Morris The Medieval Mind of C. S. Lewis by Jason Baxter Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh I Live Under a Black Sun by Edith Sitwell The Dwarf by Par Lagerkvist You Are Not Your Own by Alan Noble Dune by Frank Herbert The Twist of the Knife by Anthony Horowitz The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley (not recommended) The Witness of the Stars by E. W. Bullinger (not recommended) The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim Dracula by Bram Stoker The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis 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: Yo