Hello, I'd like to welcome you to the first of what I hope will be many reading and book

Q&As. I'll be honest, I've been a little bit overwhelmed, positively overwhelmed, and

happy, really happy at the response that the hardcore literature podcast has been getting.

I've been getting a lot of you guys writing in, saying really nice stuff, talking art books, asking

questions about different directions to go and reading and all that geeky stuff that we love.

And whilst at time of recording, I have responded to everybody so far, I would like to take a

little show and just respond in a more long form sense. So, because some of these questions are

actually really good and they're really interesting. And I'd like everybody to kind of have the

answer to them. I thought we could build a little bit of a show out about it. And if you want to ask me

anything, anything to do with education books, anything like that, the email is ben at benjamin

macawoy.com.

Macavoy spell M-C-E-V-O-Y.

And so let's just get in to some of the questions straight off the bat.

Some of my favourite ones.

Emma has asked a few questions, and they're all really good ones. The first question she said she wants to become more well read and learn how to engage more deeply

with literature where should she start i came across your five-year reading program would this be a

good starting point for me uh the five-year reading program let me just get this up so the thing is

about the five-year reading program um and I'll go through it in a second.

I'm not sure if it's the best starting point for everybody.

It really depends, because it's quite weighted towards the classics.

Now, I've got it up here.

This reading program basically is built out from the premise that everything, every book that you come across is part of a canon and a tradition and a long history before it. If you read Aristotle,

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