BiblioFiles: A CenterForLit Podcast about Great Books, Great Ideas, and the Great Conversation

We're changing things up a little bit this week! In February we gathered with some lit lovers all over the world to talk through what CenterForLit is up to and what our plans are for the future. We called it our "2017 Launch Party," and we definitely had a rollicking good time. In fact we had such a good time, that we thought it'd be fun to share the webinar recording with you! So if you're an avid listener of BiblioFiles, but you're not really sure who we are or what else our company does, this is a great episode to check out. And if you are already familiar with CenterForLit, tune in to hear our vision for how we hope to continue serving readers, teachers, and parents of all stripes in the next year.

Works Cited:

–Teaching the Classics: Second Edition

• Second Edition Features
• Upgrade Program

–BiblioFiles Podcast

–Reading Roadmaps

–Ready Readers

–The Pelican Society Membership Program

–Online Academy

–The Lost Transcendental: Moral and Theme

–Worldview Detective

– Adam's appearance on the IEW podcast

We love hearing your questions and comments! You can contact us by emailing [email protected], or you can visit our website www.centerforlit.com to find even more ways to participate in the conversation. 

In our last episode we considered human nature's relationship to freedom, and how sometimes bondage can be the condition that makes us most free. But what are we to do in a world where we are entirely free to be whatever we want to be, go wherever we want to go, and do whatever we want to do? So much freedom can be overwhelming, and because we are bombarded with images of other people "taking advantage" of their freedom, we are often left feeling discontent and guilty for what seems like our comparably unremarkable lives. Can the great literature of the past speak to our current social media condition? That's what we've come to the BiblioFiles table to find out this time around. 

Referenced Works:

–The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

–Dandelion by Don Freeman

–Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

–The Moviegoer by Walker Percy

–"Revelation" by Flannery O'Connor

–Pride and Prejudice and Emma by Jane Austen

–Abba’s Child by Brennan Manning

–Sam, Bangs & Moonshine by Evaline Ness

–Paper Towns by John Green

We love hearing your questions and comments! You can contact us by emailing [email protected], or you can visit our website www.centerforlit.com to find even more ways to participate in the conversation. 

There are some thinkers who see the history of humanity as one great progression toward true freedom. But is mankind meant for liberty? What role does bondage or restraint play in shaping the human experience? In today's episode we turn to the great authors to see what they had to say about this issue. Yes, yes Dostoevsky comes up again. How could he not when we're talking about bondage? But we tried really, really hard to expand our authorial reach this week...

Referenced Works:

–Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

–The Wall by Peter Sis

–One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

–The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

–I am David/ North to Freedom by Anne Holm

–Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie

–The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

–The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

–Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

–Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

–Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens

We love hearing your questions and comments! You can contact us by emailing [email protected], or you can visit our website www.centerforlit.com to find even more ways to participate in the conversation. 

It's getting to be a hot topic these days, and after receiving a particularly thoughtful question from one of the students in our Online Academy, we decided to bring the issue to the BiblioFiles table. Are the classics the only books worthy of study? If so, what makes a classic? Is it age, quality, or content? And how can we tell which books written today will become classics? Or should we only stick to the old books? Such are the concerns of this episode, alternatively titled "In Which the CenterForLit Clan Has Strong Opinions." We hope you enjoy the conversation and that you'll join in on the discussion!

Referenced Materials:

–Teaching the Classics: Second Edition

–2017 Launch Party: Free Webinar

–The Great Books Set (Encyclopedia Britannica)

–The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

–The Great Divorce and 'Til We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis

–Home by Marilynne Robinson

–The Memory of Old Jack and Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry

–The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

–Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

"What makes them part of the great conversation is something so deep as to be elusive. It has to do with the impalpable medium of thought and sensibility in which our raw daily experience floats. The great conversationalists of the Western past are, as we have said, the architects of our mental habitat. That habitat is our real mother country and we are its citizens. As citizens we are all equal, but imaginative writers are more equal than the rest of us. They react to our common home in a special way, responding more intensely, interpreting it, extracting from it symbols, emblematic characters, images, webs of evocative language, epiphanies of human awareness. All these emerge from a view of life pervaded by the great ideas even though the dramatist, the novelist, the poet may never explicitly cite them. They form the bed on which these creators rest, dreaming the dream that will become Death in Venice or Waiting for Godot. This is the case even when a great idea is disowned or assailed. In A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway describes a mood in which "abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene." Here he may be addressing, however indirectly, the author of The Iliad..." -Clifton Fadiman

We love hearing your questions and comments! You can contact us by emailing [email protected], or you can visit our website www.centerforlit.com to find even more ways to participate in the conversation. 

S.D. Smith is a very busy man these days, and we were honored that he took the time to come to the BiblioFiles table to discuss his work with us! Author of the Green Ember series, Sam talks to us about the desire that motivates him to write and the difficulty of crafting children's literature that tells the truth about the world in a nurturing way. 

He also generously offered to give away a complete set of his work, personally inscribed to one of our BiblioFiles listeners! Follow the link below for details:

S.D. Smith Giveaway: https://centerforlit.squarespace.com/bibliofiles-giveaway-sdsmith

Referenced Works:

–Story Warren Website

–S.D. Smith's Website

–S.D. Smith Officie Facebook Page

– S.D. Smith Twitter Handle

–The Chronicles of Narnia, The Abolition of Man, and Letters to Children by C.S. Lewis

We love hearing your questions and comments! You can contact us by emailing [email protected], or you can visit our website www.centerforlit.com to find even more ways to participate in the conversation.