The Well-Read Life: Nourish Your Soul through Deep Reading and Intentional Friendship
$17.95
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(as of Oct 25, 2024 07:53:40 UTC – Details)
Imagine recovering time for yourself by putting your phone down and feeding your imagination and intellect through reading great books. The Well-Read Life: Nourish Your Soul through Deep Reading and Intentional Friendship is a step-by-step personal guide to reading well and reading often. No matter where you start, you can succeed by taking small but determined steps in the company of like-minded friends.
In The Well-Read Life, Marcie Stokman and Colleen Hutt of Well-Read Mom, a rapidly growing national women’s book club, offer practical, inspiring advice based on their own experiences and the experiences of others just like you to help you rediscover the importance of reading and setting your own reading goals. With the authors by your side every step of the way, you will learn to:
Rebuild and strengthen your intellectual, imaginative, and spiritual capacities that have been dulled or weakened in the digital age. Identify and reclaim leisure time and space so that reading time becomes the best, most anticipated part of your day. Understand and apply what you read in a way that allows you to grow personally and spiritually. Connect with others in more meaningful ways, especially through the sharing and discussing of worthy literature. Choose books with characters who will inspire you and enrich your life. Make room in your life for things that matter—the ideas and images based on goodness, truth, and beauty that lead us ever closer to God.
Each chapter contains down-to-earth advice on how to step away from your screen and create a space to learn and grow at your own pace, free of guilt and pressure. Action steps at the end of each chapter will help you set and achieve your reading goals, evaluate worthwhile reads, overcome reader’s block, and find reading groups near you.
Discover the liberation and confidence that come from exploring and understanding the moral imagination and creative genius of the literary greats of the ages. Through great and worthy books, you will begin to reclaim your life—and your world—and make room for all that is good, true, and beautiful.
Are you ready to read often and read well? Let’s get started.
Publisher : Ave Maria Press (September 13, 2024)
Language : English
Paperback : 192 pages
ISBN-10 : 1646803205
ISBN-13 : 978-1646803200
Item Weight : 8.8 ounces
Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.7 x 8.5 inches
3 reviews for The Well-Read Life: Nourish Your Soul through Deep Reading and Intentional Friendship
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Jennie –
benefits of reading but also steps in how to read deeply
The Well-Read Life: Nourish Your Soul through Deep Reading and Intentional Friendship by Marcie Stokman and Colleen Hutt is a book that provides helpful information on the importance of reading well. Which I find to be of importance, so I am glad the ladies wrote a book about it! The authors run an online and in-person national book club. This is a book that not only shares the benefits of reading but also steps in how to read deeply. This book was an enjoyable read for me, as I agreed with all they were saying about our culture today and what is happening to our minds because of the internet and lack of deep reading (ability to comprehend and focus). The authors provided some great questions to ponder on throughout the book and action steps at the end of each chapter, which were helpful for me to take my reading deeper.So if you have been lacking in reading books or are in a slump, this book will be an encouraging help to get you back to reading. I loved that the authors shared some of their favorite books throughout, along with why and what they have learned through the books they have read. However, it made my to be read book pile bigger, but I wonât complain. I am always on the hunt for the next good book to read!Here are some of my highlights: Somethingâs been missing in my life. I want more than shallow surfing, enticing influencers, and an endless to-do list. You deserve to become well-read, not only for your own growth and happiness but for your children, your family, and for society. Technology is changing our societyâs very definition of what it means to be read. We read deeply not for information but for transformation and wisdom. Strengthen your mind. Enrich your soul. Reading great and worthy books is one way to feed our mins and souls with goodness, truth, and beauty. We begin to assume that scrolling headlines, scanning news bits, and tapping screens is reading 0 and it is. But it is not reading for meaning. The capacity of books to spark a fire in us, to move us to action and bolster courage, was confirmed once again. Today, we are outsourcing our thinking to pundits and not taking the time to fill our souls with texts necessary for human flourishing. Literature shows us that a particular person who lived in a different moment of history, who had different religious beliefs or a different family structure, can nonetheless share something in common with contemporary people living today. Reading and discussing literature together can be a simple yet powerful way to build social connections that are necessary for spiritual growth, good mental health, and personal happiness.One thing to note, they are Catholic, so you will come across some Catholic references, but that didnât affect me and what I have learned from this book. Also, it doesnât release until September 13th, but that will be here before you know it. I do recommend this book to all book lovers or want to be book lovers, so go put it on your list!!
Heather C –
Great book for a Christian woman looking to start a book club
Since I’m starting a book club soon at my church I decided to pick this one up to read through and review. This one is definitely from a Catholic perspective but as a non-Catholic Christian woman I found a lot of good information and encouragement in this book. It is a book written by women geared towards women.I really liked the quotes from famous individuals such as C.S. Lewis and Pope John Paul II that were disbursed throughout the book. They reinforced some of the ideas that the authors presented. I liked how the authors laid out each chapter and had questions to ask yourself at the end of the chapter to encourage thought about the ideas presented in the chapter. This book definitely reinforced the idea that bringing women together around books can encourage great conversations and develop strong relationships. I also liked how they reinforced the idea that not all books need to be finished to participate in their book discussions and gave tips to women looking to get back into reading.There is a lot of great literature out there, even modern Christian fiction which brings real life challenges and applications to our lives, but the authors focused on novels that are considered great fiction reads such a “Dante’s Inferno”, “The Picture of Dorian Gray” and “Don Quixote” which are excellent books but I would also have liked to see encouragement on reading some of the more recently published works that are out there. This was my one negative thought on the book but it’s a big one because being well read doesn’t always pull from a list of traditionally great novels – there are so many great books out there in general and I had hoped to see Christian fiction mentioned since this is a Catholic/Christian group of women reading books. I agree that these great works of fiction can allow anyone to grow and examine themselves, but as an avid Christian fiction reader I had hoped to see encouragement to read those books mentioned.Overall this book is a great resource to encourage women to read more and gave me ideas to start my own book club with a few friends from church. I recommend this as a resource to encourage anyone, particularly women to read more. It gives a lot of good tips for reading and how to carve out time to read and retain what’s being read.Thank you to Ave Maria Press for an opportunity to read an ARC of this book. All opinion expressed are my own.
UnrepeatableBlessings –
A Must Read for Readers
I have long been a fan of Marcie Stockman and Well-Read Mom and their amazing book suggestions! Just like their book suggestions, this book is a book that is not to be missed! In this book, Marcie and Colleen beautifully explain the benefits that deep reading have upon not only the intellectual life of a person but upon their spiritual life and indeed upon the whole of their sphere of influence.Reading this book was like taking a retreat and remembering why I read. I loved being reminded that reading is indeed good for my soul. The time that I take to read is not time wasted or taken from my family but a gift to the world around me as I become a better citizen of the world!I highly suggest this book to every reader who wants to become a better reader and who wants to remember just why they love reading in the first place.Thanks to NetGalley and Ave Maria Press for a copy of this book!