Episode 307: "Best of" – Our Year in Reading, Ep. 31
The Literary Life Podcast
Angelina Stanford
4.7 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 16 December 2025
⏱️ 106 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week on The Literary Life podcast, we are dipping back into the archives to bring you a delightful conversation from 2019 in which our Literary Life podcast hosts chatted all about their past year in books, as well as what they hoped to read in the coming year. Cindy, Angelina and Thomas began by sharing some commonplace quotes from books they read in 2019. They discussed their strategies for planning their reading goals and how they curate their "to be read" lists. Each of our hosts also shared some highlights from their year in books.
Angelina then introduced The Literary Life Podcast 20 for 2020 Reading Challenge. She talked about how to approach this reading challenge. Then our hosts talked a little about each category in the challenge and gave some of their possible book picks for the challenge. Cindy mentioned a list of Shakespeare's plays in chronological order. She also has a list of "Books for Cultivating Honorable Boys."
Happening now–the House of Humane Letters Christmas sale! Head over to the website to peruse the discounted webinars and mini-classes on sale, already discounted, no coupon code needed.
Don't forget to check out this coming year's annual Literary Life Online Conference, happening January 23-30, 2026, "The Letter Killeth, but the Spirit Quickeneth: Reading Like a Human". Our speakers will be Dr. Jason Baxter, Jenn Rogers, Dr. Anne Phillips, and, of course, Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks.
For the full show notes for this episode, including book links, quotes, and today's poem, please visit our website at https://theliterary.life/307.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Literary Life Podcast. |
| 0:02.9 | We've grown quite significantly since our debut in 2019, and we've had many requests to highlight older episodes that new listeners may have missed, as well as revisit listener favorites. |
| 0:15.2 | To honor that request, I present to you this episode of the best of the Literary Life podcast. |
| 0:21.6 | Welcome to the Literary Life Podcast, where your host's Angelina Stanford and Cindy |
| 0:27.9 | Rollins explore a life shaped by books, stories, and poetry. |
| 0:32.7 | Each week we will rescue story from the ivory tower and bring it to your couch, your kitchen, and your commute. |
| 0:39.3 | The literary life is for everyone because in the words of Stratford Caldecott, to be enchanted |
| 0:44.4 | by story is to be granted a deeper insight into reality. |
| 0:51.2 | Hello and welcome to this very special New Year's Eve episode of the Literary Life podcast. |
| 0:57.5 | I'm here with The Blonde Bombshell herself, Cindy Rollins, and the mysterious Mr. Banks. |
| 1:04.1 | Happy New Year, everybody. |
| 1:05.7 | Happy New Year. |
| 1:06.6 | Happy New Year. |
| 1:08.1 | We are here today to very excitedly talk about our favorite thing, books. |
| 1:13.0 | Today we're going to talk about our year in reading. |
| 1:15.9 | Just sort of recap the highlights, maybe throw out some titles for you. |
| 1:18.8 | So get those notepads handy because you're, are those Amazon links handy? |
| 1:22.2 | Because you're going to probably want to explore some of the books we talk about. |
| 1:25.4 | And we're also going to introduce something. |
| 1:28.0 | We're very excited about the Literary Life Podcast, 20 for 2020 Reading Challenge. And we're going to |
| 1:35.7 | tell you all about that and how you can plan for your best reading year ever with us today. |
| 1:41.7 | But before we do that, we're going to start off with some commonplace quotes |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Angelina Stanford, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Angelina Stanford and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.