On Reading Well
Finding the Good Life through Great Books
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Narrated by:
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Lisa Larsen
About this listen
Reading great literature well has the power to cultivate virtue. Great literature increases knowledge of and desire for the good life by showing readers what virtue looks like and where vice leads. It is not just what one reads but how one reads that cultivates virtue. Reading good literature well requires one to practice numerous virtues, such as patience, diligence, and prudence. And learning to judge wisely a character in a book, in turn, forms the reader's own character.
Acclaimed author Karen Swallow Prior takes fans on a guided tour through works of great literature both ancient and modern, exploring 12 virtues that philosophers and theologians throughout history have identified as most essential for good character and the good life. In reintroducing ancient virtues that are as relevant and essential today as ever, Prior draws on the best classical and Christian thinkers, including Aristotle, Aquinas, and Augustine. Covering authors from Henry Fielding to Cormac McCarthy, Jane Austen to George Saunders, and Flannery O'Connor to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Prior explores some of the most compelling universal themes found in classic books, helping readers learn to love life, literature, and God through their encounters with great writing. In examining works by these authors and more, Prior shows why virtues such as prudence, temperance, humility, and patience are still necessary for human flourishing and civil society.
©2018 Karen Swallow Prior (P)2018 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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- By: Joan Chittister, Rowan Williams
- Narrated by: Joan Chittister O.S.B., Dan Havron O.F.M.
- Length: 5 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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This series of reflections reveals the importance of gratitude in helping us see beyond the immediate to a broader and deeper reality. The discovery of this perpetual alleluia will help you discover what you are, become who you are, and grow with gratitude into the unknown.
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Spiritual platform for left-wing ideology
- By John Glemby on 06-29-19
By: Joan Chittister, and others
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The Illumined Heart: Capture the Vibrant Faith of the Ancient Christians
- By: Frederica Mathewes-Green
- Narrated by: Frederica Mathewes-Green
- Length: 2 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Why are modern Christians so indistinguishable from everyone else? How come Christians who lived in times of bloody persecution were so heroic, while we who live in safety are not? How could the first Christians fast valiantly, but we feel deprived without dessert? How did New Testament believers pray without ceasing? How could the early Christian martyrs actually forgive their torturers? What did the Christians of the first centuries know that we don't? This book explores these questions.
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Illuminating wisdom! Thank you!
- By James A. Coles Jr. on 06-17-16
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The Great Gatsby
- By: F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Narrated by: Jake Gyllenhaal
- Length: 4 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic American novel of the Roaring Twenties is beloved by generations of readers and stands as his crowning work. This new audio edition, authorized by the Fitzgerald estate, is narrated by Oscar-nominated actor Jake Gyllenhaal (Brokeback Mountain). Gyllenhaal's performance is a faithful delivery in the voice of Nick Carraway, the Midwesterner turned New York bond salesman, who rents a small house next door to the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby....
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Simple, Beautiful, and Exquisitely Textured
- By Darwin8u on 04-09-13
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The Western Canon
- The Books and School of the Ages
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: James Armstrong
- Length: 22 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Harold Bloom explores our Western literary tradition by concentrating on the works of twenty-six authors central to the Canon. He argues against ideology in literary criticism; he laments the loss of intellectual and aesthetic standards; he deplores multiculturalism, Marxism, feminism, neoconservatism, Afrocentrism, and the New Historicism. Insisting instead upon "the autonomy of aesthetic," Bloom places Shakespeare at the center of the Western Canon.....
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A personal and opinionated book on the Canon
- By Steffen on 07-23-12
By: Harold Bloom
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The Reason for God
- Belief in an Age of Skepticism
- By: Timothy Keller
- Narrated by: Timothy Keller
- Length: 5 hrs and 46 mins
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The End of Faith. The God Delusion. God Is Not Great. Letter to a Christian Nation. Best seller lists are filled with doubters. But what happens when you actually doubt your doubts? Timothy Keller, the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, addresses the frequent doubts that skeptics, and even ardent believers, have about religion.
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Unrivaled Apologetics
- By Daniel on 05-01-13
By: Timothy Keller
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The Spirit of the Disciplines
- Understanding How God Changes Lives
- By: Dallas Willard
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
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Dallas Willard, one of today's most brilliant Christian thinkers and the author of The Divine Conspiracy ( Christianity Today's 1999 Book of the Year), presents a way of living that enables ordinary men and women to enjoy the fruit of the Christian life.
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Drivel
- By Amazon Customer on 07-09-18
By: Dallas Willard
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The God Who Weeps
- How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life
- By: Terryl Givens, Fiona Givens
- Narrated by: Fiona Givens
- Length: 6 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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"Whether by design or by chance," Terryl and Fiona Givens write, "we find ourselves in a universe filled with mystery. We encounter appealing arguments for a Divinity that is a childish projection, for prophets as scheming or deluded imposters, and for scripture as so much fabulous fiction. But there is also compelling evidence that a glorious Divinity presides over the cosmos, that His angels are strangers we have entertained unawares, and that His word and will are made manifest through a sacred canon that is never definitively closed."
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So engaging that I listened to it twice
- By Douglas on 01-02-14
By: Terryl Givens, and others
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The Year of Our Lord 1943
- Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis
- By: Alan Jacobs
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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By early 1943, it had become increasingly clear the Allies would win the Second World War. Christian intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic thought the soon-to-be-victorious nations were not culturally or morally prepared for their success. These Christian intellectuals - Jacques Maritain, T. S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis, W. H. Auden, and Simone Weil, among others - sought both to articulate a sober and reflective critique of their own culture and to outline a plan for the moral and spiritual regeneration of their countries in the post-war world.
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The Audible is a Train Wreck
- By John on 09-04-18
By: Alan Jacobs
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The Holy Longing
- The Search for a Christian Spirituality
- By: Ronald Rolheiser
- Narrated by: Bill Loran
- Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
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Listeners will be fully engaged in a unique and altogether fascinating discussion of Christian spirituality. Rolheiser seeks to reconcile the rift between a smorgasbord of spiritual voices and an authentic Christian discipleship by the use of anecdotes, personal examples and a wide range of literary and cultural references. His starting point is the desire within us that longs irresistibly for fulfillment.
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Great content
- By Allison Winter on 11-07-23
By: Ronald Rolheiser
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Things Worth Dying For
- Thoughts on a Life Worth Living
- By: Charles J. Chaput
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 6 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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With a balance of wisdom, candor, and scholarly rigor, the beloved archbishop emeritus of Philadelphia, Charles J. Chaput, traces the human experience from ancient times to today to find threads of connection in our yearning for God, love, honor, beauty, truth, and immortality. He looks at our modern appetite for consumption and individualism and offers a penetrating analysis of how we got here and how we can look to our roots and our faith to find purpose each day amid the noise of competing desires.
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Low score for modernism
- By Joey on 05-17-21
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This expanded audio collection presents William Zinsser's On Writing Well, the classic teaching book that has sold more than 1 million copies, together with a new 90-minute section that tells you how to write a memoir.
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Conceived over 30 years of painting and creating in his studio, this book is Makoto Fujimura's broad and deep exploration of creativity and the spiritual aspects of "making". What he does in the studio is theological work as much as it is aesthetic work. In between pouring precious, pulverized minerals onto handmade paper to create the prismatic, refractive surfaces of his art, he comes into the quiet space in the studio, in a discipline of awareness, waiting, prayer, and praise.
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Neuroscientists and cognitive scientists have made enormous strides in understanding the brain and how we learn, but little of that insight has filtered down to the way teachers teach. Uncommon Sense Teaching applies this research to the classroom for teachers, parents, and anyone interested in improving education.
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What listeners say about On Reading Well
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Matt Hutson
- 05-22-23
Deep Dive into Literature and Christianity
This was a well pieced together book filled with several references and deep dives into award-winning authors and books from fairly close to present today all the way back to ancient times. The author has explained well the relation of the book to biblical interpretations and examples. It's definitely worth checking out if you're interested in how deep literature has a deep connection to real life and what it can teach us about living well.
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1 person found this helpful
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- S. Honeycutt
- 03-19-23
New Insights to Old Reads
I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this audiobook. I’d never considered some of the values in fiction which Swallow Prior examined in this book. It was thought-provoking, both for the books I had previously read and for those I have not yet read. I ha e awhile new list of books in my “To Be Read” list thanks to this book.
The narration was also excellent.
I highly recommend this book for any lover of literature.
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- Jim Manning
- 03-14-20
Thought provoking
This is one of the most enlightening and thought provoking books I have read in a long time. I want to go back and re-read some of the books she highlights.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Ada Tarcau
- 08-14-20
A jewellery tour-book through great literature
This book! I don’t even know where to begin describing what this jewellery of a book has done for me.
This book has been a most cherished companion in the last couple of months - it has guided me through 12 amazing works of literature of which I have undertaken to read 9 before each of their respective chapters. I was awe-stricken and stirred in my thoughts so much of the time (and the effect has not worn off yet, I’m still haunted by “The Tale of Two Cities”, by “Faith”, by Ivan’s dead life, by O’Connor’s short stories). I feel a whole world has opened up, it has given me a great appetite to keep reading classics (I have already read 3 more works along the way by some of the authors that appear in the selection, I have fell in love with some, like O’Connor, of whom I knew nothing of before).
Besides introducing me to these great works that are really diverse from one another not just in worlds but also in styles and narrative techniques (this guide also gives some precious hints as to how to read and judge each work to make the most of it), I was also very appreciative of the condensed, full of substance and revelatory manner of expanding each virtue, fitting in exquisite insight from great philosophers and Christian thinkers (I now have a fresh motivation to read Thomas Aquinas, and also a curiosity for some other works that were mentioned along the way, like The Canterbury Tales, The Divine Comedy, The City of God and others).
“Reading literature, more than informing us, forms us.” says K. S. Prior in her introduction. I do feel reading all these works has been formative.
Notable ideas and quotes about each virtue abound, I’ll try to select 1-2 ideas that have striked me for each of the 12 virtues analysed in this book:
1. Prudence
In classical art, the goddess Prudentia is often depicted with a mirror (to represent self-knowledge or conscience) and a serpent (an ancient symbol of wisdom). The image conveys the understanding that prudence requires knowledge of both universal principles and the particulars of a given situation, along with the idea that, as Aquinas says, a prudent person is one who sees from afar.
2. Temperance
"Temperance helps us to desire pleasures in a reasonable manner, desiring them neither too much nor too little, the virtuous mean between the vices of self-indulgence and insensibility."
3. Justice
"In a perfect world, what is just is also fair. In a fallen world, however, justice does not always feel fair. in our fallen humidity we often bristle at the holiness of a God who's justice does not always strike us as fair.”
4. Courage
Courage (fortitude = the habit of facing difficulties well) and its link with the heart (root word): getting your heart in the right place at the right time despite the obstacles; putting the greater good before the lesser good in spite of opposition.
5. Faith:
New Testament scholars describe faith as having three primary elements: belief (cognitive), trust (relational), and fidelity (obedience). … "Thus, rather than having faith in faith itself, as a point of certainty that relies on our volition only, true faith is a childlike trust in God, who allows his children to question him as they might question their earthly parent, and to do so in the certainty of the relational knowledge and trust of the Father.”
"What does it mean to practice faith well? While our works cannot save us, our habits can strengthen our faith."
6. Hope:
"Hope gives birth to love and activity." T. Aquinas
7. Love:
goal: communion
(from The Death of Ivan Ilyich: not self-interest, self-advancement, no drawing of lines after which you’ll not extend yourself because of comfort and self-protection)
8. Diligence:
Diligence (root: single out, prize, love, esteem, value) is carefulness, attentiveness (vs negligence), steady persistent effort. Opposite: Sloth = carelessness, apathy (no appetite/desire), oppressive sorrow that weights so upon a man’s mind that he wants to do nothing; sluggishness of the mind which neglects to initiate the good, robs us of our appetite/zest/interest/enjoyment of God, stops us from seeking Him and His righteousness.
"Paradoxically, people of business and frenetic activity can be the most slothful."
Diligence: taking one step at a time towards the goal + not getting distracted + not giving up
9. Patience:
Patience is willingness to endure suffering. When faced with suffering/wrong, the virtuous person responds neither with wrath (overcome wrong by doing wrong, unwillingness to accept this reality) nor stoicism/carelessness/sloth/disspiritness (withdrawal from this reality), but with patience, which is not lack of care/inaction/passivity, but virtuous anger, perseverance, anchored both in present reality and future hope.
"Patience is a complex of other virtues: generosity, self-control and humility (they take us out of our natural egocentrism); patience is the place where faith, hope and love meet up" (NTW)
10. Kindness
Envy (sorrow for another’s good) vs Kindness (when something good happens to another, to rejoice as it happened to you, not to envy it)
11. Humility:
(root: earth, ground)
Being truly humble is being grounded.
EXPERIENCE is rooted in the self and therefore is a source of knowledge that is ripe for pride (pride: placing faith in oneself) and is therefore a way of knowing that sharply contrasts with REVELATION (Seeing who we really are--which requires seeing ourselves in relationship to God--is true humility; self-knowledge perfected; man’s estimation of himself according to the truth)
"None has raised high enough to look down on others."
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4 people found this helpful
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- Dr. David Odegard
- 01-12-19
The English Department might save Christianity.
Prior enfleshes the spirit of C. S. Lewis in her perusal of the character novels of the past. She points to how virtue must be demonstrated by believable characters in great works of fiction.
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3 people found this helpful
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- J. C. WOODS
- 12-30-22
Insightful
Listening to this book is a great way to ponder the virtues through a different lense!
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- Buyer in VA
- 02-08-19
Stellar!
Karen Swallow Prior weaves together classic literature and principles of living a good life in a manner that truly draws you in! The reader is both entertained and compelled to do some soul searching. A great read!
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- Adam Shields
- 02-14-19
Reading as a means of learning virtue
I both love the actual book On Reading Well and I love the intent of the book. On Reading Well is trying to teach the reader how to read books with an eye on classic virtue. Swallow Prior is an English professor, focusing on 17-18th Century British literature.
Karen Swallow Prior is trying to restore the historic ideal of seeing literature as a means to understanding virtue. She is part of the movement toward great books. And there have been a number of books that have started to write on traditional virtues lately.
What makes me uncomfortable is that some are returning to Great Books, not because they part of a great tradition of reading as a means of learning about and practicing virtue but as a means of restoring the great Western tradition, with the emphasis on Western culture.
Prior’s academic focus is 17-18th century British literature. So it makes sense that this and her earlier book, Booked, primarily focus on traditional western canon texts. However, in reviewing her earlier book and this one, I wish she had made more of an effort to find virtuous texts outside of the Western canon. Not because western canon texts are always bad, but to emphasize that literary theory that was deconstructing the White, male, patriarchy that abuses Christian thought by upholding slavery or colonialism or sexism or other oppression should be still critiqued even while holding onto the idea that reading can be part of that critique.
We are in a rough patch intellectually. Many of the critiques of western thought and action are right. But also many of the criticisms are fundamentally deconstructive and not constructive. Returning to virtue and character and the telos of what it means to be human is good. Returning to those ideas as a means to fighting deconstructionism or liberalism or pluralism misses the point and can quickly degenerate into white supremacy or at the very least western cultural bias.
Again, I do not think this book in particular is attempting to uphold white supremacy. I do think that in particular Evangelical Christian authors need to work harder at making sure that they are doing the work to diversify their work. In this case that means more should have been done to include positive examples of non-White authors, especially Black authors, doing work in virtue. There was one chapter about Endo’s Silence. And it was good. But similar to my critique of Dreher’s Benedict Option, it matters if all of the minority quotes are outside of the US.
I really do commend On Reading Well as a good exploration of both the concepts of virtue and how to read in a way that promotes virtue. But I also think that it is an example of where White Evangelicals need to do more to make their work more Evangelical and less White.
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- Matthew J. Harris
- 01-27-24
The Illumination of Virtue
She shed light on virtue through great works of literature. It’s thoughtful and grounded in a biblical worldview though sometimes concepts are overly defined.
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