Reading for the Love of God with Dr. Jessica Hooten Wilson

reading for the love of God Jessica Hooten Wilson homeschool conversations podcast
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Calling all book lovers and want-to-be readers: you won’t want to miss this literary conversation with Dr. Jessica Hooten Wilson! We discuss the art of reading, how to approach literature as Christians, why words matter, and more. Plus, you will be sure to enjoy Dr. Wilson’s suggestions for the books every student (and their parents) should read! Read the transcript or listen to the podcast, then leave your thoughts below in the comments.

Be sure to check out all the other interviews in our Homeschool Conversations series!

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Meet Jessica Hooten Wilson

Jessica Hooten Wilson (PhD, Baylor University) is the inaugural Visiting Scholar of Liberal Arts at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. She previously taught at the University of Dallas. She is the author or editor of eight books, including Reading for the Love of GodThe Scandal of Holiness (winner of a Christianity Today 2023 Award of Merit), and Giving the Devil His Due: Demonic Authority in the Fiction of Flannery O’Connor and Fyodor Dostoevsky (winner of a 2018 Christianity Today Book of the Year Award). Hooten Wilson speaks around the world on topics as varied as Russian novelists, Catholic thinkers, and Christian ways of reading.

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Watch my Homeschool Conversation with Jessica Hooten Wilson

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Amy Sloan:  Hello, friends. Today, I am joined by Dr. Jessica Hooten Wilson, who is the inaugural visiting scholar of liberal arts at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. She previously taught at the University of Dallas. Jessica is the author and editor of eight books, including Reading for the Love of God, The Scandal of Holiness, and Giving the Devil His Due: Demonic Authority in the Fiction of Flannery O’Connor and Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Wilson speaks around the world on topics as varied as Russian novelists, Catholic thinkers, and Christian ways of reading. I am so delighted to have you on the podcast, Jessica. I’m really looking forward to this. I know that many of my listeners are fellow book lovers like I am and this will be really a great conversation. I gave the official bio there, but can you tell us a little bit about yourself, your family, and just the history of your own literary life? I always am curious if there’s a particular book or experience as you were growing up and it changed the way you thought about reading.

Jessica Hooten Wilson: Yes, absolutely. Well, thank you for introducing me to your listeners. I am a mom of four and we live in Siloam Springs, Arkansas right now, but we’re transitioning to California actually this year because I’m going to take a full-time job again at Pepperdine. I’m going to go from half-homeschooling right now (we have a hybrid school) to letting my husband do the half-hybrid school. We’re making that transition right now, but I applaud homeschool so much. I’m gratified to hear there are so many followers of that.

My own literary journey starts when I could learn to read and I learned to read really young. I just was voracious as I’m sure many people who are big readers now can remember being. One of the life-changing moments for me was– I actually shared this with my book club on Tuesday night. We were all talking about books that changed our life when you were little. Mine wasn’t so much about the content as the experience.

I took a book on vacation with my family. I think we were going to the beach in Florida and it was Huckleberry Finn. I read it before we even got to the beach. I read it in the car, on the car ride. I was like, “Oh no, what am I going to do? I already read the book I brought.” My dad said, “Just read it again.” That was such a life-changing moment. I’m like, “Wait a second. What? You could read a book more than one time?”

From then on, I read it, I don’t know, maybe four or five times over the course of our beach trip. I thought, “This is awesome. You experience so much more every time you read it,” and then I couldn’t wait. One of my favorite things now, of course, is getting to read books again with students, reading books again with my children and seeing their first experiences, and then just the pleasure of learning something new every time that I get to know that book or that author again.

Amy: That is such a fantastic story. I love rereading books. Two different things. One, I love taking a book that I loved when I was younger and reading it again every few years or every decade because the book grows if it’s a good book, right? It’s growing with you. You’re a little different the next time you read it and so you notice different things about the book.

Then even just reading a story for the first time with my child is also a whole different way of thinking about the book. Last year, I read through The Chronicles of Narnia with my youngest. Of course, this was probably the millionth time I had read the series on my own, but to have that experience of reading it for his first time was just a really unique way of approaching the book. I think readers, we love being able to see those books we’ve read in new ways.

Jessica: It’s so fantastic when they get excited and anxious about like, “What’s going to happen?” and that enjoyment because you’re like, “I know what’s going to happen and I’m still on the edge of my seat.”

Amy: Exactly. It’s like, “Is this time Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth going to get together?”

Jessica: Exactly.

literature reading for the love of God Jessica Hooten Wilson homeschool conversations podcast

Why do Christians need to read literature widely?

Amy: Well, Jessica, why do you think that Christians, in particular, ought to read literature widely? A little tongue in cheek, but sometimes you might hear someone say, “Oh, well, just read the Bible. Maybe a few, but a little bit of non-fiction. We don’t really need to read literature.” What would you say about that?

Jessica: You say tongue in cheek, but I hear it all the time. I just had one of my former students who I taught when I was at University of Dallas teaching classical education for teachers. She just texted me and she was so frustrated because she tried to create this beautiful catechism of quotes from all the literature that her eighth and ninth-graders would be studying over the course of the year and giving them something good and true to memorize.

The administration came back because parents were angry, they were memorizing anything but the Bible. She’s like, “Why do we keep having this conversation every single year?” I think it’s a worthwhile one to have because there are still so many misconceptions about the Bible and its relationship to literature, but God spoke creation into existence.

From the very beginning, the first way He reveals Himself to us is as a speaker of words who unites the things of this world with the words that are.

He does that from Genesis all the way through Revelation, the Book of Life. We had Jesus being called the Word. God is telling us that words matter, that books matter, and we are called the people of the book as Christians. The book that primarily we put our faith in is created by God working with human beings who are also culture makers and readers and cultural intakers.

We have Genesis. It’s not a problem that it’s influenced by Canaanite literature. What’s amazing is that it’s responding to it and revealing something higher that humans could not have come up with. You can still put it in concert and in conversation with those secular texts because that’s what the writers were being influenced by. It’s the same all the way through the New Testament.

We have Paul just drawing on his wisdom and knowledge from secular literature and Pagan and Greek writers and putting them in concert with the voice of truth. I think as Christians, we should constantly be doing that, reading the things of this world through the lens of the Bible, and then returning to the Bible with a renewed sense of who God is and what He’s asking for us as we live in and reside in this world.

Amy: I think that’s such an important perspective. I think as a classical educator, we’re very word-focused. It’s a word-rich education. I think as Christian classical educators, it’s really important to remember exactly like you were saying. God spoke the world into existence. It was by the word of His power. Jesus is the Word. There’s a reason why words matter and why they’re at the core of our education and our Christian life, right?

Jessica: Yes, absolutely.

What does it mean to read in a Christian way?

Amy: What does it then mean to read in a distinctively Christian way and why does that kind of perspective matter?

Jessica: There’s a whole tradition that is really hard to sum up, so I’m going to talk. People are going to feel like they’re just drinking from the hose here on high and I’m sorry about that. Basically, over the history of the world, we have lost our ability to read well as more and more secular voices and philosophers and politicians and school teachers have really had more individualistic ways of reading, utilitarian ways of reading, instrumental ways of reading that have influenced us.

Now, we don’t even know how we read and how much has just been part of the culture we’re in. For instance, in my book, I start with this example of Thomas Jefferson, who creates his own version of the Bible by cutting it into little verses and pasting them together. It’s called the Thomas Jefferson Bible. Well, that would’ve been unheard of 500 years before him. Now, we naturally just cut up verses and paste them all around our houses and we think nothing of it, right?

We put them on our cars and we put them on our T-shirts and, again, would’ve been unheard of for a way of reading the Bible. If we look at the whole tradition, going back to how Jesus read the Old Testament, how the apostles then read the teachings of Jesus, how the early church read the Acts of the Apostles, how the medieval church then read the early church fathers and mothers. We get a more consistent and coherent methodology about how to read.

It has to do with who we are in God. It has to do with our humility that’s necessary before the scriptures, our charity because we worship a God that is love. It has to do with our spiritual nature as beings, not just our physical or material nature. If we return to that kind of consistent narrative and story that gotten threaded and lost down the line, I think we’ll have a richer experience of encountering the word but also encountering literature as well.

Amy: Not only when we’ve broken up the Bible and picked out our little life verse or the verse that’s going to tell us what to do today or something like that, which is a terrible way of understanding the big picture of scripture, but I see that as well. It comes into when we’re reading a book and we just look for the moral, “Okay, what’s the moral of the story,” or not really wanting to see the big picture of what the author is trying to tell us, “Okay, let’s just go and find a nice little quote, a pithy saying we can take from this book.” It doesn’t really give us that full picture of idea and story and what the author really intended, right?

The art of reading

Jessica: Yes, if I can go off of that– Well, two different directions. One, something I talk about in my text is about the author’s relationship also to the reader, also to the text. There is something personal about scripture. There are life verses. There are verses that you memorize and they become part of the refrain in your head, that kind of chorus mentality that we’re called to as creatures to have memorized things and bring them out at the right time in the right place. That’s a reader response to the text.

As you said, it’s also in tandem with the author’s intention for the text. In this case, the author is God. It’s a very high author intention. Then it’s what the scripture actually says itself. You’re also trying to understand not just the whole but understand things that may be beyond your reader experience. For instance, if you’re reading the Bible and something speaks to you, that’s wonderful. You want to memorize it. You want to hold on to it.

If you’re reading the Bible and something confuses you, don’t go past it, right? Wrestle with the text as well because we’re worshipping a God that’s higher than ourselves, which means things are not going to be understood by our limited beings right away. We have to wrestle with what’s actually there as well. I call that the art of reading, right? The author’s intention, the reader’s response, and the text itself. A-R-T, the art of reading really demands all three.

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Amy: That’s really great. Yes, really good. Let’s imagine, someone who’s listening, they’re thinking, “Okay, this sounds great, but I’ve just picked up this new book. I’m about to start reading it.” What are some of the steps that we ought to take as readers when we have that new book and we want to understand it more deeply?

Jessica: I would say first, and this is from C.S. Lewis, move aside your presuppositions or assumptions. For example, if you come to the text thinking something about the author in particular like, “Oh, this is a Catholic writer and I’m Protestant. I don’t know if I can read this,” or “This is Nietzsche. He was an atheist and he was crazy. I can’t read this well. I have to be skeptical the whole time.” Move aside all the presuppositions, then also move aside your cultural or time period located ones for the moment so that you can fully enjoy it.

For instance, if you’re reading a piece of medieval literature and it doesn’t accord with what you think in the 21st century, move that aside. Try to be a medieval person for a moment. C.S. Lewis says, “Put on the knight’s armor,” right? Walk in his steps. Walk in the footsteps of the character. I think that’s the first read. Everybody always talks about reading as though it’s only a one-time, one-and-done. As I mentioned with my Huckleberry Finn experience, what I’ve learned is that the first reading is just the reading for enjoyment.

It’s just the reading for pleasure. It’s where our skepticism needs to come down, our moments of holding on to our own beliefs, and not wanting that to be prevailed against, et cetera. We just need to enjoy the first time through without all that baggage. Then the second. I’m not saying don’t ever analyze or don’t ever question or don’t ever argue with the text, but that should always be secondary to trying to enjoy what is in front of you, trying to receive the gift that this other author tried to relay.

Amy: Yes, the more times that we reread it, we’re able to go– Well, the first time, you don’t know what’s going to happen, right? Sometimes you’re just reading it so very quickly because you’re trying desperately to find out what’s going to happen next. You can miss some of the details or the nuance. Then as we are able to return to the book later on, we’re able to slow down because we don’t have that same anxiety of knowing what’s going to turn out in the story. We’re able to notice some of those things that we might not have seen the first time through.

Jessica: Yes, exactly. You want to have both experiences when you’re reading a book.

How can we nourish a Christian approach to literature in our homeschool?

Amy: Well, most of the listeners of my podcast are obviously homeschool parents. We have this desire to pass on a deep love for and a humble posture towards the great books and the good books. How would you encourage parents and educators to nourish this wise Christian approach to literature? I’m wondering specifically if there are some questions we can ask our children as we read and discuss books together and maybe if there are some questions we ought to avoid.

Jessica: The first thing I would throw out, and especially thinking about kids, is you throw out the idea that every piece of literature you’re supposed to like.

Amy: That’s a good one.

Jessica: In the same way that your kids, when they first try curry, maybe they don’t like it, or they first try green beans and they don’t like it. Not everything that they try, they’re going to prefer the first time. We, I think as a culture, too much feed into the sensibility of, “Well, if you don’t like it, just move on.” Okay. Well, that’s fine with some things. New York Times bestseller, maybe it’s not your cup of tea, or maybe this season of life, this book isn’t the book for you and that’s okay for right now.

When it comes to training up your children, you know that Augustine’s Confessions is good.

It is time-proven to be good. If they don’t like Augustine’s Confessions, you need to remember there’s always something wrong with all of us. We have to work so that the things that are worthwhile actually become things that we love. We are learning to love what is worth loving, which may be trial and error. It may have to. In Augustine’s words, “Even the sweetest bread to a sick person may taste bitter.” If it tastes bitter to them, they have to change their palate. You want them to grow and develop a better palate for those things, which means they have to try things they don’t like.

As parents, as you’re working through a text with them, stay away from the, “Do you like this? Any kind of idea?”

Instead, “Do you think this is true? Is there anything the writer is saying that you’ve thought about before or you’ve seen in the world?” or “Do you think the author is wrong? Why? What do you see out there that disconnects from what the author is saying?” or “Why is her perspective so limited?” or “Why is her perspective different from where you are in the world right now?” or “What justice actually looks like the way that you see it or the way that you understand it?” but really getting into those questions about what troubles the student or if they keep coming back to like, “I don’t like this,” or “Why? What about it is troubling you or is not placating your heart or is not patting you on the back or so forth?”

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Amy: That’s part of that process of conforming the soul to reality, right? We’re thinking of, there is something external. Outside of my own heart and my own mind that is true or that is good or that is beautiful, there’s something eternal. As I am approaching literature, there may be things that I don’t like. Maybe that’s because I’m recognizing something in that book that is not in line with ultimate reality. It might just be because, like you were saying, there might be something wrong with me that I’m not yet able to appreciate or understand.

I think it was G.K. Chesterton, probably G.K. Chesterton because he always has a great quote for every situation. One of these things is something like, “There’s no such thing as an uninteresting subject, only uninterested people.” I was talking to one of my children about that earlier this week as they were talking about how boring a particular subject was. I was like, “Well, maybe it’s you who’s boring, not the subject.”

Jessica: No, that’s exactly right. Flannery O’Connor says, “We’re goods under construction,” which means there’s just going to be a lot of pains. If something is being formed into an image that it’s supposed to become, you chisel wood, you cut things away, or you mold the clay, you press into different places, and the process of reading should be doing that. It should be changing us, constructing us into something better.

Amy: I love that thought because how often is it– I really do think about the books I’ve read over time, especially I think about books I read as a child that really did form the way I think about the world in a real sense. We’re being fashioned by what we read, which should also give us a warning and making sure that we’re reading something that we want to form us in that particular way, I guess.

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Books Every Student Should Read

Jessica: That comes back to content. Reading for the Love of God is about how or why we read, but you’re also talking about content. Content then becomes very important, which is why I have all those reading lists in the back, right? What are we reading?

Amy: That’s a perfect segue to my next question because, now, I really do not like the idea of some sort of perfect book list. You give your kids, have them read this perfectly-curated list, and they’re going to magically become educated and holy. This is not a magic formula. That being said, there’s nothing quite so much fun as a good book list, right?

Jessica: Yes, I’ve been making book lists from thousands of years.

Amy: Exactly. If you had to pick five titles, I mean five titles-ish, I’m not going to hold you to that, and you’d say, “Okay, every student should read these books before they graduate high school,” which five would you pick and why would you pick them?

Augustine

Jessica: Okay, top five. Augustine’s Confessions, I just absolutely adore. That was really meaningful for me at 18. I can imagine that high school students can read it because I read it. I was a public school-educated kid and I loved it. That one should be for every teenager, I think. Anything

Dostoevsky

by Dostoevsky. I always go to The Brothers Karamazov because it’s the masterpiece by Dostoevsky. I feel like you can see all of his great novels coming to fruition in that one.

A lot of people do Crime and Punishment with younger students because it’s more maybe of a thrill ride than The Brothers K, but they’re all great. Anything by Dostoevsky, I would highly recommend.

Dante

Dante’s Divine Comedy. It is hard for teenagers to get through that. I teach it at the college level and it’s hard for college students to get through it, but it’s about the humbling experience of sitting before something that you don’t understand. Is that okay, Amy?

Amy: Yes. Oh no, please. I love baby noises. I don’t get to hear them. Don’t apologize.

Jessica: Okay, sorry. She’s just talking. She’s normally asleep, so I’m glad she’s not crying. Dante’s Divine Comedy would be my third choice because you really don’t understand the text the first time through. Everyone says you read the Divine Comedy, you get to the end, and you’re like, “Oh, now, I have to read the Divine Comedy.”

If you’re a teenager and you just read it, you’re like, “I didn’t understand a word.” That’s okay. It’s a first read. You need just a first read. It’s just such a beautiful text. Something will stick with you. Something will speak to your heart because it’s just 14,000 lines of amazingness. I can’t imagine it won’t.

O’Connor

Flannery O’Connor would be my fourth. To me, she is the writer who taught me everything I know.

I’ve been listening to her voice since I was 15 years old. I was obsessed with her at 15. I couldn’t get enough of her. I read all her complete stories, all of The Habit of Being, all of Mystery and Manners. I read everything by Flannery. I would highly recommend her stories to start with teenagers and really make them an object of discussion because her stories can be enjoyed on the first read-through.

I talk about this in my book because I give her as an example for how to read literally first and then spiritually, but they really demand also of wrestling like Jacob with the angel after you’ve read them, which I hope is a high recommendation. Let’s see. For high school students. Man, I’m just looking at my bookshelf. I’m like, “Okay, do I want to pick Julian or Solzhenitsyn or Athanasius or–” Argh.

Amy: [laughs]

Alvarez

Jessica: I know. There are so many. Let me go with Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies because I remember reading that when I was a kid. I read it as a teenager and I couldn’t put it down. One of the things it showed me is how to respond to history in such a way to discover the meaning that is there. Especially when things look meaningless like the death of these martyrs, the death of these sisters, the art is able to move that into showing us that meaning is always available, that there’s things that we can’t see right away when we’re experiencing things. We can reflect on them and create and show the meanings that’s there and not really create the meaning. I think that’s a beautiful text for that.

Amy: Well, I think you picked some excellent ones there. I’ll mention to anyone who’s listening that I have an intro to Dante, free webinar that Kristen Rudd and Wes Callihan taught for us a year or two ago. I’ll put that link in the show notes. My daughter is actually taking an online Dante class this year. This will be her second time, I believe, reading through the Divine Comedy. This time, she’s doing it for a full year, taking it slow, reading a lot of other books along with it to help understand. My friend, Kristen Rudd, is teaching that, so I highly recommend the Divine Comedy.

Well, would you make any changes to that list if you were talking to maybe a parent, someone who’s like, “Oh, man, I just feel like I need to reclaim my own neglected education. I never read anything hard. I don’t know where to start. I’m feeling a little overwhelmed”? Would you still give those same five suggestions or add or change anything?

Homer

Jessica: If it is an adult who has never read within the tradition, I always start with Homer because it’s just– Whitehead says that everything’s a footnote to Plato. Well, that may be true on philosophy, but when it comes to poetry, everything’s a footnote on Homer. To me, you can’t get better than wrestling with either the Odyssey or the Iliad. I prefer the Odyssey for story. I prefer the Iliad for– I just think it’s better poetry than the Odyssey is, but both, that’s where I would start most adults,

Amy: I adore the Iliad. It has been one of my favorite books since I was 14. I first read Fitzgerald’s translation and have tried others since, but just nothing captures my heart the way Fitzgerald’s translation does. There’s actually a really good audiobook version of that too, but it took me so long to really understand the Odyssey, I think, because I just got so irritated at Odysseus.

I was not able for the longest time to– going back to what we were talking about earlier, being able to kind of step outside myself and listen to what the story was saying. Then it wasn’t until I actually, I guess, two years ago, read Emily Wilson’s new translation of the Odyssey. I was like, “Do I like this now?” It was the first time where I started seeing themes and ideas that were bigger than just Odysseus being a big jerk.

Jessica: Yes, I feel like she did a phenomenal job. She’s the translator I go to right now. Her and then Sarah Ruden for all the Latin translations like Aeneid and Augustine. There’s just some really good translators out there now.

Amy: It really can make a difference. I would say that as well. If there’s someone who’s tried one of the ancient texts and they’re having trouble with it, don’t give up. Just try maybe a different translator because sometimes that can make a really big difference.

Jessica: Yes, absolutely. One of my causes, I don’t know how to put this, one of my missions, I guess, has been all these texts that I’ve rediscovered. I was trained in great books. I had a public-school education, but then I did great books at Pepperdine. I did great books at Baylor, at University of Dallas. I’ve done great books everywhere. It wasn’t until I discovered some of these other voices like Julian of Norwich or Marie de France or some of the perpetuous testimony, some of these women that I had not discovered.

It made the great books come alive even more just putting them in concert. It made them look bigger and vaster. I was like, “Wow.” There’s a world of texts out there to discover.

Suddenly, the great conversation just– I don’t know. It was like a fractal. It was like a moment. I’m frozen or something where you see all the fractals and you’re like, “Woah, this just expands out.” I would say with great books, if you’re picking a great book, pick something too that also fits where you are. If it doesn’t sound great to start with Homer, there are a lot of other great books out there.

Amy: That just gave me goosebumps when you were talking about this explosion in the fractal of the conversation just as you realized like at the end of Chronicles of Narnia farther up and farther in, right?

Jessica: Yes, absolutely. That’s a great line.

What Jessica is reading lately

Amy: Oh, this has been an absolutely delightful conversation. Here at the end, though, I do want to ask you the question that I ask all of my guests, and that’s just what are you personally reading lately?

Jessica: What am I reading right now? Well, Philip Yancey just came out with a modern rendering of John Donne’s Devotions.

Amy: Ooh.

Jessica: I’ve been reading that. For my own project I’m working on, I’m reading a lot of Edith Stein. I don’t know if you know Edith Stein.

Amy: I don’t.

Jessica: Okay, she was a Jewish convert to Catholicism who was killed by the Nazis when they were attacking the Catholic Church for trying to go against them. They executed her, but she was a philosopher during a time where women couldn’t get philosophy jobs. She wrote all these amazing essays and philosophical treatises. I’m reading a lot of Edith Stein, her bios, her autobio, et cetera, right now. Also, I read a lot at one time. Do you want me to stop?

Amy: Oh no, please keep going. This is fine.

Jessica: I don’t ever really just read one work. For fiction, I’m reading Sun House by David James Duncan. He wrote The River Why and The Brothers K, which is kind of a play off The Brothers Karamazov in a 20th-century setting. He’s just one of those novelists that– his last book came out 15 years ago maybe, maybe 20 years ago. If he writes anything, I’m going to read it because he’s just a phenomenal novelist. Yes, so that’s a lot of what I’m reading right now.

Amy: It’s always fun to have at least one living author. You have the hope that there could be another book. Our favorite dead authors, once you read all of them, you’ll never– unless somebody discovers a manuscript, I guess.

Jessica: A lot of these dead authors, there’s so much that they wrote. That’s the thing. Dorothy L. Sayers, I thought I’d read everything by her. Then I went to her archives and she had all these prayers that have never been published.

Amy: Oh, my goodness. Well, can you get on that, please? [laughs]

Jessica: Well, actually, I sent three of them to The Rabbit Room. For Every Moment Holy, they’re going to have a third volume come out of– It’s a collection of different prayers by different people. I sent them three of Sayers’ unpublished prayers. They’ll come out in Every Moment Holy.

Amy: Oh, fabulous. Okay, I’ll put a link to that in the show notes too. I can never get enough of Sayers. I’m with you. Jessica, where can people find you all around the internet?

Find Jessica Hooten Wilson online

Jessica: Yes, so I do have a Twitter. I try to use it really responsibly. It’s mostly a syllabus about what I’m doing, what you just heard, what I’m reading, and what’s going on with me. That’s the same with my newsletter. I try to review a book every month in my newsletter of whatever it is I’m reading and trying to dig deep into just the life of conversation about books. If you’re needing that or you don’t have a book club where you are, I have a bunch of online book clubs that are coming out of my newsletter or through articles I’m writing on Twitter or through my YouTube channel. I regularly try to converse with books in those different spaces.

Amy: Fabulous. Well, I will put links to all of those things and links to your books over in the show notes for this episode at humilityanddoxology.com. Guys, thank you so much for listening today. If you would take a moment, please, to leave a reading and review in your podcast app while you’re there and share this episode with a friend, that would be fantastic.

If you want more good book discussion, there was a previous Homeschool Conversations episode I did actually with a real-life friend and fellow book club member where we talked all about starting a book club and how to do that with your friends. That would be a fun follow-up to this episode. Jessica, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me today. This was really great.

Jessica: Thank you, Amy. I loved it.

Check out all the other interviews in my Homeschool Conversations series!

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