How to Join the Hardcore Literature Book Club

Listeners of the Hardcore Literature Podcast have been asking for a book club for a little while now, and I’ve finally put one in place:

Hardcore Literature Book Club

It’s been a lot of work, but has already been thoroughly rewarding and I’m excited for it to kick off. So I’d like to say thank you for everyone getting involved, sharing their reading adventures with me, and expressing interest in the Hardcore Literature Book Club.

As you may know, the first book we’ll be reading together is Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, and we’ll be doing a slow deep reading of the novel over 8-10 weeks.

Once we’re finished with Anna Karenina, we’ve also got some more great books lined up.

I’ve noticed some patterns when readers email me about the books they would like to read deeply with a group (works by writers like Austen, Dostoyevsky, Proust), so I think this Spring 2021 Book Club Syllabus will get people excited:

• Feb 2021 Big Read: Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina
  • Poetry Appreciation: Shakespeare’s sonnets 1-17
• April 2021 Big Read: Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment
  • Short Story Masterclasses: Chekhov & Turgenev
  • Poetry Appreciation: Robert Browning & Emily Dickinson
• May 2021 Big Read: Austen’s Persuasion
  • Poetry Appreciation: Shelley & Blake
• June 2021: Proust Projection Begins
  • Short Story Masterclasses: Maupassant & Borges
• Summer Holiday Reading Set

You can see the format is a deep reading of one big book, with a smattering of short stories masterclasses and poetry appreciation tutorials.

By summer 2021, you’ll be more well-read than 99.9% of the world.

And then from summer to the end of the year, we’ll be reading classics by Emily Brontë, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Flaubert, Dickens (our Christmas read), and many more. We’ll also have different pop-up literary lectures, classes, Q&A shows, and bookish hangouts along the way.

You’ll get a supplementary reading list for each week and each book we tackle, which is modelled on the reading lists our Oxford tutors used to give us for our tutorials. The first week will have us exploring Plato, Pater, Pushkin, Mill, Mozart, Strauss, Baudelaire, and more. In the second week, we read Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Joseph Campbell, William James, Freud, and more – and there will be a bunch of tasks and assignments with the aim of deepening your reading journeyand connecting you with the themes and characters of the work.

Where the Book Club will take place: Readers have recommended I go the Patreon route for the book club, which is a popular membership platform. So we’ll be putting the video lectures, the downloadable and interactive stuff there. The first week of Anna Karenina was set to formally kick off from 14th February, but because the videos on Part One are already uploaded, I would like to invite you for early access:

Hardcore Literature Book Club

The first week’s lectures and videos are on:

• What makes a character psychologically complex?
• What is love? We’re breaking down Plato’s 2 loves in The Symposium, which is important for understanding Levin and the book’s wider themes
• Tolstoy’s theory of art vs Pater’s theory of art (“Art for art’s sake” vs religious consciousness)
• The history behind Anna Karenina (historical, biographical, cultural)
• Discussions on translation and deep dives into favourite/key passages from Part One
• Deep breakdowns of Part One of Anna Karenina

The Part One “breakdown” videos are long so everything will be timestamped for you to jump about as you wish. We’re going deep into character analysis.

We’ll be looking at surrounding cultural, historical, and biographical context, reading around Anna Karenina, but also sticking deep to the novel, conducting some line-by-line readings of the best parts.

You’ll also be invited to examine your own reactions to characters and events and, depending on which tier you decide to opt for, get involved either in contributing to online/virtual discussion or joining the Hardcore Literature Live Reading Group. The “Proust” tier is for those who want the videos and lectures, and the “Shakespeare” tier is for those interested in live discussion.

I’m super excited. I think we’re going to start something special here, so I hope to see you in there!

Sign-up here:

Hardcore Literature Book Club

All best wishes and happy reading,

Benjamin