Hard Reading and Hip Hop After Humanity: A Review of Michael Ward’s Guide to C.S. Lewis’ Abolition of Man

Posted on February 13, 2026 by Brenton Dickieson

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it here, but it took me a long time to “get” what C.S. Lewis was doing in The Abolition of Man. It’s the kind of book that gets name-dropped by columnists, philosophers, theologians, and–knowing that there is a joke in here somewhere–at least one Catholic Pope, Chief Rabbi, and Archbishop of Canterbury. I mean, it’s an important essay (really a set of three lectures). And we all want to know if Star Trek’s Spock is one of Lewis’ “Men Without Chests.”

In this little book, Lewis talks about the “tao”–an essential moral path built into the human universe–and is prophetic on concepts like technocracy. Even if you don’t know what technocracy is, you are experiencing it–maybe even in reading this post. So I try to bring it into my thinking, like the vinyl that is on right now in my living room: Hip Hop artist Shad’s TAO (referring both to “tao” as “the way,” and “The Abolition Of”). In this concept album, Shad reflects on the wasting away of the human heart in our our alogorythmic police state.

Shad TAO album cover

I’m battled-tested but was never that aggressive
Even as an adolescent I would rather have a message
But, man alive the whole game’s been sanitized
Damn, what we done to the young, is like infanticide
Infantilized, the dumbed-down get amplified
Via algorithms that’s anything but randomized
I can’t abide while these lies keep confusing things
They use euphemisms to lose the meaning of human beings
We know we’re old souls, they call us new machines
What they call enhanced reality’s a lucid dream
Literally remove the screen and you’ll see through the schemes
The stupid memes we consume keep us too serene
I love to laugh too but, it’s too much
What we lose in our addiction to these cool new drugs
We relax then detach then we straight lose touch
With everything, and that’s when at last we lose us (from “TAO Part 1”)

Yeah, that’s it for me, the age of human history that Lewis is warning us about. In this track, TAO Part 2, Shad rhymes his observations between three blazing quotes from The Abolition of Man.

He closes the song with Lewis’ mic drop moment from The Abolition of Man:

It is not that they are bad men
They are not men at all
Stepping outside the Tao, they have stepped into the void
Nor are their subjects necessarily unhappy men
They are not men at all
They are artifacts
Man’s final conquest has proved to be, the abolition of man (from “TAO Part 2”)

Well, I know that Hip Hop isn’t everyone’s philosophical love language, and Lewis requires a bit of translation for our age (like Shad and the folks hinted at above all do). But with these few words, I think you can see part of the journey that I have taken in appreciating this classic moment of cultural criticism.

The Abolition of Man did not come easilty for me. It didn’t come at all, actually, until I listened to the audiobook–which makes sense because it was a lecture series, originally. After reading and rereading, I invited the mirky pattern I took from the text to my desk and into my classroom. That’s when Lewis’ warning about the present future came clear to me.

I am not alone in thinking that The Abolition of Man is one of the 20th century’s great cultural essays. I think it stands up with Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media (1964, “the medium is the message” and “global village”), E.P. Snow’s “Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution,” Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, Toni Morrison’s Playing in the Dark (1992), Hannah Arendt on “the banality of evil” (1963), Albert Camus’ “The Myth of Sisyphus” (1942) and–well, my list is no doubt different than yours. If you are a fan of Ayn Rand, you probably don’t have The Abolition of Man on your list (see this essay), but who knows? And there is always more to add: This National Review list that has Abolition of Man as #7, reminded me of some other essential culture shapers I forget to remember.

While I don’t think I “get” The Abolition of Man fully, I have let it work on me and I continue to work on it. In fact, there is an aspect of Lewis’ warning that I think people are missing; I want to draw that out sometime when I’m in a philosophical state of mind.

Meanwhile, though, I’ll share my review of Michael Ward‘s After Humanity: A Guide to C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man. Ward’s “guide” is intricately designed to provide context clues for Lewis’ most important and most difficult work of cultural criticism, The Abolition of Man. This review was originally published in an academic journal–Sechnsucht–and I have made some slight adaptations.

Michael Ward, After Humanity: A Guide to C. S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man (Park Ridge, Illinois: Word on Fire Academic, 2021). 253 pages. $24.95. ISBN 9781943243778.

Though it is an intellectually resonant book, C. S. Lewis’ The Abolition of Man remains puzzling for those who are not trained philosophers. The three lectures contain striking and immediate images and ideas. Nevertheless, there is an elusive quality for later readers—and, apparently, for many of Lewis’s original audience. The linked lectures are so brief that they require close reading to follow the tight logical progression. It is easier to feel Lewis’s warning about the abolition of humanity in our bones and even to discern some of the reasons for this moral apocalypse than it is to know precisely what Lewis is arguing concerning the “Tao.” Thus, The Abolition of Man remains a challenge even for committed readers. It is also a notoriously easy book to appropriate for ideological reasons–and I’m not certain that choice is always an innocent one.

That is why there is a need for Michael Ward’s After Humanity: A Guide to C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man. Ward goes beyond annotation and commentary, exceeding expectations with a remarkably rich and somewhat unusual guide.

The greatest strengths of Ward’s Guide correspond to the two most significant challenges in understanding Lewis’s argument. First, Abolition emerges within a very particular social context and at a particular point in C.S. Lewis’s life. Second, literary, philosophical, and religious references fill The Abolition of Man, giving the book a deceptively complex and implicated subterranean intellectual ecosystem. Ward personalizes the material by bringing each of these contextual and literary complexities together in a series of brief but informative background essays, a clear overview of the argument, helpful discussion questions, comprehensive text glosses with an extensive bibliography, a philosophically-informed literary commentary, and a precise evaluation of Abolition’s impact.

After Humanity surprising me in its beautiful design, including thirty-six full-colour plates, white space for personal annotations, and poetic moments, including Malcolm Guite’s sonnet, “Imagine,” as a closing image (which he reads here as part of Regent College’s Laing Lectures in 2019).

Readers need to have some sticky notes on hand, I think. The Guide invites us to engage somewhat proleptically because of its (initially puzzling) combination of in-text citations, footnotes, endnotes, and glosses–and because Ward covers the “impact” question in three separate chapters. Sometimes this back-and-forthness could be simplifies; for example, some of Ward’s mini-essays could use separate treatments. However, as a guide, it is fitting that readers will flip back and forth, moving between Lewis’s original argument and the commentary. After Humanity’s peculiar–and initially challenging–features are its strength as a companion to Lewis’s somewhat idiosyncratic book. The Abolition of Man‘s sophisticated and verdant argument demands a reading that appreciates complexity. It will take work.

Ward is commendably restrained in providing a companion text rather than his particular point of view, yet does not hesitate to refute (usually unstated) misreadings of Abolition of Man. For example, Ward explains how Lewis is resisting a kind of moral subjectivism that he sees as a growing presumption in his cultural moment. A doctrine of objective value, Lewis argues, is the foundation of any truly human society in its shared moralities and virtues, including social values like scientific curiosity, intellectual honesty, and self-sacrificial love.

Still, things become more complex when we attempt to articulate what positive response Lewis has to the subjectivism he sees as a cultural blight. It is not uncommon in social forums for someone to quote Lewis against subjectivism (often reduced to moral relativism) but fail to note two other essential threads. First, Lewis consistently affirms the subjective centre, including our limitations of knowledge as seekers of truth. Second, it is true that Lewis is rejecting moral subjectivism that would hollow us out ethically (both individually and as a culture); however, he is also rejecting various kinds of claims to objectivity.

Ward commendably guides the reader down Lewis’s radical middle way.

As ideologies and worldviews do not sit on a two-dimensional spectrum from objectivity to subjectivity, however, it would be helpful for Ward to map the intellectual landscape of Lewis’s contemporaries. Ward productively discusses I.A. Richards and A.J. Ayers, so it would help to place Ayer’s logical positivism or Richards’ scientific-literary criticism in the context of other claims to objectivity. Lewis says “no” to these kinds of objective reductionisms in concepts like “Two Ways of Seeing,” which includes both the personal-subjective knowledge of experience and the objective-distant. What we don’t always see is that Lewis’s rejection of objectivist reductivism is as powerful as his challenge to moral relativism, for the errors are linked. Lewis’s main argument for a doctrine of objective value is the Tao—a shared cultural value that Lewis believes is in some sense “there,” but that is ever-evolving and, we must admit, comes from a “subjective discovery of objective value,” to use one of Ward’s titles. I am not certain that Ward clarifies this enough for a culture beset with competing and often uncritical claims to objectivity and autonomy, but I have seen few commentators try to draw out the distinction.

Mapping the fine points of Lewis’s argument is absolutely critical because, in ghastly simplicity, popular readers of Lewis can unblushingly quote The Abolition of Man about moral relativism and ignore his argument about technocracy, utilitarianism, and environmental destruction. Others place Lewis confidently on a contemporary–often American–left-right political spectrum. This error introduces into Lewis’ thought a distinction that does not exist there, and then determines which side of that distinction he fits (to paraphrase Dr. Ransom). But Lewis is doing something more subtle and valuable. Thus, I fear on this point that, as careful as Ward is, there remains a risk of some readers “falling foul of the subject/object split” (33).

There is always more one can say in a guide, and Ward’s brevity is commendable. He shows wisdom and restraint in choosing material that supports a wide variety of readers, including students and teachers, theologians and pastors, philosophers and cultural critics. Ward lets Lewis’ critics speak and gives space to the scholarly quotations and explanations of literary references—the diverse, overflowing bookshelf that is hidden in each of Lewis’s essays.

This symposium in libro links Lewis’s prophetic warning with the great religious traditions and centuries of scholarship. Ward’s Guide provides us with the tools we need to read Lewis accurately and profitably for ourselves. Ward invites readers to consider the implications of Lewis’s thought in our own classrooms, living rooms, and neighbourhoods. Together with the companion edition, Ward’s guide has given me my most fruitful reading of The Abolition of Man thus far.

Originally published in Sehnsucht: The C.S. Lewis Journal 15, no. 1 (2021). See here for the free (open-source) PDF. With thanks to the publisher for the review copy and to the folks who contribute to public scholarship by making Sehnsucht free for the public.

This is a video of the Wade Center’s virtual book launch of Michael Ward’s After Humanity: A Guide to C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man.

Link to PDF of my review: https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/cslewisjournal/vol15/iss1/25/.

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Fake Memes, Broken Dreams, and C.S. Lewis’s Apocalypse of the Imagination (Mythmoot Keynote)

Posted on February 6, 2026 by Brenton Dickieson

Dear Friends, I am very pleased to share this talk with everyone: “The Long Defeat: C.S. Lewis’s Apocalypse of the Imagination.” For various reasons, I was unable to deliver my keynote live to the folks at Mythmoot X. Rather than pop into the conference on a giant Zoom screen, I decided to take advantage of the video format and pre-record my talk. This approach had a few bonuses, like having backup plans and a script for those with hearing issues. Taking the time to make a full video resulted in two other moments that are especially rewarding.

First, while I was giving the keynote lecture in the room, I was also able to moderate my own conversation live on Slack, in real time. You might not know this about digital-age nerds, but when we attend a live, online, or hybrid conference or event, there is almost always a group of chatty folks emoting in real time on Discord, Slack, or the Zoom chat. For this small subsection of lovers of imaginative literature and film–particularly in the Tolkien and Lewis vein–it was a real treat to be with them live, engaging in the Q&A, and explaining bits that didn’t land or swept by too quickly. It was a peculiar and lovely time-bending experience.

Second, as you will see, I played a lot with editing and design, including some pop culture references and the full text of the quotations. Truthfully, I quite love the background I designed, and our lighting and audio aren’t bad. I confess that I hesitated to share this video because I don’t want to pretend to have any real production chops. As I sat with the piece, though, I came to recognize that, as with anything we create, we are bound to see our own flaws first. Nevertheless, someone out there will be grateful to receive the gift of what we make.

I think the latter is true because–like C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and T.S. Eliot–I am prone to mourn the apocalypse of our culture’s imagination. It feels like the poets have been banned from our republic at the same time that we are being entertained to death by content. This apocalypse is a slow fade, but that is how we give our lives away.

And as there are others who feel sadness about this leaky imaginative capacity, there are even more who know what Lewis and Tolkien felt on the frontline of WWI in their desperation to shape and share their craft. Like the many other artists who did (and did not) survive the war, we creative practitioners worry that our great work of art will never live in the world. You know what I mean–that sketchbook with its permanent place in our backpack, the folder of short stories in the cloud, the palette that is too often dry, the novel manuscript cycling through the New York submission-rejection rinse-and-repeat cycle, the spark of an idea that could change everything, the poems in the margins of that spreadsheet or student paper we are working on today.

This is why I begin with “The Quest of Bleheris” and other poetic projects that Lewis failed to finish during the WWI months. The stones that ford the river of Lewis’ success are visible to us from this point of view, a century later. For Lewis–and for most people who are trying to do something beautiful–each leap from a stone is into a rushing river of unknown depth.

Thus, for this piece, I start by mocking a fake C.S. Lewis quote, “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” It is bumper-sticker wisdom with the spiritual depth of a late-night burrito. As I take on this idea with the hope of rooting our hope in something that is true, beautiful, and good, I decided to make some other fake C.S. Lewis memes, mostly for fun, but also to make a point.

Some things are worth mocking, but even things that might be mocked (like this YouTube video) are still worth sharing. The video is below, followed by a script. Be well.

Dickieson – Long Defeat (Mythmoot script)Download

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C.S. Lewis and the Art of Blurbology: Part 2: Reading as a Game

Posted on January 22, 2026 by Brenton Dickieson
excerpt from an Apr 4, 1950 C.S. Lewis letter to Roger Lancelyn Green; source

A few weeks ago, I published Part 1 of “C.S. Lewis and the Art of Blurbology,” aiming to provide a review of Justin Keena’s C.S. Lewis, Blurbologist (2025) that would be useful to readers and researchers. Besides its practicality, I commented on the sheer good fun of Justin’s efforts in this newest contribution to the Journal of Inklings Studies supplement series.

The term, “Blurbology,” is one of the words that Lewis made up in his own jesting way, drawing from American street-speak that had begun to define the publishing industry.

Once we know what a “blurb” is, “blurbology” falls quickly into place as almost inevitable–one of the words bound to emerge eventually, even as a joke. We don’t know when Lewis or one of his friends first coined the word. However, if you learned cursive (or can trust my partial transcription), we know when he first uses it: a 1950 letter to Roger Lancelyn Green (see full transcription in the original review).

My dear Roger

Thanks v. much for the blurb [for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe]: I shall send it to [publisher] Bles to-day. It seems excellent to me, but like you I don’t really understand Blurbology.

Yours
Jack Lewis

While Lewis claims not to know much about the art of Blurbology, Justin Keena’s careful study reveals Lewis’ principles of the craft:

  1. Blurbs should be accurate
  2. Quotations should rarely be used, and used only when they don’t misrepresent the book or interrupt its enjoyment (i.e., no spoilers)
  3. Blurbs should capture the author’s intentions for the reading experience

In the earlier review, I talked about each of these ideas and gave examples from the text of the various features of the book. One of the most inconsequential—or possibly irrelevant … at least, idiosyncratic—reasons I split up this review is because I want to talk about the manner in which we read books. I don’t mean “manner” in any sophisticated way, like when I’ve talked about “Different Kinds of Readings for Different Kinds of Books.” No, this time I simply mean that when we read, do we go through page after page, sequentially, or read in some other pattern?

Generally, reading the pages in order is recommended. While I could open any page of Tom Jones and find funny, smart, and mind-numbing storytelling that seems completely disconnected to everything else—and thus, containing a demonically 18th-century kind of unity. However, I would not approach Till We Have Faces, The Lord of the Rings, Anne of Green Gables, The Fionavar Tapestry, or Dracula that way. I can open any of those well-worn books and pick up the tale, but I would not read all the way through, say, Pride & Prejudice, by randomizing the chapters. Even though I think most abridgments should be made illegal, I enjoyed Pride and Prejudice and Zombies as a way of re-experiencing the Jane Austen classic. But even that hatchet job of an adaptation keeps everything in the right order.

Perhaps it is my nostalgia for the Choose Your Own Adventure books of my youth, but there is something to be said about reading anthologies, essay collections, and other kinds of resource books in a seemingly random kind of way.

For example, I was recently interviewing some grad students about Acorn Press’ 2024 ANNEthology—a collection of ten Anne-inspired stories by Canadian YA writers. While I was initially inclined to say “no” to the project because I was angry with myself for not thinking of the title before they did, it turned out to be a brilliant discussion.

To make six stories connect—each one represented by the reading experience of six relative strangers—I jumped into the volume with the piece that most interested me. Then I daisy-chained the readings by their qualities, like fantasy vs. realism, dystopian vs. historical, and so on. See? An enjoyable Choose Your Own Adventure set of tales! If I get killed by zombies, develop galloping consumption, or get lost in nostalgia, I can always take a step back and try again.

This is the kind of approach I used with Justin Keena’s C.S. Lewis, Blurbologist, with marvelous success. Besides the intro, the book has three main sections:

  • Part One: Lewis’ Blurbs for His Own Books
  • Part Two: Lewis’ Blurbs for Others’ Books
  • Appendix: Blurbs for Lewis’ Books (Probably) Written by Others

Each of these sections includes the blurb in question and Justin’s notes about the historical provenance and importance of the blurb, with longer discussions about what parts of the blurb are definitively or possibly Lewis’. These copiously footnoted studies are usually brief—though some run as long as 10 pages. Other than this 20-page introduction, the other general editorial comments are brief.

The game was this: When I encountered a footnote that linked to another blurbological study in the book, I would pause my reading and follow that link. Soon, I wondered two things:

  • How much of the book could I read before getting through the 20-page intro?
  • How many levels deep could I go chasing footnotes?

Do you see it? The second question was less precise for me, but I was at least 5 levels deep: Intro footnote to a blurb to its reference or footnote at least three more times, then walking back and finishing each section as I went, finally returning to the Intro.

The first question is a bit more fun: How much of the book could I read before getting through the 20-page intro and its four main sections? Here’s the cold, hard data:

Section 1: Lewis’s Attitude to Blurbs and Blurb-Writing:

  • 23/26 of Part One blurbs (88.4%)
  • 8/26 of Part Two blurbs (30.8%)
  • 12/36 of Appendix blurbs (33.3%)

Section 2: Scope and Methodology

  • + 1/26 of Part One blurbs (+3.8% = 92.3%)
  • + 2/26 of Part Two blurbs (+7.6% = 38.5%)
  • + 16/36 of Appendix blurbs (+44.4% = 77.8%)

Section 3: Identifying and Authenticating Lewis’s Blurbs for his own Books

Section 4: Conclusion and Further Directions

  • + 2/26 of Part One blurbs (+7.7% = 100%)
  • + 10/26 of Part Two blurbs (+ 27.7% = 76.9%)
  • + 0/36 of Appendix blurbs (+0% – 77.8%)

Thus, in the first 15 pages, I had read more than half of the book. By the time I had read the introduction, I had read 9/10 of Lewis’ self-blurbs, 4/10 of his blurbs for others, and 3/4 of recovered blurbs for Lewis’ books. Jumping to the conclusion, I increased the first two categories to 10/10 and 3/4. Ultimately only 14/88 blurbs remained—about 30 pages of the 220-page book.

That means that I was able to read 6/7 of C.S. Lewis, Blurbologist in my Choose Your Own Adventure format. Pretty cool. Moreover, I didn’t fall into peril, like some many readers of the genre. I didn’t enter a secret door and fall to my death, or choose the path to the undefeatable ogre, or make friends with a villain. I “won” the book my first time through!

Granted, not many people will read Blurbologist my way—or even read it cover to cover. It is a resource book, written in tight, non-self-indulgent sections so that researchers can get what they need and fans can check up on their favourite books. As I had agreed to read the book, though, I was going to read the entire thing. So why not make a game of it?

A sample of my normal notes in Keena’s Blurbologist

Not that the material is flippant, of course—even when some Lewis letter or a note by the editors is humorous. Quite a number of the blurbs in Parts One and Two are new additions to C.S. Lewis’ archive of published material. Beyond Justin Keena’s more fully fleshed-out theory of “Lewisian Blurbology,” I was able to make a number of connection to my other projects. The book is also a good source for seeing another dimension of Lewis’ habits of writing, storytelling, and worldbuilding.

And the project works. At points, I would pause and sketch a note to the effect of, “I don’t think CSL used this word.” For example, on the dust jacket front flap of the UK That Hideous Strength, I had doubts that Lewis used the words “thriller” and “shocker.”

In this volume – which comes nearer to a full-dress novel than anything he has yet given us – C.S. Lewis relates the final adventure of Dr. Ransom, now returned from his planetary travels and living on the outskirts of an English University town. This restriction of the scene to Earth does not mean that the story is less mythical (the author calls it ‘a fairy-tale’) than Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra. It means that the Senior Common Room at Bracton College, the quarrel between Jane Studdock and her husband, the National Institute for Co-ordinated Experiments, the tame bear, and the deeply wronged fields and villages of England are here given that more than earthly background, that dimension of depth which such things (in the author’s view) always have in real life, though not in realistic fiction. The central danger – the ‘hideous strength’ – will be enjoyed by all who like a good shocker: it will also have more serious repercussions for those who may have read the author’s Abolition of Man.

Anticipating my concern, Justin carefully presented an argument that shows where and how Lewis used these words and the ideas in the last two sentences. Concluding with a logical claim, Justin identifies which parts of the blurb are most probably Lewis’ (which I have bolded), while the rest may be the publisher’s phrasing.

So, I gamified the experience of reading C.S. Lewis, Blurbologist. What did this particular approach to reading do for me?

First, it was more fun. Like most children, I love stats, challenges, and games. People always say that reading is its own reward, but why should be stop there? Why not also celebrate a reading badge or post a picture of a pencil worked down to its nub or feel pride at a bookshelf filled with things I’ve actually read?

Second, the fact that I finished most of the book while reading the short introduction shows how integrated Justin’s approach really is. Certainly, he presents copious examples for his claims in this exemplar of evidence-driven scholarly work. On a deeper level, though, Justin’s research echoes one of C.S. Lewis’ key features–that he is a single person. Despite wearing different hats and having incompatible interests, Lewis is not a mixed set of personalities, a collection of contradictory homunculi in the chest of an Oxford don. As we see in the diversity of the blurbs he writes and those written for him, Lewis the literary critic is in unity with Lewis the fantasy writer and Lewis the theologian. Justin’s project of interleaving text and commentary echoes Lewis’s creative practice.

Finally, this may shock you, but not every resource text, archival report, or work of literary criticism is unputdownable. I am a slow reader, so this approach kept me pinned to the page and helped make reviewing this book–writing reviews fills me with dread, I’m afraid to say–something to look forward to. My notes and games help keep me on task as much reading spreadsheets and Goodreads updates, helping me engage with the reading using different parts of my brain.

So … how will you read Blurbologist or your next Choose-Your-Own-Adventure-friendly book?

Posts of Interest

C.S. Lewis and the Art of Blurbology: Part 1: The Actually Helpful Review
The Other Side of Screwtape: C.S. Lewis’s “Archangel Fragment”
The Legacy of Walter Hooper, C.S. Lewis’ Better Than Boswell
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2025: My Year in Books: The Infographic and the Aftermath

Posted on January 20, 2026 by Brenton Dickieson

Happy New Year, everyone! As we tumble ahead into this season, I wanted to share the Goodreads “My Year in Books” infographic. I still track my reading in an Excel sheet, but I am no longer fascinated by a month-by-month self-reflection about my reading year. Here, I’ve scooped some images from Goodreads and will add a few reflections to follow. You can see the interactive online infographic here, where you can click on each book and see my ratings or reviews. I hope you have a beautiful year of reading!

I met my personal challenge of 120 books for 2025–123 books, actually, when all is said and done.

Unfortunately, no one is sending me to the Mariana Trench to check this fact. Still, my decade of tracking reading shows some consistencies between my yearly book count (on the left) and page count (on the right). 2019 was the year of my PhD viva voce, so lots of reading. In 2023, I was ill and burnt out, and I used reading as a balm. When I could no longer read screens in the fall of 2023, I soaked in paperbacks, which tumbled into 2024. 2025 was closer to what I would call “normal,” except that I read fewer books by audio (which isn’t shown here).

As I have been hoping for a decade now, Goodreads is secretly playing with some of its infographic features. Some of this is quite sweet, like a 5-star gallery, the most popular books I’ve read, and top genres.

But what happens when the badges become a kind of competition? I highly doubt I am in the top 5% of readers, though I quite like the first infographic below. It could be that I have written many reviews. I would rather know what reviews have been helpful to others, honestly.

As I will confess in a review that drops on Thursday, I’m quite okay with turning reading into a game. I don’t find it creepy and evil, like when Grammarly sends me an email saying that I am “lapping the competition.” What competition? I mean, it’s a spelling app. I’ll be watching these infographics to see if they move into the competition zone.

What I would love, though, is a seasonal or even monthly reading review. I began 2026 partway into Ursula K. Le Guin‘s Earthsea chronicles (for a brilliant BA Honours thesis) and Harry Potter. I was also well into rereading Terry Pratchett as the year began. I started 2025 with the full-colour edition of The Last Hero (#27) and finished in December with Snuff (#39)–the antepenultimate Discworld novel. I have just begun Raising Steam (#40), so I’ll finish this Winter. Last year, I finished Andrew Peterson’s brilliant Wingfeather Tales, Stephen King‘s Bachman books and most of the Castle Rock stories, Asimov’s original Foundations trilogy (didn’t love it), John Wyndham’s four major novels (I love Midwich Cuckoos best), Jane Austen‘s major works (still reading through her manuscripts, slowly), and Wodehouse’s humorous Blandings Castle tales. I continued working through R.F. Kuang–whom I admire but struggle with–and returned to some Octavia Butler material.

Jeepers, as I look at 2025, it is mostly fantasy fiction–about half of which are rereads. There are a few other features, though.

Last year, I began my Podcasting course and have continued teaching in communication and leadership, so I typically had one of these books on my desk in ’25. As part of a chapter that is now somewhere in the land of copy editing, I did a good amount of J.R.R. Tolkien scholarship reading (and am about halfway through his poems). Throughout the year, I was consistently working on C.S. Lewis and L.M. Montgomery–though I was not typically reading whole books. I also picked up my Shakespeare-of-the-month challenge and finished the History Cycle in early 2026.

I would love to do a write-up of my favourite 2025 discoveries, but I’ll list them here: Mark Sampson’s local horror, Lowfield, Samantha Harvey’s Orbital, and Diana Glyer’s The Major and the Missionary: The Letters of Warren Hamilton Lewis and Blanche Biggs (which I read along with Warren’s journal and some of Tolkien’s letters).

And then there are badges! I love badges–though I wish Goodreads would tell me when and how I won them. Besides getting monthly badges, I also received badges for Memorable Memoirs, Spine Tinglers, Century-old Classics, and for reading Black authors. I’m curious where the badge for reading indie writers is. Or Canadian writers. Or poetry.

It has been another good read of reading for me. I appreciate the badges, but I am richer for having read. I leaned on books I loved and finished off series in a year where I am slowly awakening to what I hope is new health. Best to all of you, dear readers, in the literary year to come! Feel free to share your list in the comments.

Here is the full infographic:

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MaudCast Season 3 Launches with a MaudSwap!

Posted on January 15, 2026 by Brenton Dickieson

Hello kindred spirits! I have another post about the casting of pods today, following up on Tuesday’s announcement about my Podcasting course. I am pleased to say that–after much effort from the team and great delay by me–Season 3 of the MaudCast is launched!

For those who are new to this site or seeking a new media resource, the MaudCast is the podcast of the L.M. Montgomery Institute. Our studio is situated on the beautiful campus of the University of Prince Edward Island, in this nearly magical “Land of Anne” that I call home.

To launch season 3 of the MaudCast—as a kind of teaser—we are happy to share a Podcast Swap! Ragon Duffy and Kelly Gerner are the hosts of the Kindred Spirits Podcast, and right now, they are reading Rilla of Ingleside in a brand new season.

2024 was the sesquicentennial of L.M. Montgomery’s birth, so Prince Edward Island was filled with celebratory events. On a very hot summer day, I met Kelly and Ragon at the Green Gables Heritage Site in Cavendish. We headed up the hill to Montgomery’s church–to the church that was built when Montgomery was caring for her grandmother in the homestead at the back of the same property. At this little white church, Montgomery played the organ, attended lectures, and watched her future husband, Rev. Ewan Macdonald, develop as a minister in the pulpit.

I sat down with Ragon and Kelly to record a special crossover episode between the MaudCast and Kindred Spirits Book Club! A podcast swap … a podswap—a MaudSwap, you might say! You can tell that recording in a rural wooden church is not without its challenges. Still, the content is great as we talk in depth about growing up with Montgomery, scholarship, fandom, and the moments we love.

You can find Kindred Spirits Book Club Podcast wherever fine pods are casting. Check out Kelly and Ragon’s digital details in the online Show Notes, and I hope you enjoy our special on-location season launch!

Farewell!

Brenton Dickieson, Host and Founding Producer of the MaudCast

Here is a hint about our next episode, coming soon to a cellphone near you:

Posts of Interest:

MaudCast S01E06: Carolyn Strom Collins and the Anne of Green Gables Manuscript
My Podcasting Course at UPEI: Round 2
A Note on “Kindred Verse: Poems Inspired by Anne of Green Gables” by Julie A. Sellers

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