The Burning Archive Program for 2025
Slow Reads, World History Deep Dives, Modernism's Greatest Year, and Live Calls with Angels of History
Welcome to the New Year at the Burning Archive. I hope you have had some days to reflect and some time to read, or even to create after your own fashion. Here is what you can expect from me this year.
The Burning Archive Program for 2025
I spent Boxing Day rearranging my study, and here you can see the view from my writing desk onto my garden where the Kangaroo Paws are reaching for the Australian summer sky.
Somehow it expressed how I felt about my 2025 program.
I have also spent some months reconfiguring what I offer you here into three core pillars of content and three levels of membership (outlined here).
Over the next few weeks I will be introducing you to the Burning Archive Program for 2025: Slow Reads, World History Tours, Deep Dives and Angels of History.
Slow Reads, World History Tours, Deep Dives, Modernism's Greatest Year and Angels of History
In this post I am announcing:
the reading schedule for my new Slow Reads program that starts on 3 February
the calendar for my World History Tour of five major ‘civilization-states’ of the world today
my commemoration of Literary Modernism’s greatest year, 1925, and
the program for my Angels of History membership program.
Slow Reads Program
My new Slow Reads program kicks off on 3 February with Olga Tokarczuk, The Books of Jacob.
What is a ‘slow reads’ program? They adapt the model of online book clubs, and look at classics, read slowly and with some guidance through chat and posts. Program members share their experience of the book. There is no test. There is no deadening literary criticism. It is way of reading long, rewarding books with the company of appreciative fellow readers.
Examples include Simon Haisell, who does War and Peace and Wolf Hall, and Samantha Rose Hill, with whom I read Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain.
My ‘Slow Reads’ program will be a bit different, reflecting my interests in history, cultural perspectives from around the world, and modern literature.
I have chosen:
one contemporary classic, Olga Tokarczuk, The Books of Jacob, and
one epic from the non-Western canon, the Mahabharatha.
On the Slow Reads program we will explore these two long books together over 2025, and in the process learn a lot about history, the “Other Europe”, India, and alternative traditions to the Western canon to make sense of this puzzling world.
Reading Schedule for The Books of Jacob
We will read the 32 chapters of this thousand-page historical fiction, The Books of Jacob, over 32 weeks. That is about 30 pages per week.
We will take it slow and explore the real history of the many characters who appear in the novel, including Jacob Frank (1726-1791, see brief biography here).
I will give you resources and pointers to the historical context so you can appreciate Tokarczuk’s masterpiece, which deals with historical characters and themes in 17th and 18th century Poland that many in the ‘West’ are unfamiliar with.
I will send you a weekly post on Monday morning that briefly summarises the story of the chapter for the week.
Paid subscribers will also receive notes on characters and historical context, and an invitation to comment and chat on a key thematic question prompted by the reading.
Here is an affiliate link to the book at Amazon.
Here is the weekly schedule.
January (Getting Ready for the Slow Read)
6 January - My mini audiobook reading of Walter Benjamin, 'Concept of History' and its surprising link to Jewish mysticism in The Books of Jacob
13 January - Tips on how to do the 'slow read' of The Books of Jacob
20 January - An overview of the characters of The Books of Jacob
27 January - Historical context of the 'Other Europe' in The Books of Jacob
February (Prologue, I. Book of Fog)
3 February - Books of Jacob Prologue
10 February - I. Book of Fog, Chapter 1
17 February - I. Book of Fog, Chapter 2
24 February - I. Book of Fog, Chapter 3
March (I. Book of Fog, II Book of Sand)
3 March - I. Book of Fog, Chapter 4
10 March - II. Book of Sand, Chapter 5
17 March - II. Book of Sand, Chapter 6
24 March - II. Book of Sand, Chapter 7
31 March - II. Book of Sand, Chapter 8
April (II. Book of Sand)
7 April - I. Book of Sand, Chapter 9
14 April - II. Book of Sand, Chapter 10
21 April - II. Book of Sand, Chapter 11
28 April - II. Book of Sand, Chapter 12
May (III. Book of the Road)
5 May - III. Book of the Road, Chapter 13
12 May - III. Book of the Road, Chapter 14
19 May - III. Book of the Road, Chapter 15
26 May - III. Book of the Road, Chapter 16
June (III. Book of the Road, IV. Book of the Comet)
2 June - III. Book of the Road, Chapter 17
9 June - IV. Book of the Road, Chapter 18
16 June - IV. Book of the Comet, Chapter 19
23 June - IV. Book of the Comet, Chapter 20
30 June - IV. Book of the Comet, Chapter 21
July (IV. Book of the Comet, V. Book of Metal and Sulfur)
7 July - IV. Book of the Comet, Chapter 22
14 July - IV. Book of the Comet, Chapter 23
21 July - V. Book of Metal and Sulfur, Chapter 24
28 July - V. Book of Metal and Sulfur, Chapter 25
August (VI. Book of the Distant Country)
4 August - VI. Book of the Distant Country, Chapter 26
11 August - VI. Book of the Distant Country, Chapter 27
18 August - VI. Book of the Distant Country, Chapter 28
25 August - VI. Book of the Distant Country, Chapter 29
September (VI. Book of the Distant Country, VII Book of Names, Final Thoughts)
1 September - VI. Book of the Distant Country, Chapter 30
8 September - VII. Book of Names, Chapter 31
15 September - A note on sources
22 September - Looking back on the slow read
29 September - Break
Reading Schedule for the Mahabharata
The great Indian epic the Mahabharata is even longer than The Books of Jacob. This great Sanskrit epic poem contains more than 90,000 shlokas or verses and is divided into either 100 or 18 parvas or books.
My slow read of the Mahabharata will be a first dive into this great book over 12 weeks from October to December.
The full text has been rendered in various translations, prose renditions and abridgements. I will introduce you to the epic poem with the help of:
The Illustrated Mahabharata: a Definitive Guide to India’s Greatest Epic
Peter Brook’s theatrical adaptation of the Mahabharata (via YouTube)
The Mahabharata was composed as early as the 9th century BCE, though scholars debate various dates for its transcription. It is thought to have been composed orally in the 8th and 9th centuries BCE. Hundreds of years before Homer. It likely reached its final, vast textual form in the 4th century CE. The epic poem is a form of history and narrates the events of Kurukshetra War that is estimated by historians and archaeologists to have really occurred around 1,400 BCE.
This great world-destroying war prompted deep reflections on statecraft, morality, history, and the contrary human impulses for love and war, creation and destruction, duty and freedom. The Bhagavad Gita, one of the essential sacred texts of Hindu thought, is one brief section of the Mahabharata. It is the Bhagavad Gita that the film Oppenheimer cites, and misconstrues, when one man who made the atomic bomb says:
“Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
Bhagavad Gita, Mahabharata
As we live, again in 2025, under the shadow of a great world-destroying war, a Slow Read introduction to the Mahabharata will help you reflect on many of the themes I will discuss in my World History Deep Dives.
World History Deep Dives
Throughout 2025 I will be guiding you on some fantastic journeys through world history to help you gain new perspectives on the major cultures or world powers or ‘civilization-states’ of today’s world.
Every Saturday I will be posting a 1,000-to-1,500-word post that offers a fresh perspective on those major cultures, reimagined with world history. Each post will give you one specific book or source recommendation so you can explore the themes and issues that interest you most.
On the following Wednesday, I will do a deep dive into the issue in a longer 2,000-to-3,000-word post for paid subscribers.
I will explore five major cultures or great states of the contemporary world through the best histories being written today. I will spend eight weeks on each power, and so take a deep dive into their role in the modern world.
The schedule for these deep dives or world history world tour is:
U.S.A - 25 January to 19 March
China - 22 March to 14 May
India - 17 May to 9 July
Europe - 12 July to 3 September
Russia - 18 October to 10 December
This will be a fantastic journey through power, culture and the reimagination of our pluralistic world. But you may ask what is happening between 3 September and 18 October?
Commemoration of Literary Modernism’s greatest year, 1925
Some years ago a British newspaper voted 1925 as ‘Literary Modernism’s greatest year. Among the works published in that year were Franz Kafka, The Trial, Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men, Mikhail Bulgakov, The White Guard and F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby.
Throughout the year I will be revisiting the landmark creative works of 1920s modernism, in celebration of Literary Modernism’s greatest year, 1925. But of course, I will be less Eurocentric that the British literary press. I will pepper my reflections on the five great powers of the world with some of the great works of modernism from these cultures.
Between 3 September and 18 October, I will look at great literary modernist texts born in 1925 (or close to) from USA, China, India, Europe, and Russia.
And, of course, I will also cover the 2025 Nobel Prize for Literature, announced in early October (see my Nobel Archive for profiles of all 121 winners of the prize since 1901)
Program for Angels of History members
My final announcement is the schedule of my new program of live calls for my “founding members” or Angels of History members.
I am scheduling 90-minute live call discussions in the last week of the month, commencing in February, with the last call in November.
I will send Zoom links to Angels of History in February before the first call.
They will be an opportunity for conversation and reflection on the Slow Reads, the Deep Dives, our favourite modernist literature or Nobel Prize books, and our shared search for ways to live in tune with a changing world.
Given our schedules and time zones, I would like to hear from you: when is the best day of the week and time to hold these live calls?
I can schedule alternating times to suit different time zones. Let me know your preferences and in early February I will schedule dates and times for the calls for the year.
If you would like to participate in the full 2025 Burning Archive program, now is a great time to upgrade your subscription to paid or an Angel of History.
This is a breath-taking amount for the year -- so happy to be here
A great schedule, which I would have liked to copy into my tablet's notebook, but Substack doesn't allow it, so I'm going have to hand copy it.