The Hardcore Literature Book Club has successfully kicked off and we’ve got a lot of great readers inside!
The Book Club has a completely self-paced option, so don’t think you’re starting late if you wish to join the fun.
Pick the Proust Tier over on Patreon and you’ll get instant access to hours of deep literary material covering the first two parts of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, discussion on different aesthetic theories, analyses of Plato’s theory of love, reading Baudelaire’s banned poems, breakdowns of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer and Freud, and much more!
Now I would like to set you some reading assignments for the next few weeks.
First let’s look at the reading assignments for the Book Club, then we’ll have some assignments for you lovely podcast listeners.
Hardcore Literature Book Club Short Story Masterclass Reading Assignments
For the month of April, our Big Read is Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment.
As there are six parts to this great Russian novel, we’ll be reading it over six weeks.
I recommend the Pevear and Volokhonsky edition.
Alongside Dostoyevsky, we will also have eight Short Story Masterclasses and Poetry Appreciation Classes. I’m setting you the short story readings now, so you can read 1-2 stories per week and be ready for a deep reread together.
Chekhov Short Story Reading Assignments
We’ll be reading, analysing, and appreciating these four short stories from Anton Chekhov:
- The Lady with the Dog
- The Kiss
- Ward No. 6
- The Darling
The Chekhov stories are available across the two-volume Everyman set, translated by Constance Garnett. Of course, some might call preferring Garnett’s translation of Chekhov to Pevear and Volokhonsky controversial, but that’s the one I’m working from.
Turgenev Short Story Reading Assignments
We’ll be breaking down, relishing, and savouring these wonderful short stories by Ivan Turgenev:
- The Live Relic
- Kasyan from Fair Springs
- Bezhin Meadow
- The Singers
All four Turgenev stories are from A Sportsman’s Notebook, and I personally recommend the Charles and Natasha Hepburn translation.
We’ll also be doing some Poetry Appreciation Classes, starting with Robert Browning and Emily Dickinson.
These are two immensely difficult poets (Dickinson especially), but their rewards are proportional to how much effort you bring to them, and you can never exhaust them.
Robert Browning Poetry Appreciation Reading Assignments
Here are the main poems we will be dealing with:
- Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came
- Love Among the Ruins
- A Toccata of Galuppi’s
- Caliban upon Setebos
- Andrea del Sarto
- Fra Lippo Lippi
Fearless Browning fans will also be invited to explore some sections from Browning’s formidable The Ring and the Book.
Emily Dickinson Poetry Appreciation Reading Assignments
And here are some of Dickinson’s poetic gems – we’ll hold these up to the light and marvel at how they shine:
- Because That You Are Going
- Had this one Day not been
- There’s a certain Slant of light
- Tell all the Truth by tell it slant
- We grow accustomed to the Dark
- Because I could not stop for Death
Hardcore Literature Podcast Short Story & Poetry Reading Assignments
Upcoming episodes of the Hardcore Literature Podcast will involve us looking at short stories by Ernest Hemingway and poems by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
So I’m going to give you the stories and poems we’ll be looking at ahead of time. That way, if you want to read them before listening to the show, you’ll get a lot more out of it.
Ernest Hemingway Short Story Reading Assignments
We’ll be reading the following Hemingway short stories:
- Hills Like White Elephants
- God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen
- A Clean, Well-Lighted Place
- The Snows of Kilimanjaro
- A Sea Change
- The Killers
All of these miniature masterpieces and more are available in the affordable, marginalia-worthy Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson Poetry Appreciation Reading Assignments
And these are the wonderful poems by the Victorian Poet Laureate that we’ll be taking apart and bringing our whole selves to:
- Tithonus
- Ulysses
- Lucretius
- Mariana
We’ll also rifle through some of the best stanzas of Tennyson’s long In Memoriam A.H.H.
That’s all for now, folks!
Happy reading.
And you might want to consider joining the Book Club to get access to a bunch of long-form bookish lectures. The readers enrolled so far are really loving it and we have an amazing group of Serious Readers!