Hello and welcome to Speaking with Joy, a podcast about books, beauty, and music.

So make yourself a cup of tea, sit down, and let's begin.

Good morning, everyone, or good afternoon, good evening, or good night, depending on when you are listening.

It is a sleepy, rainy Monday morning here in Oxford as I'm recording this podcast, and I

thought there was no better way to begin this week

for me than by starting our summer book club. It's becoming something of a tradition to have a

summer book club here on Speaking With Joy, and by a tradition, I mean that I did it last year,

the year after I started the podcast. But I enjoyed it so much. Last summer we read The Great Divorce and it sparked many interesting

conversations and questions and discussions. I felt like I learned so much by reading your

comments and your thoughts. It was funny because I had written my master's dissertation on it,

but I feel like doing a discussion group opened up even more depth and interesting things,

and I noticed things I hadn't noticed before. So I loved doing the book club last year, and I had many

of you say that you would like to do one again this summer. And as I'm going into a less structured

summer, as summers always are, it kind of helps me to have a rooting and an anchor to be able to do

something with you all throughout the summer. So I'm so excited to begin this summer's book club

on Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton. Now, I explained a little bit about this book in the last

episode, so go give that a listen if you want to. But I am so excited about this book because I both enjoy

the ideas and the convictions that it presents, but it's also just a pleasure to read.

Chesterton has this wonderful ability to both be lighthearted and funny and clever without being

dishonest or being ironic. And that's something I really love about him,

because this really is his very sincere attempt to explain how he came to believe in Christianity.

So this week we will be exploring the first chapter, which is the introduction called

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