Benjamin McEvoy

Essays on writing, reading, and life

Shakespeare’s Sonnets Podcast

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Reading Shakespeare’s sonnets in sequence across a span of many weeks, ranking your favourites, then attempting to possess the best by memory is one of the greatest literary joys a book-lover can pursue. So today we’re kicking off the new year with a discussion on how to read the sonnets, why read the sonnets, and […]

Reading and Life Goals for 2021

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2020 was a crazy year. But let’s look to 2021 and set some aspirational reading and living goals. Good reading is good living, and how you read your books (indeed, what books you read) transfers to every other part of your life. We’re talking about book clubs, reading plans, goals, roles, mantras, personal manifestos, breathing, […]

Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray Podcast

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Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray is endlessly reread-able, beautiful, enduring, haunting, and, despite Wilde’s contentions and theory of art, is an eminently moral book. In today’s episode of Hardcore Literature, we’re talking about the history of this great work, the censorship trial and Wilde’s imprisonment.  We’re doing a close analysis, Talmudic style, of the […]

Hardcore Literature Podcast Now Available On Spotify

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Thank you to everyone sending in kind words about the show. I’m truly blessed to have such intelligent, kind, lovers of literature for a listenership. After a few requests, I sought to get Hardcore Literature up on Spotify as well as iTunes, so you can listen to it there now. Listen to Hardcore Literature on […]

How to Embrace Your Positive Non-Toxic Masculinity

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The new-norm is a degenerate culture that praises mediocrity and refuses to embrace the good God that is manifest inside us. Look to what the masses sedate themselves with. Look to what the mainstream praises and holds up as aspirational. And there you will find the real toxicity: Netflix-and-Chill Following orders without question Neglecting your […]

Should You Really Go To Oxford University?

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It’s been a positively overwhelming week. We’re just a few days away from the Oxford and Cambridge interviews starting (all online this year). I feel everyone’s excitement and nervousness. But whether you’re awaiting your interview, waiting for your answer back from interview, or didn’t get an invite this year, I wanted to talk a little […]

Poetry is Death and Past Life Regression (A Theory of Poetry)

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Why do some lines of poetry move us more than others? Why do seemingly innocuous lines, lines that many might glide over, lines unsavoured by the mass of men, so enrapture us? Why did this line, from the third stanza of Keats’ ‘To Autumn’, inspire tears in me late last night, compelling me to reread […]

How to Study English in Your First Term of University

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This is my advice to First Year English students studying in their first term at University. This is everything I would have done differently. If I could go back in time and get the most out of my English degree as possible, this is how I would structure my time, how I would approach my […]

Reviewing My 7 Book Reading Goals for 2020

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As we near the end of a strange, tumultuous year, I’m looking back on the goals I set for my reading this time last year. Did I hit them? Did you hit your book reading goals? I’ve put timestamps to the different goals below the video. Reviewing My 7 Book Reading Goals for 2020  […]