Episode 209: “Best of” Series – The Literary Life of Emily Raible, Ep. 56

Welcome to another episode in our “Best of The Literary Life” podcast series. Today on The Literary Life Podcast, our hosts Angelina and Cindy chat with “superfan” Emily Raible about her own literary life. Emily is a homeschool mom, an avid reader, birdwatcher, baker and probably Angelina’s most loyal student. In telling the story of her reading life, Emily talks about her childhood and how she was not a reader as a young person. She shares how she finally started getting interested in reading through Janette Oke and Hardy Boys books. Then she tells about borrowing books from a local family’s home library and starting to fall in love with true classics.  After getting married to an avid reader, Emily started going through her husband’s own library during her long hours at home alone. Even after she became of lover of reading, Emily still didn’t define herself as a real reader. Emily shares her journey to becoming a homeschooling parent, how she learned about Charlotte Mason and classical education, and her first time meeting Angelina and Cindy. They continue the conversation expanding on the feast of ideas, what it means to be a “reader,” and how we learn and enter into the literary world throughout our lives.  If you are listening to this on the day it drops, there is still time to grab a spot for Thomas Banks and Anne Phillips’ webinar on Herodotus taking place today January 30, 2024. Head over to HouseofHumaneLetters.com/webinars where you can sign up! Of course, you can also purchase the recordings to tune in after the webinar is released. If you missed the 2020 Back to School Conference with Karen Glass, you can still purchase the recording at MorningTimeforMoms.com. Also, our Sixth Annual Literary Life Online Conference is coming up in April 2024. The theme is “Dispelling the Myth of Modernity” with keynote speaker Jason Baxter. You can learn more and register now at HouseofHumaneLetters.com. Commonplace Quotes: But the object of my school is to show how many extraordinary things even a lazy and ordinary man may see, if he can spur himself to the single activity of seeing.  G. K. Chesterton Time can be both a threat and a friend to hope. Injustice, for example, has to be tediously dismantled, not exploded. This is often infuriating, but it is true.  Makoto Fujimura The poet is traditionally a blind man, but the Christian poet, and story-teller as well, is like the blind man whom Christ touched, who looked then and saw men as if they were trees but walking. This is the beginning of vision, and it is an invitation to deeper and stranger visions than we shall have to learn to accept if we are to realize a truly Christian literature. Flannery O’Connor Armies in the Fire by Robert Louis Stevenson The lamps now glitter down the street; Faintly sound the falling feet; And the blue even slowly falls About the garden trees and walls. Now in the falling of the gloom The red fire paints the empty room: And warmly on the roof it looks, And flickers on the back of books. Armies march by tower and spire Of cities blazing, in the fire;— Till as I gaze with staring eyes, The armies fall, the lustre dies. Then once again the glow returns; Again the phantom city burns; And down the red-hot valley, lo! The phantom armies marching go! Blinking embers, tell me true Where are those armies marching to, And what the burning city is That crumbles in your furnaces! Book List: Tremendous Trifles by G. K. Chesterton Culture Care by Makoto Fujimura Rascal by Sterling North Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery Little Women by Louisa May Alcott Poppy Ott by Leo Edwards Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare The Once and Future King by T. H. White The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkein The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan Agatha Christie James Patterson Tom Clancy Harry Potter series Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen Mansfield Park by Jane Austen Howards End by E. M. Forster The Divine Comedy by Dante (trans. by Dorothy Sayers) Illiad and Odyssey by Homer Dorothy L. Sayers The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf Why Should Businessmen Read Great Literature? by Vigen Guroian The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy Arabian Nights Are Women Human? by Dorothy Sayers Confessions by Augustine Beatrix Potter Treasury Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame Babe the Gallant Pig by Dick King-Smith Brambly Hedge by Jill Barklem 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 www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/CindyRollinsWriter. 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