The Catastrophe Hour Book Club

Every Wednesday 3-4pm ET, beginning June 11

The rumors are true! I am hereby starting a weekly book club for The Catastrophe Hour, my new collection of essays. There are 14 essays, which means we’ll do it over 14 weeks, beginning June 11 and ending September 10.

Since there is no audiobook yet, I am releasing audio excerpts of each essay every week as special podcast episodes. I will release them a week ahead of the scheduled book club discussion. In other words, on June 4 I’ll release an excerpt of the first essay in the collection and we’ll discuss it at the meeting on June 11.

You are eligible to participate if you are a paying subscriber to this Substack and have an annual membership. In other words, if you paid for the whole year upfront (which is a better deal anyway). To change or upgrade your membership, click this button.

Meetings will take place on Zoom. We’ll use the same link for each meeting. Want to join? Leave a comment or send me a DM and I’ll make sure you get a link.

Again, I’ll release excerpts of each essay a week ahead of each meeting. (They’re excerpts, so you should still buy the book so you can read the whole thing.) That said, I just released a special podcast episode in which I read the entire last essay in the book. It’s brand new, written late last summer, and deals with some of the issues involved with personal writing today. It’s called The End Of The Personal. We won’t get around to discussing it until September, but I thought I’d let you enjoy it for now.

Hope to see you in the club.

Housekeeping

📖 Order my new book, The Catastrophe Hour: Selected Essays, on Amazon or directly from the publisher here.

📘 The Catastrophe Hour book club for yearly paying subscribers starts June 11 and will run for 14 consecutive Wednesdays, 3-4 pm ET. We will meet on Zoom.

📹 The Unspeakeasy Live livestream takes place every Thursday at 3:00 p.m. ET. Look for a notification on your Substack app when we’re live.

Stuff to read and listen to:

New York Times, Jan 31, 2025: The L.A. Fires Taught Me To Accept Help

Recent(ish) solo episodes :

• January 9: The First 24 Hours

• January 16: The Immaterial World

• January 27: Housing Wars

• February 5: Remembrance Of Things Past

• February 13: What Is A "Catastrophe?"

• March 2: A Mental Infection

• March 31: Dignity Is Out Of Style

📺 Visit The Unspeakable on YouTube.

✈️ The Unspeakeasy’s 2025 retreat season is underway. It includes a just-announced COED retreat with more attendees and multiple speakers. October 11-12 in New York City. Programming and ticketing info here.