Benjamin McEvoy

Essays on writing, reading, and life

8 Difficult Books and How to Read Them

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Even after all these years of deep reading, there are still some books and authors I run into that pose a difficulty. And different writers have different kinds of difficulty. The difficulty of Proust is not the difficulty of Swift. But if you value searching for the reader’s sublime (a difficult pleasure) and enjoy slow […]

How to Read Great Imaginative Literature

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How do you read great works of imaginative literature? I get asked this question quite often, usually by readers who already know how to read certain other types of book (e.g. popular fiction, self-development, textbooks). But when it comes to these great big books, like Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina or Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, […]

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  […]

How to Possess a Poem by Memory

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Memorisation is a lost art. Particularly when it comes to poetry. People hardly even read poetry anymore, let alone memorise poems. But memorising a poem is possessing a poem, and that’s where most of a poem’s value comes in. Here’s how to memorise a poem

Recommended Books for my Teenage Daughter

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I went into a bookstore before lockdown and overheard a father asking the worker what books he would recommend for his teenage daughter. They walked past the Austen. Past the Homer. Past the Shakespeare. And straight to the colourful YA section. Had my British sensibilities not intervened, I might have recommended a few different books… […]

How to Use Tarot to Solve Your Problems

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Tarot readings get a bad rap as being woo-woo, but regular tarot readings, along with a unique way of looking at art, are one of the best tools in my self-development arsenal. Real tarot can help you solve your problems and provide you with solid life advice. In this video, I run through my two […]