Reading Jane Austen's "Persuasion" Together: A Schedule!
Making good on my promise to read the winner of 2026 Literary March Madness
Tomorrow, From My Bookshelf turns two years old. I’m working on a post about my hopes and plans for Year Three.
For today, however, I have something else for you, short but sweet.
I’m ready to announce the schedule for our upcoming read-along of Jane Austen’s Persuasion.
Earlier this spring, when I ran my Literary March Madness competition of classic novels—from which Persuasion emerged victorious—I promised that I would write about whichever book won. But I have something even more exciting planned for you now.
My colleague Christina Bieber Lake, who taught literature at Wheaton College for 25 years and now devotes her considerable energies toward writing Art & Soul here on Substack, approached me to see if I might like to team up on a read-along of Persuasion. And I jumped at the chance. Combining her literary expertise with my background as a political theorist will be fun for us and, I trust, more illuminating for you than I would have been solo. So we’re going to tackle the novel together, beginning mid-June and running through July.
Christina and I plan to use the inexpensive paperback edition from Penguin Classics, but of course there are many editions out there, and if you would like to read along—as we hope you will!—any of them will do.
Here is the schedule we will follow:
Monday, June 15: We’ll begin reading the novel and will offer a short introductory post to get things started.
Wednesday, June 24: One of us will share some commentary on Volume 1, chapters 1-7, roughly the first quarter of the novel.
Wednesday, July 1: At this point we will have completed Volume 1, and to mark the halfway point, Christina and I will hold a Substack Live conversation about it from 2-3pm Eastern Daylight Time.
Friday, July 17: As we did with the first volume, one of us will again share some commentary on Volume 2, chapters 1-9.
Friday, July 31: In order to create an opportunity for interaction and discussion with all of you, Christina and I will hold a live conversation using Google Meet; time TBA.
We are looking forward to partnering on this, and we hope that it will be a chance to engage with many of you over one of the greatest novels by one of the greatest novelists.
So mark your calendars now—and stay tuned for more information tomorrow on the next great year at From My Bookshelf!
