Looking to widen my reading

[lattywatty]

Hi there! Basically I'm just looking for recommendations to widen my reading. I know the top 100 book list would be a good place to start, but I want a wider variety of historical periods and settings. (Well, mainly historical periods since I hope to study English + History at uni )

Thanks in advance for any help

[dfloyd]

or do you want to read factual history. And about what countries?

If you want to read about the Kings of England, you could do worse than read Shakespeare. Some say the Etonians learned the history of England from Shakespeare's plays. I am an American, but that is how I became familiar with English history. Start with John II and go through Henry VIII.

Sir Walter Scott is a good one to read also. Kenilworth is an excellent novel about the Elizabethan period. The Talisman takes you into the Crusades with Richard I and Saladin.

For historical facts, try reading Christopher Hibbert. He is everyman's historian who makes history come alive. I just finished Redcoats and Rebels about the American Revolution told from the English perspective.

Thackerey's Vanity Fair has quite a bit about England versus Napoleon and the battle of Waterloo.

For WWI read Siegfried Sasson's Memoirs of an Infantry Officer and Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Man. Try Robert Graves' Goodbye to All That.

For WWII read Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honor and for a retrospection of English society between WWI and II, read Waugh's Brideshead Revisited.

You can learn a lot of history through fiction.

[lattywatty]

or do you want to read factual history. And about what countries?

If you want to read about the Kings of England, you could do worse than read Shakespeare. Some say the Etonians learned the history of England from Shakespeare's plays. I am an American, but that is how I became familiar with English history. Start with John II and go through Henry VIII.

Sir Walter Scott is a good one to read also. Kenilworth is an excellent novel about the Elizabethan period. The Talisman takes you into the Crusades with Richard I and Saladin.

For historical facts, try reading Christopher Hibbert. He is everyman's historian who makes history come alive. I just finished Redcoats and Rebels about the American Revolution told from the English perspective.

Thackerey's Vanity Fair has quite a bit about England versus Napoleon and the battle of Waterloo.

For WWI read Siegfried Sasson's Memoirs of an Infantry Officer and Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Man. Try Robert Graves' Goodbye to All That.

For WWII read Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honor and for a retrospection of English society between WWI and II, read Waugh's Brideshead Revisited.

You can learn a lot of history through fiction.

Regarding what countries, I don't actually know to be honest. Just want to learn about a variety of cultures I guess and its impact on the literature.

Yeah I meant more history through fiction, but I'll check Sir Walter Scott out too. Thanks very much, I'll look into all of them

[dfloyd]

read Alexandre Dumas. The Marie Antoinette Romances are about 8 volumes which take you completely through the French revolution to the guillotining of Marie Antoinette. These are fascinating stories with fictional characters coupled with real historical figures. Add Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities to round out the menu.

[Veho]

For English history, I recommend Katherine by Anya Seton. It's not really classed as 'literature', but it's an wonderful read about the son of King Edward III and his mistress, told around the Hundred Years' War and the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. It's fiction but based on facts and the author is a historian.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Also, what you could really do with is cementing a basic timeline of events or movements in history and literature that you could then widen and develop at a later stage. If I were you I'd read widely to get an overview of the history of literature as opposed to reading heavily in one area. That and follow your own particular areas of interest. Books such as A History of English Literature by Michael Alexander will help to guide you to bridge the gap between A-level and university study.

From there you could do worse than to get a solid base in some of the root areas of canonical (English?) literature, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, the founders of the novel form in English: Richardson, Fielding, Defoe, the likes of Austen, the Romantic poets, the Brontes, Dickens, Eliot, Hardy, Woolf etc, mostly I'd forget the lists of top "100 books to read before you die" and all of that as mostly nonsense, you'd be far better to start building a solid base of these canonical writers than chasing such shadows.

Enjoy.

[stlukesguild]

How wide is w---i---d---e? Seriously, I would suggest that anyone wishing to study English literature would do well to have a firm footing in the Bible, the Greeks (especially Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides) the Romans (Virgil, Ovid, Horace, at a minimum), Dante, Petrarch, Beowulf, Chaucer, Don Quixote, and then the rest of English literature. But I would also think about exploring English literature in relationship to another body of literature: French, Italian, Spanish, Russian... or something further afield: Persian, Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Latin-American, etc...

[Vautrin]

I, Claudius by Robert Graves

Shakespeare's King Henry VI (Parts 1,2,3) and Richard III

The Day the Leader was Killed by Naguib Mahfouz

[JBI]

Are you looking to expand outward - as in cover more geographic space, or downward, as in cover more periods of time over one or a few spaces?

If you want to really broaden scope, I recommend starting to look at authors from Africa and The West Indies, and perhaps Canada, as those traditions really shake up conceptions of English literature and its complement/descendant American literature.

[hellsapoppin]

My greatest criticism of the books and history that we Westerners study is that our horizons are not wide enough. While we know much of our literature and history, we know next to nothing of the great works produced in the Third World.

Just this evening I watch Kurosawa's Ikiru which, I thought, was an extraordinary piece of art. How many Yanks know the great catalog of Kurosawa's works?

If we took the time, most of us could easily write down the titles of 100 meritorious Western books. But as for Third World titles, how many can you list? As for me, I can only list about a couple of dozen off the top of my limited skull.

My hope is that the future generations will be comprised of people who are far more open minded than my generation (and earlier generations) have been.

[janesmith]

Quite recently I read "Marie Antoinette: The Journey" by Antonia Fraser. Besides being a fascinating character I learned a great deal about the turbulent history of France during that period. I would definitely recommend.

[lattywatty]

Thanks for all the replies! Getting a basic timeline first is a great idea so I'll look into that before exploring things in more detail.

Thanks again, got lots to look into

[Katy North]

Good History books:

The Discoverers and The Creators by Daniel Boorstein... these give an excellent overview of History under their respective topics.

Generally good books to read:

Any and all religious texts of societies that interest you... The Bible, the Koran, Bhagavad Gita, The Book of the Dead.

Any fictional work illustrating the time period you're interested in... The Iliad and Odyssey if you're interested in Greek History, Morte De Arthur and Gawain and the Green Knight if you're interested in Europe in the Middle ages, The Tale of the Genji if you're interested in Feudal Japan, Charles Dickens if you're interested in 19th Century England, and so on.

If you want to consider going on to get your MA and Ph.D. , I would suggest you pick a time period and country you like and stick with it. Look in the bibliographies of books you reads, and inspect footnotes and endnotes. In college, the more obscure texts you read the better in some cases. Gain knowledge beyond GENERAL knowledge and you will do quite well.

[mal4mac]

Although a firm footing in the Bible is useful, this doesn't mean you have to read it! It's a really hard slog. A Bible dictionary, or good notes on Biblical references, might be necessary for some authors. The Iliad is pretty tough going as well. Again, good notes will help, as will the "Oxford Companion to Classical Literature". Start by reading authors that are approachable - Shakespeare isn't that difficult if you a have a version with good notes (like the RSC Complete Shakespeare) But just read a few scenes a day, otherwise it might feel like heavy going. Take your time, his language is beautiful and should be savoured like a fine wine. Great stories as well! Read some 'easier to read' authors at the same time. Dickens is excellent, as are Tolstoy, Montaigne & Cervantes (make sure to get good translations though!)

[JBI]

My greatest criticism of the books and history that we Westerners study is that our horizons are not wide enough. While we know much of our literature and history, we know next to nothing of the great works produced in the Third World.

Just this evening I watch Kurosawa's Ikiru which, I thought, was an extraordinary piece of art. How many Yanks know the great catalog of Kurosawa's works?

If we took the time, most of us could easily write down the titles of 100 meritorious Western books. But as for Third World titles, how many can you list? As for me, I can only list about a couple of dozen off the top of my limited skull.

My hope is that the future generations will be comprised of people who are far more open minded than my generation (and earlier generations) have been.

Well, isn't that a backhanded compliment? You essentially equated Non-Western with underdeveloped, which doesn't make any sense.

Even if we accept that the West is the top in terms of development, which I think, in terms of standard of living and distribution of wealth, is justifiable to a pretty good extent (in so far as we say the Four Little Dragons (Singapore, S. Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan) as well as Japan and now to an extent Malaysia, as well as others, are exceptions (despite constituting a couple hundred million people)), the question remains though when looking at literary history and asking if this was always true, for whom it was true, and how that has had bearing on art.

So, for instance, if we take Heian Japan, and Tang China as cultural Golden Ages as some historians do, and compare them to Medieval Europe, or, in the case of the US and Canada, and Latin America, pre-colonial times, we must question who exactly is third world and who isn't.

Even still, the term third world doesn't apply to closer regions, such as the Middle East, Persia (Iran), Turkey and Moorish Spain, as well as many other other places, such as India, who advanced far faster than Europe, in terms of literature, we see that, in terms of literary development, it is justifiable to equate, up until the Industrial revolution, the so called "Developed world" as the third world.

That being said, it is true that Westerners aught to pay more attention to Non-Western authors, though that is the common trend now.

It's just on the lower levels, as publishers don't run mass prints of Chinese novels the way they do American ones, or French ones, despite the vast amount of high quality stuff that gets translated every year. Likewise, readers don't have any exposure, though it can be argued, in the case of the US especially, though Canada too, that it isn't so much as ethnocentric culture, but absence of culture, especially book culture.

Film actually is probably the best balancer, but it is strange that you pick Kurosawa, who, in terms of classic cinema, seems the most absorbed into Western culture (Roshoman for instance, when it came out, was far better received in Venice where it premiered than Japan), still though, I think there is a reluctance on the part of some people to watch movies with sub-titles, so such films, in the case of North American markets, don't really run successfully anyway, even if they are French or Italian or whatever.


But, then again, Canada is a "developed" country, and is a "Western" country, so why don't people know anything about Canadian literature/cinema? I guess you know about Canadian music a bit (Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, and to a lesser extent a few others) but when it comes to literature, with the exception of Margaret Atwood, and now to a lesser extent Alice Munro, few people seem to know anything. So, then again, it makes no difference about class, wealth, or even language.

Quite simply put, I don't think readers on the whole actually care about expanding. I think they merely like to try to fill time with the most familiar.

That goes with music and cinema as well - the pursuit of different modes and genres is a rather uncommon pursuit. Reading in general is something weird, I think, so why should people assume that people will take to reading outward, or upward.


That said, if the original poster wants recommendations from other traditions, I will gladly give them. If he/she wants recommendations from earlier time periods in English, I can give them too - but even then - how many people have read Nashe, let alone Richardson, George Herbert, let alone Robert Herrick, so if you want them let me know, and I will gladly help you, but I think you will need to be more specific as to how wide you wish to go, and in which direction, and also what you have already read.

The above posts of the Iliad and Bible are probably of your knowledge already as it is.