Canonical Resolutions 2025

Just kidding, we don't make resolutions

Kilo, PCF’s managing editor, is still recovering from New Year celebrations. He fell asleep while consulting with me on the current piece.

In a PCF post from December 31st, 2023, I laid out plans for this newsletter for the following year. While we made good on most of those plans, we fell short at a couple of points, and so that post proved to be overly ambitious. We won’t make that mistake again this year.¹

However, we will look forward a bit to what is coming in the near future, along with possibilities for later in the year. Please feel free to comment and make suggestions. So, here is what is in store for the near and middle distance, along with a few longterm possibilities:

Coming up soon:

1. Album(s) of the Year for 2024 and Honorable Mentions

For premium subscribers: this is already partly drafted and should come along next week. It will include AOTYs in some unusual categories, as well as twelve honorable mentions that didn’t make it onto my list of 36 favorites. If you missed that list, here it is in three parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

2. The Loss of the Album Side

This is also partly drafted: an essay on what we lost when we stopped dividing albums (or playlists) into “sides.” This will appear in January.

3. Preparing for the Chaucer Reading Challenge

As promised, PCF’s next reading challenge, which will begin in about two weeks, will cover the major works of Chaucer. This challenge will appear in conjunction with two courses that I am teaching in the coming semester devoted to the poet. Next week, a post will drop that will discuss what you might do to prepare for the challenge.

Medium Term:

1. The Chaucer Reading Challenge

This will run from January until May. Like earlier challenges on Beowulf and Tolkien, this will include one major post per week, along with some bonus goodies for premium subscribers. I am considering a concurrent series on medieval music to accompany this challenge, but I’m not firm on this yet. Please let me know if this would interest you.

2. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Appended to the end of the Chaucer Challenge and running through the month of May, this challenge will take on another famous 14th-century poem.

3. The Comic Body and Historical fiction

This is a standalone essay—a version of a paper that I will be delivering at a conference later this month.

4. Back to the Body

This will be a continuation of an occasional series related to my current book project on the body in the works of Hilary Mantel, Patrick O’Brian, and other writers of historical fiction. Installments will appear throughout the year.

5. The Tolkien Reading Challenge II

This is one longer-term project for PCF that is a certainty, given the positive response to the first go-around last year. This time we will consider The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings as a single massive narrative. I also hope to recruit some more guest writers for this series.

6. The Music of 1980

At some point this year, we will wrap up our discussion of the music of 1980 with a couple more posts on albums by the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Blondie, and Joy Division. If you missed the earlier entries, you may find them here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

Over the Horizon

Abby is PCF’s head fact-checker. That nose can sniff out anything.

Beyond these plans, nothing is completely firm. I would like to return to Jonathan Swift in the autumn, when I will be teaching him again, and finish what I started a few months ago. (This is one of the places where PCF gave out before the finish line in 2024, much to my regret.) Doubtless, there will be some more music reviews, along with some listening challenges like the earlier forays in Vaughan Williams and Schubert. I would like to tackle Haydn at some point. I’m also considering a series on the TV show Severance, which would be my first foray into television criticism, but I’m going to wait until I see the second season (which launches later this month) before deciding on this.

What else would you like to see from PCF in 2025? As always, we would love to hear from you.

And thanks for reading, from our fancy internet typewriter to yours.

Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash

1. Please note that the use of the first-person-plural pronoun is not an indication of the “royal we,” but rather perpetuates the illusion that PCF employs a full editorial staff rather than being the product of one eccentric brain. Or perhaps the “we” represents the various aspects of this particular brain.