Posts by Well-Read Mom

One reason we read is to encounter human behavior as it actually is, to discern—through imagination—what we ought to do if placed in similar circumstances.

Why I Need Well-Read Mom Written By Marcie Stokman, Well-Read Mom Founder and President *Reprinted from Well-Read Mom’s Year of the Contemplative Reading Companion. (copyright 2018) Although it has been seven years since Year of the Contemplative and nine since our first Victor Hugo selection, it is wonderful to pause and reflect on the beauty…

When I learned that Victor Hugo originally intended his seminal novel to be titled “Notre Dame,” and that the “Hunchback of” was actually an unwanted addition, I felt forced to reconsider the whole novel as a study on Notre Dame as a teacher.

As I read Purgatorio during this season of Lent, I felt myself invited to consider my own attachments and ask myself what I am being invited to let go of. Through much prayer and reflection—and with the help of Dante and Virgil—I came to realize my own attachment to homeschooling.

If I could figure out a way to recommend books to people as a profession, I feel like I would have my life made.

Jesus and I are preparing for a hike together, just Him and me. He’s the experienced hiker so he’s checking my backpack. It’s so heavy. He looks up at me and says, “You don’t have to carry all this.” He invites me to just give some things up, to lay them at His feet. In fear, I clutch all my things and explain why I need them. 

The truth is: We need each other. We thrive in relationships. We are better together! In Well-Read Mom, we are resisting individualism by staying together in our reading, and together matters.

During the Year of the Teacher we have expanded our horizons of what it means to be a teacher. Nature as teacher, architecture as teacher, parents as teacher, silence as teacher. Each read has opened up a place in my soul and illuminated it in a way that would have otherwise not been possible.

Several years ago, I began reading Pinocchio aloud to my boys. We got as far as the first encounter with the fox and the cat before I decided I would read no further. To this day, it is the only family read-aloud I’ve ever abandoned.

One of the things that makes literature so valuable is how it can introduce us to perspectives and lives different from our own, and sometimes we can learn from writers in ways that perhaps they did not even intend.