2025 was one of the most transformative years of my life, mainly due to the Dante read-along, which many of you have been following closely.

I was inspired by Gustave Doré, one of my favourite illustrators, who, in his youth, decided to select a list of masterpieces of world literature that he wanted to illustrate before he died. Such meticulous planning, such focus, such knowledge of what your life is going to be dedicated to — I found this incredibly, unbelievably, almost indescribably inspiring. I followed in his footsteps, and I did not regret it.

In 2026, I would like to continue this journey. I’ve selected, for now, several books that I would love to read carefully, in the same spirit in which we read Dante’s Divine Comedy. What you’ll find below is the list of works we’re going to explore in 2026. It’s a short list, but an important one.

Read-Alongs 2026

* Sophocles’s Antigone (February, approx. 3 weeks)

* The Captive Mind by Czeslaw Milosz (April, approx. 4 weeks)

* The Odyssey by Homer (June-July, approx. 6 weeks)

* Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar (September - October, 6 weeks)

Philosophical Exercises

I believe that we can sculpt ourselves in the same way Michelangelo sculpted his figures.

In life, we are given the material — our bodies, our time, our consciousness. And I believe that we can chisel away certain parts in order to sharpen others, shaping our lives into something deliberate and meaningful. If we are attentive enough, disciplined enough, we can turn a human life into a kind of sculpture — something worthy, something precise — not unlike Bernini’s Persephone or Michelangelo’s David.

Literature, as the philosopher Pierre Hadot once argued, can serve exactly this purpose. Reading, when done properly, is not entertainment or information, but a form of inner work. The read-alongs revolve around this philosophical idea. Each of these books was chosen with a specific purpose in mind.

Sophocles’ Antigone explores our responsibility towards a divine order — or, more broadly, towards something higher than convenience, power, or obedience. It forces us to confront the cost of standing by one’s conscience.

Czesław Miłosz’s The Captive Mind offers a defence against manipulation and ideology. It teaches us how easily the mind can become imprisoned, and how often that imprisonment is voluntary. It is a book about preserving inner freedom in an age that quietly erodes it.

Homer’s Odyssey is a journey of its own. It would be difficult to exhaust its depth in a few sentences, but I trust that many of you already know this work’s power. It shows how a human being can be tested, weakened, tempted, and yet still return — changed, but intact. It, too, teaches us how to chisel away our weaker parts in order to form a stronger self.

Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar has already had a profound influence on my life. The book takes the form of a series of letters written by the dying Emperor Hadrian to his successor, Marcus Aurelius. In them, Hadrian reflects on what life taught him — about power, restraint, love, loss, and limits — and passes those lessons on before his time runs out.

This is the unifying thread that runs through these works. They are not chosen at random. Each one offers a different kind of philosophical exercise — a different way of shaping the self.

Sophocles’s Antigone

( Starting Sunday 1st of February - Finishing 15th of February)

The first work I would like to explore together is Sophocles’ Antigone. I’ve always been fascinated by the tension in the play between earthly law and divine law, and I want to explore how I perceive this conflict through my own eyes.

Antigone is fighting for the right to honour what she believes to be higher than any political decree: the demands of conscience, memory, and the dead.

In our own lives, this tension appears whenever obedience clashes with inner conviction, whenever following the rules means betraying something essential within us. Antigone asks a difficult question that never loses its urgency: what do we owe the law, and what do we owe the truth as we see it?

The Captive Mind by Czeslaw Milosz

( Starting Sunday 4th of April - Finishing 25th of April)

The Captive Mind is an extraordinary book for our day and time, when the human mind is so often taken hostage by ideology.

Miłosz is not interested in crude propaganda, but in something far more dangerous: the quiet, almost invisible ways in which intelligent people surrender their inner freedom. One of the great dangers of our age is that nobody is more enslaved than those who believe themselves to be free. We may think we are independent thinkers, while in truth our assumptions, language, and values are shaped by ideological premises we rarely examine. Miłosz offers not slogans, but clarity a kind of an antidote to the captive mind.

This book was recommended to me by Christopher Hitchens.

The Odyssey

( Starting Sunday 31st of May - Finishing 5th of July) .

The third work is Homer’s Odyssey. Reading the Odyssey has been a goal of mine for a very long time. I’ve read it several times, and yet I still feel that I don’t fully understand it. Odysseus — or Ulysses — was omnipresent throughout Dante’s Divine Comedy. Dante had not read Homer’s version of this journey, and yet the figure is there, unmistakably. That alone makes me want to return to Homer and look again, more carefully, at this wandering hero.

Perhaps coincidentally, Christopher Nolan is releasing his cinematic interpretation of the Odyssey in July 2026. We’ll finish reading, interpreting, and trying to understand the poem first, and then we can head to the cinema with our own vision of this great masterpiece.

Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar

( Starting Sunday 6th of September - Finishing .October 11)

The final work on this list is one of my favourite books of all time, comparable in its impact on me to Dante’s Divine Comedy: Marguerite Yourcenar’s Memoirs of Hadrian. It’s been five years since I first read it. I’ve returned to it many times since — sometimes in part, sometimes in full — but I’ve never read it with the same discipline and attention that I brought to Dante. That is something I would like to do now.

This is a book about power seen from the inside. Hadrian looks back on his life not as a conqueror, but as a man reflecting on love, responsibility, loss, ageing, and limits. It asks what it means to rule others without losing oneself, and what remains when ambition gives way to memory.

These are the four books. Below, you’ll find all the practical details — dates, structure — and you’re free to join or opt out of any read-along, depending on what resonates with you.

🐙 2027 Read-Alongs?

Those of you who thought that the Dante read-along marked the end of the read-along series on Genius & Ink — I’m happy to surprise you. Read-alongs on Genius & Ink are going to continue throughout the years.

There are, of course, two things that could stop this journey. The first is obvious: life is finite. Still, I hope that we have many years ahead of us to explore some of the great masterpieces of world literature together. The second possibility is more prosaic. At some point, I might be forced to abandon this project in order to pursue a mediocre job, simply to put food on the table. Before that happens — and I hope it will take a very long time — I trust that, with your support, I’ll be able to continue this work for as long as it is humanly possible.

Because of time constraints and the need to prepare properly, I had to omit several great works from the 2026 read-alongs in order to focus fully on the four books I’ve outlined above. That does not mean these works have been abandoned. On the contrary, they remain very much part of the long-term vision for Genius & Ink.

One such work is Virgil’s Aeneid. I had to exclude it from 2026 because it is a magnificent text that deserves its own time and attention. I hope that by 2027 I’ll be ready to explore the Aeneid together.

Other works I deeply wish to explore include Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso. I would also love to devote time to the plays of Aristophanes, as well as to the poetry of Lord Byron — particularly The Corsair and Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables is another work I feel drawn to, though it would once again require an entire year due to its sheer scale.

Among other books that stand high on my list are Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, Hermann Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game, and, of course, Cervantes’ Don Quixote — one of the absolute essentials. I would also love to explore Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T. E. Lawrence.

Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra remains near the top of the list, as do the works of Vladimir Nabokov — perhaps even Pale Fire, if I have the courage to take it on. Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound is another work I would love to explore, alongside Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound. And, of course, Goethe’s Faust is a work I feel continually drawn back to. I’ve already explored parts of it in earlier posts, but it remains a text I would love to return to in full.

As you can see, the list is ambitious — and it is only the beginning. There are countless other masterpieces of world literature that deserve careful attention and slow reading. That is why I say that the Dante read-along was not the end of this endeavour, but only its beginning. I hope we’ll continue this journey together, year after year.

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