I'm going to take up your challenge of arguing that "life" is objective. (Though I've never actually read Charlotte Mason, and I suspect my take on this isn't going to agree with most of her fans.)
I think your claim that "of course" life is not objective comes from an attitude of pluralism. And I agree that we all have our own taste, so every book will appeal to some people more than others
But the definition that I like is that a book is living if there's a community of people anywhere who are actively using it to organize their lives and their worldview.
By that definition, many books that violently disagree with one another can both be living (for example, Karl Marx and Ayn Rand).
But whichever side of the debate we fall on, the existence of a community on the opposite side makes it a valuable exercise to read their foundational books, if for no other reason than to understand them better.
And that applies even if the books in themselves are poorly written by most literary standards. If anything, that should only deepen the mystery of how such a book has inspired so many people.
The ability to write elegantly crafted prose is a useful tool, but what really matters is whether a book changes how people live. Given how few books achieve that goal, anything that does survive is fascinating, regardless of how it gets there.
Interesting! I see you (tell me if I’m misinterpreting) as both lowering and raising the bar for what qualifies as a “living” book.
Lowering: it’s enough for any book to qualify if even one community of people somewhere has fallen in love with it. I’m open to this.
Raising: the community needs to do more than have fallen in love with the book, it needs to use the book to organize their life and worldview.
This last part seems higher than I’d like to set the bar. I think it makes intuitive sense to me to describe a book as “living” if scores of people have fallen in love with it, and experience it as giving them life. (A good number of dinosaur books from my childhood count.)
But, y’know, one should be careful of just arguing over words. Still, I’m interested to know what you think — am I making the bar too low?
Yeah, I think that's an accurate assessment of what I meant.
I guess the bar depends on your goal. I was thinking of how you would pick "the best ideas that have ever been written", so the bar I set is pretty high.
But perhaps most of those books aren't very accessible to an average third grader. So a list of "books that third graders will love and remember" might look very different.
Though a handful of very special books could fit on both of our lists! And perhaps it's useful to think about how those books manage that feat.
There are a few elephants in the room regarding decline in literacy/reading, especially framed by online pandemic instruction, but the one whose absence strikes me the most is the disappearance of the reading parent. It’s not enough to scour Google for what other people deem to be “living books” and proffer them to your kids hoping it’ll be the key to their love of literature. I was an avid reader as a kid because every day my dad came home from work, played with us, ate dinner, and then spent his evenings trying to get as many pages in of a novel before his attentions were called elsewhere. My mom spent her mornings reading. My parents kept books in the bathroom so they could read during their few moments without four kids demanding attention. I didn’t want to just read books for my age, I spent hours poring over their books (75% of which I would consider unpalatable today) trying to get into their heads and figure out what made them so interesting to my parents. It wasn’t the quality of the books that made me a reader, although I found plenty that were vivid and powerful to me, it was watching someone else read every day. Kids naturally want to do what they see their parents doing, for a time at least.
None of this is to shift any blame to parents, and especially now that I am one I am awed by the difficulty of engaging in creative or personal pursuits beyond raising kids. Parents have less time than ever to spend with their kids. I was incredibly lucky to have reading parents and I hope I can be one for my son.
Wonderfully said! Tell me if I’m chunking this properly: to be able to experience the life of a living book, it helps to love books. If so: full agree.
To add onto this point, it helps if kids see their peers reading, too. There seems to be a decline in cultural cachet of reading vs being 'very online' among school age children. This is troubling because kids want to be cool. If the cool kids are reading then others will want to read as well.
(You may notice striking similarities in some of the topical lists, for example, between these two sites - this is due to the fact that the founders of the two sites were at one point collaborating on a project, before going their separate ways to have different types of sites).
Reshelving Alexandria also has a great Facebook community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/reshelvingalexandria (The theme of the group is "home library building" rather than just "living books", but the practical result is that a lot of what people are discussing is living books - be sure to read the group rules/guidelines if you join as there are a few rules about the types of content allowed to be discussed). A lot of the discussion in this group is about kids' books, some is about books for adults.
Potato Peel Pie Society Book Community also has some great discussions about Living Books (https://www.facebook.com/groups/1382730042050099). I'm not as active in that group but it seems more evenly split on discussions about adult books and kids books. This group also has an extensive set of subgroups for "reading group" discussions on specific books.
I can't say enough good things about the Oz books. My 4 year old son has been absolutely devouring them and they are almost shockingly wholesome, chock full of delightful imagery and discussion points.
I'm going to take up your challenge of arguing that "life" is objective. (Though I've never actually read Charlotte Mason, and I suspect my take on this isn't going to agree with most of her fans.)
I think your claim that "of course" life is not objective comes from an attitude of pluralism. And I agree that we all have our own taste, so every book will appeal to some people more than others
But the definition that I like is that a book is living if there's a community of people anywhere who are actively using it to organize their lives and their worldview.
By that definition, many books that violently disagree with one another can both be living (for example, Karl Marx and Ayn Rand).
But whichever side of the debate we fall on, the existence of a community on the opposite side makes it a valuable exercise to read their foundational books, if for no other reason than to understand them better.
And that applies even if the books in themselves are poorly written by most literary standards. If anything, that should only deepen the mystery of how such a book has inspired so many people.
The ability to write elegantly crafted prose is a useful tool, but what really matters is whether a book changes how people live. Given how few books achieve that goal, anything that does survive is fascinating, regardless of how it gets there.
Interesting! I see you (tell me if I’m misinterpreting) as both lowering and raising the bar for what qualifies as a “living” book.
Lowering: it’s enough for any book to qualify if even one community of people somewhere has fallen in love with it. I’m open to this.
Raising: the community needs to do more than have fallen in love with the book, it needs to use the book to organize their life and worldview.
This last part seems higher than I’d like to set the bar. I think it makes intuitive sense to me to describe a book as “living” if scores of people have fallen in love with it, and experience it as giving them life. (A good number of dinosaur books from my childhood count.)
But, y’know, one should be careful of just arguing over words. Still, I’m interested to know what you think — am I making the bar too low?
Yeah, I think that's an accurate assessment of what I meant.
I guess the bar depends on your goal. I was thinking of how you would pick "the best ideas that have ever been written", so the bar I set is pretty high.
But perhaps most of those books aren't very accessible to an average third grader. So a list of "books that third graders will love and remember" might look very different.
Though a handful of very special books could fit on both of our lists! And perhaps it's useful to think about how those books manage that feat.
There are a few elephants in the room regarding decline in literacy/reading, especially framed by online pandemic instruction, but the one whose absence strikes me the most is the disappearance of the reading parent. It’s not enough to scour Google for what other people deem to be “living books” and proffer them to your kids hoping it’ll be the key to their love of literature. I was an avid reader as a kid because every day my dad came home from work, played with us, ate dinner, and then spent his evenings trying to get as many pages in of a novel before his attentions were called elsewhere. My mom spent her mornings reading. My parents kept books in the bathroom so they could read during their few moments without four kids demanding attention. I didn’t want to just read books for my age, I spent hours poring over their books (75% of which I would consider unpalatable today) trying to get into their heads and figure out what made them so interesting to my parents. It wasn’t the quality of the books that made me a reader, although I found plenty that were vivid and powerful to me, it was watching someone else read every day. Kids naturally want to do what they see their parents doing, for a time at least.
None of this is to shift any blame to parents, and especially now that I am one I am awed by the difficulty of engaging in creative or personal pursuits beyond raising kids. Parents have less time than ever to spend with their kids. I was incredibly lucky to have reading parents and I hope I can be one for my son.
Wonderfully said! Tell me if I’m chunking this properly: to be able to experience the life of a living book, it helps to love books. If so: full agree.
To add onto this point, it helps if kids see their peers reading, too. There seems to be a decline in cultural cachet of reading vs being 'very online' among school age children. This is troubling because kids want to be cool. If the cool kids are reading then others will want to read as well.
“the love of reading is the master skill” !!!
I'll offer a couple sources if people are looking to discover more living books:
Biblioguides (a paid subscription site with some free content): https://www.biblioguides.com/
Reshelving Alexandria (free site, a bit harder to use the database there): https://www.reshelvingalexandria.com/
(You may notice striking similarities in some of the topical lists, for example, between these two sites - this is due to the fact that the founders of the two sites were at one point collaborating on a project, before going their separate ways to have different types of sites).
Reshelving Alexandria also has a great Facebook community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/reshelvingalexandria (The theme of the group is "home library building" rather than just "living books", but the practical result is that a lot of what people are discussing is living books - be sure to read the group rules/guidelines if you join as there are a few rules about the types of content allowed to be discussed). A lot of the discussion in this group is about kids' books, some is about books for adults.
Potato Peel Pie Society Book Community also has some great discussions about Living Books (https://www.facebook.com/groups/1382730042050099). I'm not as active in that group but it seems more evenly split on discussions about adult books and kids books. This group also has an extensive set of subgroups for "reading group" discussions on specific books.
I can't say enough good things about the Oz books. My 4 year old son has been absolutely devouring them and they are almost shockingly wholesome, chock full of delightful imagery and discussion points.
If you are in or around Dallas, TX, check out the LLF Library. https://www.librarycat.org/lib/LLFlibrary