Hello! Nice to meet you, and welcome!
My name’s Benjamin McEvoy, but you can call me Ben.
I’m a lecturer, writer, and host of the Hardcore Literature Book Club. Oxford University educated (English Language and Literature at Oriel College). Half-Irish (the Wilde half). Introvert (INFJ). Bookworm. Lived all over the world, and spent the last couple of years split between Tokyo and Vienna before settling down in the land of my birth. Love vinyl, Kobe beef, dogs, cats, ice baths, chess, strongman weightlifting, running, teaching, lecturing and living the Great Books.
Hardcore Literature Book Club
The Hardcore Literature Book Club is a guided tour across the best literature even written. We have a great community of book lovers from all over the world deep-reading and discussing the Great Books together.
We have tackled Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Jane Austen’s Persuasion, and we’re currently reading Proust’s, In Search of Lost Time, Hermann Hesse’s Siddharta, Don Quixote by Cervantes, and gearing up for Hugo’s Les Misérables.
You are guided through each book with long-form lectures, reading assignments, and community discussion. The best thing of all is that the video and audio lectures are always there (and so is the discussion), so you are encouraged to self-pace your reading journey.
Check out the schedule and contents page for the book club:
In addition to the Big Read, we also have Short Story Masterclasses covering authors like Chekhov, Turgenev, Borges, and more, and Poetry Appreciation Classes covering poets like William Blake, Emily Dickinson, Shelley, Keats, and more.
We also have monthly general book discussions which turn into long threads (great for enthusing you to pick up your books), ‘Coffee with Hardcore Literature’ (the Q&A show where we have coffee/tea and answer your questions), exclusive podcasts designed to help you live the great books, and much more.
If you’re looking for a book club diving into great literature, you’ve found it! Joining the “Proust Tier” gives you instant access to all of the great content (over 100 exclusive long-form posts at this point), and you will be warmly welcomed.
Hardcore Literature Podcast Episodes
Hardcore Literature is currently in its fifth season, with over fifty episodes and great reviews from all over the globe. You can listen to this podcast on the great books on iTunes and Spotify.
We have episodes deep-diving into great books from Tolstoy, Austen, Shakespeare, Nietzsche, Milton, Dostoyevsky, Hemingway, Jung, Rumi, Solzhenitsyn, Frankl, Orwell, Dickinson, Wilde, Aristotle, and many more.
We also have episodes walking you through how to read world literature, how to heal your trauma with bibliotherapy, how to do shadow work, guides to scriptural works like the Bhagavad Gita, and much more.
YouTube Videos
Most of my videos are over at the Book Club, but the YouTube channel has some nice guides and book discussions. We are also building a great community. Many people have noticed just how engaged I am in the comments section (I try to respond to as many as possible) – but how could I not be? The comments are incredibly insightful, deep, and nuanced.
We have videos ranking an author’s works (like Nietzsche and Harold Bloom), we have the literary detective series where we get to the bottom of what book Anna Karenina is reading or discover which book turned Dorian Gray Evil, we also have trips to the bookstore together, discussions on what makes a book great, guides to specific authors, and translation taste tests.
Hardcore University
Hardcore University is an educational video suite offering guidance through the toughest exams in the world. We currently have five structure video courses that have helped students get into the university of their dreams.
The ELAT Masterclass is an in-depth video guide to acing Oxford University’s English Literature Admissions Test.
We also have a Personal Statement Writing Masterclass, Oxbridge interview masterclass, a guide to Oxford’s TSA, and an essay writing masterclass over at Hardcore University.
My academic consulting schedule is currently full, so if you would like to work with me one-on-one, please make sure to as my enquire a few months in advance.
Want to connect with me?
If you want to talk about literature and reading the Great Books, the best way to connect with me is through the Hardcore Literature Book Club where I spend a lot of my time.
If you want to arrange consultation sessions, or you have a business request, please note that my schedule is currently full so reaching out a few months in advance would be prudent.
My Favourite Topics to Lecture Upon
I love literature to the deepest parts of my marrow, and find my every thought consumed with the Great Books. When I’m not voraciously inhaling literature or planning long-form lectures, I’m talking with fellow passionate readers from all over the world.
A few of my favourite areas to lecture upon include: Shakespeare and Elizabethan theatre production, Nietzsche’s philosophy of eternal recurrence, ekphrasis in poetry and novels (from Keats’ Odes to Melville’s Moby Dick), Freudian readings of Proust and Proustian readings of Freud, the development of psychologically complex complex characters in history (from Don Quixote to Anna Karenina), and how the first readers experienced the Great Books.