Book Club Housekeeping & Your Questions for Hardcore Literature (Patreon)

Dear Book Club Readers ---

I hope your reading is treating you well!

Here's a little bit of Book Club housekeeping/admin for the month.

1) A very warm HLBC welcome to new patrons

Welcome aboard, and thank you for reading with us!

Do let us know which book(s) you're enjoying at the moment and what life is looking like for you.

2) Coffee with Hardcore Literature

Do you have any questions about reading the Great Books? Or, indeed, anything else?

If so, please do let me know either here or PM me and I would love to sit down with a coffee and record my answers.

Here are the last three Q&A episodes:

• Episode XIII (April) 
• Episode XII (March)
• Episode XI (Feb)

3) Bookish Content

Many readers expressed interest in my recent foray into the natural world, so we had a book vlog about reading in the English countryside. We also had a video on creating your own personal canon, which included a short story reading assignment from Kurt Vonnegut:

• How to Create Your Personal Canon (Deep-Reading Assignment) 
• Book Vlog - Reading Great Literature in the English Countryside 

We reached the sublime ending of Moby Dick, but the conversation around Melville continues. We're also deep into the heart of Blood Meridian, which makes for a logical follow-on from 'The Whale'.

Over the next few days, we will have a video called 'How to Read Samuel Richardson's Clarissa', which will inaugurate one of our most rewarding reading experiences yet. We will also have a guide to reading Shakespeare's Comedies (after Antony & Cleopatra), in which we'll get ourselves in the summer mood and talk about comedy as festive celebration. 

Our latest instalment of George Eliot's Middlemarch is out, and we have more Plato and Modernism to look forward to. We will also have videos on the art of slow-reading, the life-saving power of Shakespeare, a discussion on how different writers explore the nature of God, and much more - all the while, one of the most fun books you'll ever read looms on the horizon (Joyce's Ulysses).

4) Thank you for your great comments

Thank you for continuing to make this such a great community to lovingly discuss great literature. We have a real literary oasis here filled with the kindest, most intelligent, and passionate readers. I'm so grateful for you all.

The discussion threads under each video really take our enjoyment of these books to the next level. I'm currently making my way through them with great joy. 

And that's all for now, folks!

Happy reading, and let us know if you have any questions for our Q&A show!