Benjamin McEvoy

Essays on writing, reading, and life

How to Read a Book a Week (52 Books a Year)

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Reading a book a week is one of the most satisfying and rewarding habits you can adopt. The habit of reading 52 books in 52 weeks is one of those challenges that almost anyone can achieve, and everyone can feel the benefits of improved creativity, increased verbal fluency, higher intelligence, and greater sense of personal […]

How To Immediately Improve Your English Literature Essay

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Listen up, English students. I’m sick of you lot coming to me with your crummy essays. I love you guys. But you grind my gears sometimes. 90% of problems I see with English Literature essays are due to laziness.  The fixes are simple.  And I’m going to give them to you right now so all […]

Alice Waters Teaches Home Cooking MasterClass Review (Part 1)

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I’m enrolled in the Alice Waters Teaches Home Cooking MasterClass at the moment. I get early access to the course as part of my All Access Pass (check out the catalogue). And I’m absolutely blown away. People who love natural cooking, love being around calm caring energy, and people whose philosophy of cooking is making delicious meals […]

How to Style and Format Your University Essays

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Styling and formatting essays can be a major PITA. Why can’t our arguments stand on their own merits? That’s how I used to think for more than half of my university career. And for most of my time at university I was throwing away easy marks. People fear learning proper essay styling and formatting because it […]

Helen Mirren Teaches Acting MasterClass Review

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The Helen Mirren Teaches Acting MasterClass is easily one of my favourite masterclasses to date (and I’ve enjoyed a lot of them). I’m not an actor, but I’ve been a fan of Helen Mirren for many years and figured I could learn some valuable insights into character construction that would help my writing career. Seeing as my All Access Pass lets […]

How To Write A Badass Book Review

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Writing book reviews is one of the best activities you can do for taking your appreciation of literature to the next level. Book reviews drastically improve your ability to retain what you read, understand difficult themes, and share your love of a book with the world. If you’re not currently writing book reviews after reading […]

Shakespeare’s Comedies and Tragedies

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The compilation of Shakespeare’s First Folio, in 1623, had the plays divided into the generic labels of Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies. Since then, the plays have been considered generically in relation to the category that was first imposed upon them. But Shakespeare’s plays are not static enough in their conventions as to be completely tragic, comic, […]

Bob Woodward Teaches Investigative Journalism MasterClass Review

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I’ve held immense respect for Bob Woodward’s investigative journalism ever since I saw All the President’s Men in my teenage years. I went on to devour his Pulitzer Prize winning work and many of his fascinating non-fiction books. For years, I had dreams of becoming an investigative journalism myself (primarily interested in war-torn regions and government corruption). […]

Best Writing Resources For First Time Writers

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This list of the best writing resources for first time writers is exactly what I would have wanted when I first started writing. I found these writing tools slowly over the course of many years. But I wonder how much quicker I could have improved if I’d had all of them right from the very […]