What Defines an "Old Soul Book"?

On reading novels that illuminate the past

If you’ve stumbled into this little corner of the internet, perhaps modern fiction simply doesn’t speak to you in the way that older, somewhat wiser novels do. Maybe you’ve yet to tackle many of the classics, (like myself!), or maybe you’ve read a handful and decided you are hungry for more—but you’re just not sure you’re ready for Homer and Dante quite yet.

Regardless of what you have or have not read, welcome!

The goal of this humble publication is to discuss the novels that don’t leave us the same and to only compare reading lists for the sake of sharing the wealth with others.

What started as a quiet curiosity for me has steadily grown into a lifelong journey to explore the depth of story and the minds of writers from decades past. Armed with little more than some Jane Austen and Charles Dickens experience, I began dreaming of reading the works of classic literature during my school-age years. Today, I’m clinging to the words of Goudge, Alcott, and Tolkien as if they are physical lifelines and unabashedly toting around illustrated children’s works of George MacDonald.

Although I could argue I’m diving into these works to prepare read-aloud lists for my two small, hobbit-like children, I believe there’s an even simpler reason I—and many others—are drawn to the older, wiser, (and often moralistic) novel; they feed both the mind and the heart.

While I’m tempted to define an “old soul book” as anything not published within your own generation, I actually think it’s inadequate to use time as a measuring stick. ( I mean, have you read anything by Wendell Berry? He’s publishing novels in the 2000s that effortlessly harken to the age of my great-grandparents.) More accurately, I would consider an “old soul book”to be any novel that illuminates the past in such a way that we are forced to recognize what our modern lives might lack.

It’s a loose definition, but purposefully so.

“Old soul books” often have a way of transporting me back in time, (if even just by a few decades,) in such a way that I long for a slower pace of life—a way of life lived before smartphones and the Internet and the 24/7 news cycle. They’ve become a sort of refuge that grounds me in an age of constant interruptions and an inevitable urgency we can’t seem to shake.

Consequently, I am on the hunt for as many of these soul-nourishing novels I can get my hands on. And I’ve simply decided that since I’ll be reading these literary gems anyway, there’s no reason I can’t record my thoughts, exercise the writing muscle, and share the wealth of reading with others.

Rest assured that I don’t believe the modern novel to be an enemy. I often read modern fiction myself. (And I certainly have my modern favorites!) It’s an important reflection of culture we would do well to pay attention to. But sometimes avid readers miss out on the richness of older literature simply because it isn’t a viral trend.

I want to read beyond what’s trending and I believe you do too, reader. It’s a perfectly ok desire to have and a rewarding one to cultivate.

And now I must know: What sort of “old soul books” have impacted you?