The Lit Path

🔊 NEW EPISODE OUT NOW! @ioanmarcjones introduces @jackaldane to the novel that allowed him to read for pure pleasure, what having a literary father did for his appreciation of reading, and more. YouTube 🔗 youtu.be/Y-ohdjjZors?si… Substack: thelitpath.substack.com

Beyond Kerouac, Salinger and Hemingway, who are some of the less obvious gateway novelists young men should read to experience the power of fiction? New episode with @ioanmarcjones and @jackaldane out now. 🔗youtu.be/Y-ohdjjZors?si… 🔗 thelitpath.substack.com/p/what-i-wish-…

A confessional second episode of the series with @ioanmarcjones, for whom reading was once intellectual pugilism, but is now about unforgettably personal moments with literature. @jackaldane YouTube🔗youtu.be/Y-ohdjjZors?si… Substack: thelitpath.substack.com

The endlessly filmable @StephenKing early novel The Long Walk about a group of boys on a walking competition in dystopian America ( is there any other kind now?) on Amazon. A bit Stand By Me meets Hunger Games. Brutal, simple but good.

When I was in London recording the audiobook for THE CASTLE, I did some videos for Penguin too - including this one, about what advice I have for nonfiction writers.

“To get up in the morning, in the fullness of youth, and open a book--now that’s what I call vicious!” Friedrich Nietzsche , Ecce Homo

🔊 NEW EPISODE OUT NOW! @ioanmarcjones introduces @jackaldane to the novel that allowed him to read for pure pleasure, what having a literary father did for his appreciation of reading, and more. YouTube 🔗 youtu.be/Y-ohdjjZors?si… Substack: thelitpath.substack.com

Fathers and sons - a tale as old as time, and an especially revealing thread of this next conversation on @thelitpathpod with the writer @ioanmarcjones. Catch it when it drops this Friday on YouTube and The Lit Path's Substack. Subscribe in replies.

.@ioanmarcjones and @jackaldane discuss men, reading and fiction on Ep #2 of The Lit Path, out later this week.

🚨 NEW EPISODE OUT SOON! Following Ep.1 with the brilliant @johnyorke123 , @jackaldane sits down with the writer @ioanmarcjones to discuss Anne Carson's 1998 verse novel 📚Autobiography of Red📚, a truly inventive work based on a fragmentary poem by the ancient Greek poet Stesichorus. They also discuss: 👉 How screens ban books from our minds 👉 Growing up with parents of the literary working class 👉 Why male readers who reject novels are in need of a paradigm shift Read Ioan's latest article on devouring the classics below, and subscribe to the Substack to catch up on the first episode.

🔗 theguardian.com/books/2026/jun…

My short piece for @unherd on Andy Burnham’s English degree, with reference to Harold Macmillan, Benjamin Disraeli, Boris Johnson, Matthew Arnold, F. R. Leavis, and m o r e . . .

At last, a prime minister with an English degree! I think that is genuine cause for optimism… thetimes.com/article/c6172e…

I have always said: men who don’t read aren’t attractive. theguardian.com/books/2026/jun…

The Lit Path's first guest @johnyorke123 reads from Gulliver's Travels, the novel that changed how and why he reads. Listen for news of forthcoming episodes with @jackaldane later this summer, and discover why men owe it to themselves to read more fiction. Link below.