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Praying with Jane Eyre
- Reflections on Reading as a Sacred Practice
- Narrated by: Vanessa Zoltan, Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
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Publisher's Summary
“In these soaring, open-hearted essays, Vanessa Zoltan writes with fierce brilliance about suffering, survival, and the kind of meaning in life that can withstand real scrutiny.” (John Green, best-selling author of The Fault in Our Stars and The Anthropocene Reviewed)
A deeply felt celebration of a classic novel - and a reflection on the ways our favorite books can shape and heal us.
Our favorite books keep us company, give us hope, and help us find meaning in a chaotic world. In this fresh and relatable work, atheist chaplain Vanessa Zoltan blends memoir and personal growth as she grapples with the notions of family legacy and identity through the lens of her favorite novel, Jane Eyre. Informed by the reading practices of medieval monks and rabbinic scholars from her training at the Harvard Divinity School and filtered through the pages of Jane Eyre as well as Little Women, Harry Potter, and The Great Gatsby, Zoltan explores topics ranging from the trauma she has inherited as the granddaughter of four Holocaust survivors to finding hope, meaning, and even magic in our deeply fractured times. Brimming with a lifelong love of classic literature and the tenderness of self-reflection, the book also reveals simple techniques for reading any work as a sacred text - from Virginia Woolf to Anne of Green Gables to baseball scorecards.
Whether you're an avowed "Eyrehead" or simply a curious listener looking for a richer connection with the written word, this deeply felt and inspiring book will light the way to a more intimate appreciation for whatever books you love to read.
Critic Reviews
“Praying with Jane Eyre is literary, spiritual, and autobiographical all at once. This is a book committed to the truths of things - from the Holocaust to personal betrayal - no matter how hard those truths may be.... We can follow [Vanessa’s] example of learning how to read as if our lives depend on it - which I believe they do.” (Terry Tempest Williams, from the foreword)
“In these soaring, open-hearted essays, Vanessa Zoltan writes with fierce brilliance about suffering, survival, and the kind of meaning in life that can withstand real scrutiny.” (John Green, best-selling author of The Fault in Our Stars and The Anthropocene Reviewed)
“As an atheist, I’ve hungered for these sermons. As a reader, I’ve longed for this exegesis. This is a book about much more than how to pray secularly, and much more than how to read reverently. It is a book about how to be. And it is told through the wondrous earthly companionship of not just Jane Eyre, but the miraculous Vanessa Zoltan.” (Lauren Sandler, author of This Is All I Got and Righteous)
What listeners say about Praying with Jane Eyre
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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- Sarah Cook
- 01-06-2022
Love, love, love
I /love/ this idea of treating secular books as sacred. This essentially entails engaging with and using secular texts the way people have done with religious texts for centuries - as a source of spirituality, wisdom, and love.
I first heard Vanessa do this on the Harry Potter and the Sacred Text podcast, and now she has written a book where she applies the same principles mainly to Jane Eyre, but also to Little Women, Harry Potter, and The Great Gatsby. Each "chapter" is described as a sermon - it takes a passage from the book of choice, and elaborates on the themes and wisdom found in said passage, often drawing from her own life experiences as well. This was a deep and inspiring read.
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