The Readist — literary essays, reading guides, and cross-cultural criticism
The Readist is a personal, evolving project by a working scholar—essays, reading guides, and field notes for people who want to read more deeply, not just more.
Start here
- Start reading How to Read Theory: 8 Strategies for Understanding Complex Texts.
- Explore the Cross-Cultural Reading Lab, the project's guiding idea.
- Want to talk it through? Book a free Office Hours session.
Reading Guides
Full companion guides to essential texts—context, theory, and discussion prompts.
Frankenstein
The Readist's guide to Shelley's gothic masterpiece, presented here alongside Jacque Lacan's "mirror stage" for a dynamic reading of the monster as misrecognition.
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Wacousta
The Readist's guide to Richardson's foundational Canadian Gothic, presented here alongside Northrop Frye's "garrison mentality" for a dynamic reading of the fort as siege psychology.
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Brave New World
Your companion through Huxley's unsettling vision of a world engineered for comfort at the cost of freedom. Inside: thematic explorations, discussion prompts, and a theoretical framework featuring Michel Foucault.
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Personal and reflective writing on reading, memory, and meaning.
The Invisible Discipline: Why Literature Didn't Make the List
David Orr's 'Earth in Mind' makes a brilliant case for interdisciplinary education while committing the very sin it diagnoses.
Cross-Cultural Reading Lab: Travel as Literary Criticism
Using travel to challenge Western literary assumptions. The Cross-Cultural Reading Lab practices secular criticism through displaced, embodied reading in foreign spaces.
What We Call a String: On Love, Dependency, and the Self
The point isn’t whether Jane Eyre ends happily. It’s whether we know what binds us in the first place.
Field Notes
Dispatches written from the place — reading while traveling.
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Essays, reading notes, and field dispatches—straight to your inbox, no algorithm involved.