Everything You Need to Know about the 2026 Book Club

Details, dates, etc.

We’re almost to 2026, and that means the 2026 book club will soon begin. I first announced this book club back in August. You can read that announcement here:

You can read about the reading selections in more detail in that post, but here’s the reading list for your convenience:

• January: Non-Things: Upheaval in the Life World by Byung-Chul Han and ‘The Question Concerning Technology’ by Martin Heidegger (Link to PDF)

• February: The Circle by Dave Eggers and ‘The Narcissistic Personality of Our Time’ by Christopher Lasch

• March: You and Your Profile by Hans-Georg Moeller and Paul J. D’Ambrosio and ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’ by Donna Haraway (Link to PDF)

• April: The Right to Oblivion by Lowry Pressly and ‘The Girl Who Was Plugged In’ by James Tiptree Jr.

• May: The Score by C. Thi Nguyen

• June: The Ethics of Authenticity by Charles Taylor and ‘Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer’ (Link to PDF) and ‘Feminism, the Body, and the Machine’ (Link to PDF) by Wendell Berry.

• July: Pattern Recognition by William Gibson and “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” by Walter Benjamin (Link to PDF).

• August: Technics & Civilization by Lewis Mumford

• September: What is Called Thinking? by Martin Heidegger

• October: Technopoly by Neil Postman and Filterworld by Kyle Chayka

• November: Stop All the Clocks by Noah Kumin, ‘The Medium is the Medium’ by Nicholas Carr, and Atlas of AI by Karen Crawford

• December: The Life of the Mind by Hannah Arendt (part 1).

Today, I’ll go over some details of the book club, how it works, and what you can look forward to. At the end of this post is January’s reading schedule.

Source

How do you join the book club?

The structure of my book club is very simple. I have a list of readings. I announce a reading schedule each month, and every Monday I post about the reading. We discuss it in the comments. Then, at the end of the month, there’s a Zoom call for paid subscribers. (More details about those calls below.)

You can participate as much or as little as you like. Some people don’t read the books but want to read my posts; some people read the books but never comment; some people dip in and out as they’re able; some people read every chapter and always comment. Your level of participation is up to you.

I don’t have to pay?

You only have to pay to join the Zoom calls. I’m doing some things this year to make those Zoom calls more valuable, but they are a supplement to the book club itself. I also send out occasional paywalled articles, but the Monday posts about the readings are free.

I’ve been told this is a stupid way to run things, because people should pay for something that does, admittedly, take a lot of my time. But what I’ve found so far is that enough people choose to subscribe to the newsletter, even if they don’t want to join the calls, that I don’t have to paywall much content, and I love that. I love that we’re making this freely accessible.

If you want to support that, you can become a paid subscriber. It’s $8/month, but you get a discount if you pay for an annual subscription. Having paid subscribers on Substack also helps me make YouTube videos that aren’t necessarily algorithm-friendly, or at the very least aren’t devoted just to getting clicks.

That’s a lot of reading, isn’t it?

Yes, it is.

I know most people can’t keep up — we all have jobs, family, responsibilities, and other interests. I’ll be doing all of the reading, of course, but I know that most people won’t be able to read everything.

So, this year I’m making a small change. The reading schedule will always be sent in advance. But that reading will be divided into ‘Core’ and ‘Optional’ categories. I’ll primarily focus on the Core readings in my posts, but I’ll bring in the Optional readings sometimes. I’m making this division to help you make your reading choices, but the choice is, of course, always up to you.

What about the calls?

The Zoom calls will happen on the final Sunday of every month. This makes them predictable and, I hope, easy to plan for. I’m proposing that we meet at 3 PM Eastern, which is 2 PM Texas time and 8 PM in London, hopefully making it a bit easier for more people to join.

Previously, these have been 90-minute discussions. They’ve been very open-ended, and that’s meant that they tend to be of varying levels of liveliness and quality. In 2026, I’m trying something new. For the first 30 minutes, I’ll present on the materials. Then the back half of the calls will be for discussion, based on whatever interests participants. If you’re planning to attend a call that month, you can DM me with a question in advance so I can try to make sure we address it.

All of the readings for that month, both Core and Optional, are fair game for discussion. I may also bring in guests for some of the calls.

Recordings of the calls will be made available to paid subscribers who are unable to attend.

What’s the reading schedule for January?

For January, the Core reading is Byung-Chul Han’s Non-Things, and the optional reading is Heidegger’s ‘The Question Concerning Technology.’

• January 5: The following parts of Non-Things: Preface, From Things to Non-Things, From Possessing to Experiencing

• January 12: The following parts of Non-Things: Smartphone, Selfies, Artificial Intelligence

  • Optional: Heidegger’s ‘The Question Concerning Technology’

• January 19: The following parts of Non-Things: Views of Things

• January 25: Members-Only Zoom Call, 3PM Eastern

• January 26: The following parts of Non-Things: Stillness, Excursus on the Jukebox