Hello and welcome back to Hardcore Literature. How are you doing today? I hope you're doing well and I hope your reading is going well.

And today, as it is my birthday, I would like to do a little bit of a celebration show and I would like to reflect on some of the lessons that

I've learnt from the books I have most enjoyed in recent years, mainly the book club reads

over the past year and this coming year. I love using milestones as an excuse to reflect. I'm a very reflective person. I like to mull over

where I've come from and where I'm going. And so today. Let's have a little bit of a chat.

We will probably try to keep this show on the shorter end of the spectrum, which is funny.

Whenever I put out content that is 20 or 30 minutes, I get people saying, oh, it's a short

show. People have gotten used to the long form with our lectures and podcasts, and the longest

solitary lecture I've put out, I think clocks in at just under

three hours. But I got up a little bit early because it wouldn't be a great birthday without

talking to you a little bit. So I got up early. I made a nice cup of coffee. I'm having a little

bit of a chill today. I've ordered some very nice steak and we'll

be cooking that up in the evening. It was talk of going out and I thought, you know what? I don't

really like going out. Sometimes when people want me to go out, like to a restaurant or whatever,

I feel that I go out of a sense of obligation. Very often I just get a little bit tired

sitting in one spot. So what I really wanted to do was get some lovely Japanese steak, cook it up myself,

get some lovely rice, cook it up myself, get some good quality tuna to go with it as well.

And there are some presents waiting for me,

and I know that they're books, their books. I've got a great books of the Western World set.

Huge, 54 volume set. And this is a set that I have wanted for a very long time, but didn't justify the expense

because, indeed, I actually have all of the books in the set in disparate volumes, but I thought

that's a really nice set. I've got a lovely, complete collection of Dickens already on my shelf. I've got a nice collection of the

...