hello, 2025!

the 25% deal is extended & a list of my favorite posts from 2024

Hello, fellow close reader — and hello January!

To all the newest subscribers, of whom there are so gosh darn many I can’t believe it: Hi, hello, and a very warm welcome to the club! I am so glad you’re here!

This year was pretty unexpectedly magical for me.

I started January 2024 with a surgery to remove my horribly ineffectual gall bladder and realized, basically within hours of waking, that it had been making me feel awful for an awfully long time.

I suddenly had my glow back. My energy was slowly returning. And as I continued to meet with doctors and therapists, and to bring my own questions and needs to the table, a remarkable thing happened: I started to feel better for the first time in a very long time.

I wanted to create. To play. To try new things. To devote myself to new projects and explore new ideas. And so I did.

As I brought that energy to this space, running two impromptu read-a-longs of Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence, and then adding another guided reading, of Nella Larsen’s remarkable novel Passing in the fall, I felt the energy become increasingly reciprocal.

You, the close readers who had somehow found me online, brought incredible comments and curious insights and open-minded questions every week. You actually read with me! You actually wrote to me about what you were learning! You kept showing up!

You made me want to show up, too. In bigger and better ways, all the time. In the last few months, I’ve been overwhelmed by the growth and support I’ve seen since announcing our book club reads for 2025.

Over the next twelve months, we’ll be embarking on six slow-paced reads together —

• Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813)

• Rebecca Harding Davis’s Life in the Iron Mills (1861)

• Tillie Olsen’s Yonnondio (1974)

• George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1871)

• Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country (1913)

• Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower (1993)

Joining + accessing the book club

Last year, we were able to have open and lively discussion of the novels every week with anyone who wanted to participate—even folks who hadn’t read at the same pace or who had read the novels years before.

In 2025, all the weekly posts for every read-a-long experience will be available to all subscribers—and free for six months, before moving into the paywalled archive.

Be sure to update your preferences in your settings. You can toggle off the “book club” section, if you just want the main newsletter. Make sure you toggle it on if you want to receive everything.

Get 25% off!

Upgrade now to save and get access to everything in 2025, including my archive with over 120 essays to discover!

This deal ends in a few days, rather than today, because it feels bizarre to start a new year and turn off a deal on a Wednesday??? So, you’ve got until this weekend to upgrade, if you want to ensure some savings 🥳

Paid subscribers receive:

• Access to the full archive

• A *bonus post* at the end of each read-a-along that gives you additional insights, links, and ways to learn more about the text you’ve just read

• A monthly round-up from me, where I share what I’ve been reading and watching during that month.

Newsletters for paid subscribers are really where I bring a lot more of the academic energy from my decade of graduate studies and teaching in English—and I have lots of really fun ideas for bringing even more of that energy to you in the coming year. If that’s something you’re into…consider upgrading!

If you’re not ready or able to become a paid subscriber, but want to show your support, you can always make a one-time contribution and ☕️ buy me a coffee (or, more accurately, a soy London Fog, since that’s what I’m drinking these days)

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Also coming in 2025

I’m working on more lessons and how-to content — like writing and annotation guides to help you become a closer reader, become more confident in writing book reviews and reflections, and to help you figure out how and what you want to write in your books.

I’m also taking requests for additional lessons. If you have an idea you’d like to share with me, please leave a comment on this post or send me a DM.

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My faves from the last year

These are all of my personal favorites from 2024 — and I’ve marked my extra favorite essays, the ones I have most enjoyed sharing and writing, with a star 🌟

In January, February, and March —

• I published more interviews to the Closer Reader series

• 🌟 I wrote a rambling, wandering essay about how books have helped me see and understand the changes in myself over the last two decades

• We began reading of The House of Mirth together

• 🌟I wrote about my favorite zombie story, The Last of Us

• I penned a quite saucy rebuttal to the claim that “nobody reads anymore!”

In April and May —

• 🌟I shared a close reading exercise (now free to read for all!)

• 🌟I wrote a lesson on how to closely read paintings, the same way you can read a book

• 🌟For my 35th birthday, I shared 35 books I love

In June, July, August, & September —

• We read The Age of Innocence together

• I shared a long reflection and diary entry about my day spent at the Art Institute of Chicago

• I shared my monthly musings about what I’d been reading, watching, and listening to

• 🌟I announced our Closely Reading Book Club!

In October, November, & December —

• I created a fall syllabus, with loads of readings for a cozy, spooky autumn

• We read Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel Passing together and processed the wild ending together — and then we read “The Yellow Wall-Paper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and wondered how on earth she wrote such a big interior and emotional world in so few pages

• 🌟 I launched the “become a close(r) reader” series — one of the biggest and most successful series I’ve ever run on Closely Reading!

I’m excited for what’s ahead

Let me know what you’re most looking forward to in the new year?