Hello and welcome to Storytime for grownups.

I'm Faith Moore, and this season we're reading Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.

Each episode, I'll read one chapter from the book,

pausing from time to time to give brief explanations so it's easier to follow along.

It's like an audiobook with built-in notes.

So brew a pot of tea, find a cozy chair,

and settle in. It was early on in college, so I was probably like 18 or 19, and I was sitting at the lunch table in the dining hall. And I was sitting with some friends and then also some people I didn't know because the table was large and we were sharing and I was talking to a friend about a book. I don't

remember what book it was. It might have been Jane Eyre, but it might have been something else.

And I was getting very animated and excited as I talked about this story and what it meant to me.

And I was kind of analyzing it or, you know,

going on some sort of some sort of deep dive about something. And one of these people that I didn't

know turned to me and said, geez, you're really passionate about that in this really kind

of derogatory, scornful way. And, you know, I said something like something like yes i am or or something like that but it always

stuck with me because it was a kind of way that people were when i was a teenager or growing up when i

always felt like i lived inside of these stories i loved them so much and these worlds were real to me

and these characters were real to me and these characters were

real to me. And whenever I started to talk about them, really talk about them and let it all go,

you know, and say all the things that I was thinking and all of the connections I was making and

all of the things that mattered to me, somebody inevitably would turn around and say,

will you please knock it off? I don't want to

talk about that anymore. And that taught me something. It taught me that I shouldn't do that,

that I shouldn't talk at length about the things that I love, the things I care about, because it

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