Hello and happy holidays everybody. I hope you're keeping well and I hope your reading is going well

during this festive season. Now if you're subscribed to my YouTube channel or if you're a member of the Hardcore Literature Book Club at patreon.com

forward slash hardcore literature then you most likely already saw the video

announcement go up recently where I revealed the book club schedule the syllabus

and reading program for 2024 but I thought it would be a good idea to put the

discussion here on the podcast too.

And I wanted to take a moment to express my gratitude and appreciation for you.

Thank you so much for listening to the show and thank you to members of the Hardcore Literature

Book Club. It's been such a magical year filled with powerful personal growth and positive change as a result of our deep reading program.

We've got such a special group at the book club now with members from all over the world, all backgrounds, from all walks of life,

and yet we are all united by our shared love of great literature.

And this year was incredible because together we befriended great writers like Shakespeare.

Indeed, reading him with the club has been my personal highlight of the year.

We've befriended Tolstoy and we made our way through the Russian epic that is war and peace.

We befriended Dostoevsky and we wrestled with the theological concerns at the heart of the brothers Karamazov.

We befriended Virginia Woolf, J.R.R. Tolkien, Ralph Ellison, Charlotte Bronte.

We befriended Alexander Dumar, indeed reading

the Count of Monte Cristo, was a wild ride. We've befriended Alice Monroe, Thomas Pynchon,

John Milton. Paradise Lost was another highlight for me. We've befriended Charles Dickens,

and many more, and many readers have

been loving exploring the extensive back catalogue of lectures, discussions, bookish

guides and read-throughs. And I've heard from readers who have fallen in love with books

...