Adult Reader Track
If you are looking for a way to read (or reread) classic and contemporary texts and participate in spacious and thoughtful dialogue in a warm yet rigorous reader community — welcome, you’ve come to the right place.
Whether you’re a teacher, parent, or lifelong learner, we’re on a mission to offer exceedingly accessible, high-quality dialogue spaces for adults to engage with literature — with depth, rigor, expertise, play, and community.
We foster a more intimate space than an online lecture series, and a more rigorous space than a book club. Moreover, once you join a book cohort, you’re a part of our member community — where we can keep meeting, reading, and learning together.
Our Core Program Features
Small Cohorts of Seven People
Cohorts are designed to be small to make sure the space is truly inclusive for everyone who enrolls.
Expert Instruction & Clear Learning Objectives
While no two cohorts or dialogues will be the same, our instructors spend many hours designing the curriculum and key learning objectives for each book we read.
Guidance Materials
To create a shared culture and ethos within our learning community, we have created several guidance documents to provide shared frameworks.
Features of the Adult Reader Track
The Online Community Platform
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We hold weekly reading “accountability” hours for all adult cohort members to gather and study together. These are optional, quiet, and warm spaces for students to say hi, then delve into their book — either with cameras on or off — and then end with a quick round-robin on the reading we accomplished.
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Students are given pre-made writing prompts as well as options to continue writing into questions that we have “pulled” from the discussion.
The prompts are intended to stimulate additional learning individually, with the option of students keeping the discussion going in an online chat thread that the Instructor will start in our online community forum.
The instructor will always offer three types of pre-made prompts:
An academic writing prompt (e.g., a research essay).
A creative writing prompt (e.g., a persona poem or a text-to-life essay).
A research activity prompt (e.g. dig up more on the origins of words, texts, ideas, and key concepts we explored).
Students are encouraged to continue the conversation in the Circle space.
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All returning students will have ongoing early-enrollment access to future book cohorts, with a 15% off discount, via the Circle platform.
Upcoming Book Cohorts
JUNE 2026
Why does Hamlet delay revenge? Is Hamlet really “mad”? What exactly is Gertrude guilty of? Wait, who’s Fortinbras, and why is there a geopolitical side-plot?
Adult readers are invited to join us for a three-week book cohort on Shakespeare’s Hamlet this June.
Session Dates: Sundays, June 14th, 21st, and 28th, 2026
Session Times: 5:00PM - 6:30PM PST.
Course Details: https://www.thenewcommons.com/hamlet
Location: Virtual via Zoom
Instructor: Lauren Frey, M.A.
Cohort Seats: Seven students
Use code EARLYBIRD by May 31st to receive a 10% discount on your seat! We can’t wait to meet you.
Adult readers are invited to join us for a three-week book cohort on Shakespeare’s Hamlet this June.
Session Dates: Mondays, June 15th, 22nd, and 29th, 2026
Session Times: 6:30PM - 8:00PM PST.
Course Details: https://www.thenewcommons.com/hamlet
Location: Virtual via Zoom
Instructor: Lauren Frey, M.A.
Cohort Seats: Seven students
Use code EARLYBIRD by May 31st to receive a 10% discount on your seat! We can’t wait to meet you, talk with you in session, and support your learning goals this summer.
JULY 2026
Why does Victor Frankenstein run away from The Creature he has made? How does language itself become theme in Frankenstein? What defines “the monstrous"? How does The Creature threaten, transgress, or represent “othered” bodies and communities?
Adult readers are invited to join us for a four-week book cohort on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein this July.
Session Dates: Sundays, July 12th, 19th, 26th, and August 2nd, 2026
Session Times: 5:00PM - 6:30PM PST.
Course Details: https://www.thenewcommons.com/frankenstein
Location: Virtual via Zoom
Instructor: Lauren Frey, M.A.
Cohort Seats: Seven students
Use code EARLYBIRD by June 30th to receive a 10% discount on your seat! We can’t wait to meet you.
Adult readers are invited to join us for a four-week book cohort on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein this July.
Session Dates: Mondays, July 13th, 30th, 27th, and August 3rd, 2026
Session Times: 5:00PM - 6:30PM PST.
Course Details: https://www.thenewcommons.com/frankenstein
Location: Virtual via Zoom
Instructor: Lauren Frey, M.A.
Cohort Seats: Seven students
Use code EARLYBIRD by June 30th to receive a 10% discount on your seat! We can’t wait to meet you.
“To read slowly, deeply, backward and forward with care and respect, with reservations, with doors left open, with delicate fingers and eyes.”