Book Club Discussion for January 2026
Added 2026-01-24 22:10:38 +0000 UTCDear Book Club Readers ---
You've had such a phenomenal start to your reading year and it would be so wonderful to hear about the books you've been enjoying this month.
Your comments in the book club continue to reveal your deep love of great literature, and we would love to hear about how your reading is treating you right now.
So, tell us what your January has been 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
Things that are giving you joy
Reading goals and resolutions
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.
So thank you so much for being a part of the family, and I hope your month continues to be filled with exciting bookish adventures.
Happy reading, everybody!
Comments
Does anyone know if there are lectures for Homer’s Odyssey? I can only find The Iliad lectures.
Kim D
2026-02-07 21:35:54 +0000 UTCWell, I am slow. Finally finished Bleak House. My God, that might have been the greatest novel I have ever read. It took forever because the first half was a bit of a slog for me. I used it to read myself to sleep every night for two months. Then slowly Dickens got his hooks in me and about the time Jo took his last breath I couldn't put it down. The prose though... It got to where I just wanted to see how he would teach every author for the next two hundred years how to end a chapter. The drama of the last third of this work is like nothing else I've read from this period of fiction. It's easy to see why Dicken's was so popular in his own time. I thought David Copperfield was my favorite, but I have to say Bleak House is the one! Anyway, as usual, I'm so grateful to Benjamin and the HCLBC for the encouragement to tackle these masterpieces. They're not summer beach reads but they will change your life if you let them.
Tom Walker
2026-02-07 06:58:32 +0000 UTCCongratulations on having your first child this year! I just wanted to reassure you that you won't lose your passion for literature :) My daughter is now almost three years old and since having her I have read so much. My kindle was my best friend during contact naps. Unfortunately, "mommy brain" is real and I did spend some time slumming in genre reading (contemporary romances were my weakness). However, I recently joined this patreon group because I wanted to read higher brow literature, but I knew as the primary care taker I would only be able to tackle these works with the help of Ben. So far I haven't regretted it. I do it on my timeline, which is after my daughter goes to bed and the house is quiet.
Nola
2026-02-06 19:20:54 +0000 UTCI am so glad I've found and joined this community (through encountering a YouTube video on Middlemarch late last year). I am (fingers crossed) having my first baby at the end of June and I'm slightly frightened of the loss of brain function that many say that journey entails .. so have decided to take my reading more seriously "while I still can". (If there are any parents out there who want to reassure me that I won't lose my passion for literature / the brain cells to understand it, please do!!! There's quite some fear in my heart.) Before contemplating joining HLBC, I was contemplating following the "Game of Tomes" big-book reading schedule for this year, which is Moby Dick for Jan-Apr, the Anne of Green Gables series for May-Aug and the Idiot by Dostoyevsky for Sep-Dec. I then purchased Moby Dick after a bit of doubt, but didn't find the discussion posts on their platform (Fable) very satisfying or enriching. So lo and behold, back into my life comes this YouTube channel and this Patreon .. I went for a membership and am already so grateful. Reading Moby Dick and watching the 'back catalogue' lectures about it on here have inspired me so much already. I tend to find it difficult to actually spend my time creatively instead of just thinking I'd like to do so and this endeavour has really been giving me life. Let's hope I manage to keep going! I'm loving reading all of your reading updates below. :)
Roos Versteegh
2026-02-06 14:03:08 +0000 UTCJust finishing part V of Septology by Jon Fosse. A little repetitive — deliberately so in its style — but mesmerizing when you give it a focused read. Between this and Knaussgard am finding myself intrigued by Norwegian writing.
Dani
2026-02-03 01:32:34 +0000 UTCSorry stopped prematurely! Here is my " impressive" reading achievement: 1) Anna Karenina 2) War & Peace 3) Middlemarch 4) Madam Bovary 5) Jane Eyre 6) Hamlet 7) King Lear 8) Much ado about Nothing 8) Julius Caesar. I got into the habit of mindlessly watching YouTube and wasted valuable time given that I am presently 74. So friends be warned--it is easy to fool oneself by saying " I"ll get back in the groove soon"--it simply does not happen.And what makes my position inexcusable is that I have had ample time to read. The solution I have come up with? TV can be viewed for two hours on a Saturday and that is it.I hope I have the strength to see this through. After all, War and Peace deserves a second reading so I have my work cut out for me. Anyway just something I wanted to share with all you good folk. We don't have to be perfect but my commitment thus far borders on the pathetic!!!
David Stephens
2026-02-03 01:15:40 +0000 UTCSince the reading list for 2026 includes Confessions of Augustine, let me make ( with an unhappy amalgam of shame and embarrassment) that since joining the HCLBC in late 2022or early 2023 the following confession: I have only read the following :
David Stephens
2026-02-03 00:51:02 +0000 UTCI decided to start with a "comfort read" and am reading The Secret History by Donna Tartt.
David Stephens
2026-02-03 00:33:55 +0000 UTCI’ve fallen slightly behind on Lonesome Dove while working through the Oresteia, which was partly due to some other diversions: Sense and Sensibility I am only halfway through, and find myself cheering for and wanting to defend Edward Ferrars, who seems to be one of the more unpopular of Austen’s men. In Austen, I think the central characters to the romances are all largely good people, so favouring one character over another just comes down to personal preference. And perhaps my partiality to Edward is simply because I can see myself in him: “Shyness is only the effect of a sense of inferiority in some way or other. If I could persuade myself that my manners were perfectly easy and graceful, I should not be shy”. It helps that I also find Elinor to be among the most attractive of Austen’s women, so I’ll be right there with Edward as he falls for her. The Fire Next Time James Baldwin’s “Go Tell it on the Mountain” is one of my favourite novels of all time, and reading “Down at the Cross” was a great experience which illuminated the parts of the novel that are autobiographical. The Frogs I like absurd humour and this play has it in abundance, and I’d recommend it to anyone reading the Greek tragedies. While a decision made by Aristophanes’s shambolic Dionysus surely cannot be any great endorsement, given the way Aeschylus’s and Euripides’s works were described, I would’ve made the opposite decision on who to resurrect from the underworld. We’ll see if I still feel that same way when we get to Euripides. While holidaying in a seaside town to escape 46C heat I also bought a copy of Guy de Maupassant’s short stories at a secondhand bookstore. I found a quote in the introduction, from a preface by Maupassant himself, which summarised a concept I had been thinking about related to academic work, and might also apply to all of us reading deeply here: “Talent is lengthy patience. It is a question of looking at anything you want to express long enough and closely enough to discover in it something that nobody has seen before. The most insignificant thing contains something of the unknown. Let us find it.”
Alex
2026-02-02 11:45:03 +0000 UTCI recently spend 6 weeks in South Africa, around Cape Town. We of course visited Robben Island and Langa township. It's shocking how recently Apartheid ended, 1991. International disapprobation was a key factor in its demise. My recent reading has mainly been Nelson Mandela's autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom. It is very relevant to what is happening in the United States and I recommend it to anyone who is moved to resist the current administration.
Nancy Fitzpatrick
2026-02-01 18:26:17 +0000 UTCAfter finishing Lonesome Dove and the Greek Plays, I thought I'd grab something light and fast. I read Louis Sachar's The Magician of Tiger Castle. Many years ago, I was a teacher, and his book Holes was (in my mind) one of the very best pieces of children's literature. Magician was considered Sachar's first novel for adults. The irony for me is that it rarely hit on adult themes, and like Lonesome Dove, was written in such an "un-blue" way that I'm sure many older children could have read the book without much objection. In fact, I would say Lonesome Dove's talks of carrots and pokes were far more direct than Sachar's. The story is interesting because it's about a magician we know right from chapter 1, who has had a very long life—he is hundreds of years old. It then focuses on a time in the castle when the princess fell in love with a young scribe just as she was supposed to marry a terrible prince. There's a little bit of action with a daring escape, and we ultimately learn why the magician will live forever. I will say, it doesn't quite thrill me as Holes once did. And it's unlikely to meet the criteria for ever placing it in the HLC. But sometimes a fast, easy read is a nice counterbalance to the slower, deliberate pace we use for HLC books. Also, we are getting a new dog next month and I've already decided he will be named Gus. :)
Lynn Chandler
2026-02-01 15:00:30 +0000 UTC
