Next Year on Close Readings
Shownotes
We’re delighted to announce five new Close Readings series starting in January 2027. Listen to the hosts talk about what to expect from each one.
Here’s the line-up:
- ‘Conversations in Philosophy II’ with Jonathan Rée and James Wood
- ‘The Everyday’ with David Trotter and Rachel Bowlby
- ‘Poetry and Place’ with Seamus Perry and Mark Ford
- ‘Mediterranean Worlds’ with Josephine Quinn and guests
- ‘Medieval-ish Novels’ with Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley
If you’re not already a subscriber to Close Readings, get 25 per cent off a 12-month subscription with the code ‘AUTUMN25’ at checkout here: https://lrb.me/cr
Get ahead on the reading and buy the books from the London Review Bookshop: https://lrb.me/crbooks
Works covered in each series:
Conversations in Philosophy II
Michel de Montaigne, ‘On Pedantry’; John Locke, ‘Of Identity and Diversity’, from Essay concerning Human Understanding; George Berkeley, First dialogue, from Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher; David Hume, The Natural History of Religion; Denis Diderot, Rameau’s Nephew; Immanuel Kant, ‘A renewed attempt to answer the question, Is the Human Race continually improving’; G.W.F. Hegel, ‘Introduction’ to the Phenomenology of Spirit; William Hazlitt, ‘On the pleasure of painting’; Henri Bergson, Laughter: an essay of the meaning of the comic; Simone Weil, ‘On the Abolition of All Political Parties’; Alain Locke, ‘Pluralism and Intellectual Democracy’; Hannah Arendt, ‘Introduction into politics’; Jacques Derrida, ‘White mythology: metaphor in the text of philosophy’ ; Franz Kafka, ‘Report for an academy’.
The Everyday
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice; Charles Baudelaire, ‘The Painter of Modern Life’; Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Man of the Crowd’; Gustave Flaubert, ‘A Simple Heart’; George and Weedon Grossmith, Diary of a Nobody; Sigmund Freud, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life; Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome; James Joyce, Dubliners; Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own; Alan Sillitoe, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning ; Nell Dunn, Up the Junction (+ Buchi Emecheta, Second-Class Citizen); Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping (+ Lydia Davis, ‘The Seals’ in Can’t and Won’t); Hanif Kureishi, The Buddha of Suburbia; David Szalay, London and the South East.
Poetry and Place
Poems will be decided through the year.
Mediterranean Worlds
This is a historical series about the Mediterranean Sea from its formation to the end of the Roman Empire. It's not focused on particular texts but a recommended reading list will be provided.
Medieval-ish Novels
Sarah Moss, Ghost Wall; Sylvia Townsend Warner, The Corner that Held Them; Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto; Herman Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund; Daphne du Maurier, The House on the Strand; Emma Donoghue, Haven; Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose; Kazuo Ishiguro, The Buried Giant; Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe; Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court; J. L. Carr, A Month in the Country; Benjamin Myers, Cuddy; Robert Glück, Margery Kempe.
Get in touch: [email protected]
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