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Book Club Discussion for May 2024 (Patreon)

Published:
2024-05-01 20:21:33
Imported:
2026-06
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Dear Book Club Readers ---

You had an incredible reading month in April, and it would be lovely to hear about the books you're enjoying this month.

Your comments in these Book Club Discussion threads continue to reveal your deep love of great literature, and we would love to hear about how your reading is treating you at the moment.

So, tell us what your May is looking like.

What are you reading at the moment?

Let us know anything that's on your mind, your literary loves, and anything you wish to share or sharpen your thoughts about.

  • Author details

  • Seasonal reads

  • Areas to explore

  • Your current Big Read

  • Complementary art forms

  • Questions about literature

  • Favourite lines and passages

  • Things you're finding difficult

  • Rewarding literary rabbit holes

  • Musings, notes, and marginalia

  • Things you want to recommend

  • Resonant character descriptions

  • General life updates (we're interested)

This is the place to put anything bookish you like, and get other readers weighing in on your thoughts!

Our wonderful Book Club community continues to be a literary oasis thanks to your thoughtful appreciations of the Great Books.

Reading through the recent book discussion threads, one can see what a truly special group of literature lovers we have here:

So thank you so much for being a part of the family, and I hope your month is filled with exciting bookish adventures.

Happy reading!

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Comments

debra

Hello, everyone. I discovered Ben McEvoy on YouTube about three months ago. After watching many of his great videos and learning so much from them, I knew I had to become a Proustian member of the Hardcore Literature Book Club very soon. And here I am. I also knew I had to start with Great Expectations. I first read it somewhere between two and three decades ago; and I just finished my second reading. I feel so enriched because of the insights, explanations, observations, and advice from the lectures. It was truly a great starting point that confirmed my expectations of the Club. I had planned to start Anna Karenina next; but, based on the 2024 syllabus, I put in an order for Infinite Jest to get a head start on the next Big Read. While waiting for it to be delivered to me in the US from Blackwell’s in the UK, I just started reading another book on my TBR shelf —The Wren, The Wren. Most nights before bedtime I read a bit of Keats from the Everyman’s Library, and I start the morning with Ben’s recommendation of Tolstoy’s A Calendar of Wisdom. For a non-fiction book, I’m in a group that is reading Essays on the Gita by Sri Aurobindo. That’s my month of May, and then some.

Emma S.

I have been reading My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante. I'm probably one of the last people to read this! I'm not sure if I like it, but I can't stop reading it either. It's quite violent and sad, which I wasn't expecting, but also compelling and hypnotic. I was wondering what other people made of it?

Vida
>>138411479

Hi Emma! I love the Neapolitan series. I found it the most fascinating read. Compelling and hypnotic is a great description indeed. I could not identify with the main characters but still I found them quite real, sad, and beautiful at the same time. I tried to put a gap between the volumes but I couldn’t even last a day. I read them all back to back. By the end, I felt that I have known these characters all my life and have grown up with them in the same neighborhood. It is a powerful and beautiful series. Nothing is sugar coated and that makes it all the more real.

Karen Werner

I recently finished the Master and Margarita which at first I thought difficult and then after several chapters I thought it really was great fun. I would recommend this to everyone it is a remarkable piece of work. I am reading This is happiness by Niall Williams. I identify with a lot of it so far because most of my family was from Ireland. It is has parts that are very funny and remind me of my childhood and great grandparents and aunts. There are also very poignant moments that the writer recalls from his past. It is a fun read. I just finished the Taming of the Shrew by the great Shakespeare. What a great comedy this one is. I never realized how great he really is. I wish I picked him up earlier. Starting Pride and prejudice in the morning. Can’t wait to get into it. Thanks Benjamin for introducing this wonderful world to me. Thanks for all of you in the group for sharing your thoughts and feelings.🌺

Ylva

Hi, everyone! It's great to read about everyone's current reads. Really inspiring. I'm in the last stretch of my first War & Peace experience, mostly listening to the translation by Anthony Briggs, but also pulling out the physical copy on occasion to read along. It's interesting to me that this book, one that intimidated me so much only a year ago, actually makes me want to contemplate-pause during reading so everything I just heard/read can sink in. Even now in the last 10-15%, I simply don’t want to rush it to find out what happens next as quickly as possible, rather wanting to savour it instead. I’m positively surprised by how therapeutic reading this book is at times, and I know I won't be able to let it go once I have read the last line. I already want to go back to the sections I marked and dive deeper into Tolstoy's world. I also started reading short stories just this month after having neglected that form of written art for far too long. My favourites so far are Shirley Jackson’s The Witch and Anton Chekhov’s The House With the Mezzanine. I love how creepy The Witch is, how much it plays with the reader, and I find it interesting how much it urges me to wonder about my own interpretation, how it plays with me, how it haunts me. The House With the Mezzanine, on the other hand, I simply found extremely charming in a wistful sense. Its atmosphere and nature descriptions in particular were delightful to read, and I love the longing it leaves me with. I read A.E. Hotchner’s Kissing the Wind earlier this month and found it delightful, as far as a book dealing with the portrait of a chronic disease can be delightful, at any rate. A book I’m actually surprised to be struggling with this month and have been for a while is Anne of Green Gables. I keep trying to find out if it’s simply not my book altogether or not the right time for it. I did read Montgomery’s The Blue Castle a few years ago and took far more pleasure in that one. That aside I’m currently dipping my toes into Shakespeare’s sonnets for the first time in my life, so far having read the first four without any analysis yet, just treading in gently. And I started a serialised read of David Copperfield by its original publication schedule—so much fun already. The Tale of Genji is on its way to me too, and I’m looking forward to diving in there.

Anil Bawa

Hi Ben, besides the book club list of readings, I went on an exploration of George Eliot’s books. having read Middlemarch a couple of times, I recently read Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, Adam Bede, and Daniel Deronda. I could not find Romola at the bookstores I frequent. My admiration for George Eliot has increased multifold. Now, I shall attempt to do the same with Charles Dickens by reading the novels I have not so as yet. Thus, I am presently reading Our Mutual Friend. Also, rereading Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth along with the book club has made me smile ear to ear as Gabriel Oak does in Far from the madding crowd. My favourite Shakespeare plays are King Lear, Hamlet, Much ado about nothing, Midsummer’s Nights Dream, Richard III, Richard II, and Julius Caesar. As you always sign off dearest Ben, happy reading.🌹🌞❤️

Clare Shepherd

I am slow reading War and Peace, which I read with the club last year, Crime and Punishment likewise, and Matilda, about the Anarchy in Medieval England as part of YouTube's Historathon. I have been enthused by Ben's videos introduction to The Tale of Genji, and as I am away on holiday for the next two weeks I have started it. Ben is spotbon that you need to persevere with the first 100 pages, but once the characters are sorted in one's mind and Genji sorts his lovelife out, the book gets more interesting. It's a very long time since I was a teen with a hormonal brother, so reading chapter two took me back many years. I'm excitedly looking forward to ends first lecture on Genji.

Clare Shepherd

I want to read the poetry project. Is there a recommended collection?

Sherron Belk

Rereading Huckleberry Finn for my Southern Book Club after reading Flannery O’Connor. Just finished Book Thief and reread of Tree Grows in Brooklyn, a longtime favorite. Loving Les Miz (including the Waterloo ‘digression’ ) using Ben’s back catalog of lectures. Have started Genji but slow going.

Sherron Belk

Btw loved the Moliere’ plays

Anna Rowe

You mentioned literary rabbit holes in the opening paragraph of the thread, and I'm in the middle of one right now. I just finished Thunderclap by Laura Cumming where she discusses the Golden Age of Dutch art, with a focus on Carel Fabritius. This book opened up a whole world for me. The author takes you through different paintings and describes the details to you. It allowed me to see things in the painting that I would have never noticed on my own and gave me such an enriching experience. After finishing the book, I went down an art rabbit hole and could barely come up for air. The experience was very similar to doing a slow deep read of a wonderful book. There is so much to appreciate if you slow down and pay attention to detail.