Fans pick 92 books like A Thousand Notable Things On Various Subjects

This is the only ‘whodunnit’ on my list, but it’s so much more. (As are all the best ‘whodunnits’.)

For a start, it’s told from four different points of view. My own books use the early history of the Royal Society, its science, and various of its actual ‘Fellows,’ and this book was undeniably an influence. Pears details the politics and religious turmoil of the time and the excitement of new scientific discoveries.

The mid-17th century’s rigid social structure and manners are shown starkly, as is the misogyny. I found it dark, layered, and although complex, it’s immediately engaging. A very satisfying book indeed!

I love all of Sarah Waters’ works, but Fingersmith ranks among my most obsessively adored books of all time. I find it a near-perfect interweaving of meticulously researched historical fiction—penned with Dickensian flair and grace—and compulsively page-turning thriller, marked by brilliant and utterly unforeseeable plot twists that will leave you slack-jawed.

It somehow manages to be wickedly funny, poignantly tragic, powerfully feminist, and gratifyingly steamy all at once. I also loved the Korean film adaptation of it, The Handmaiden, which not only embraces Fingersmith’s anti-patriarchal themes but ingeniously weaves anti-colonialist elements into the by setting it in Japan-occupied Korea in the 1930s.  

The testament of Cresseid, written in Old Scots in the fifteenth century, was framed as a response to Chaucer’s earlier telling of the Troilus story—the ill-fated love between Troilus and Cressida. Henryson imagines what becomes of Cressida where Chaucer’s version ends. I read this poem at school, together with the fables, and loved it straight away. It was a revelation to find a view of Cresseid sympathetically disposed, in language that was vivid and direct; a telling that was startlingly humane. There is humour, heart and feeling in the fables too. It blew away my preconceptions that Scotland in the past was dour and inaccessible, and the language difficult, and replaced them with a fondness and a familiarity lasting to this day.  

I first read They Were Defeated over thirty years ago, and recently reread to see if it had the power to move me still today. It does. Set in 1641, in Devonshire and Cambridge at the very brink of the Civil War, it reads like a love letter to a lost world, where the poets and Platonists are illuminated in already fading light, beautifully and tenderly observed. Rose Macaulay wrote that she had done her best "to make no person in this work use in conversation any word, phrase or idiom" not used at the time. "Ghosts of words," she calls them, after Thomas Browne. An astonishing feat in the pre-digital age. Yet the language of her ghosts is clear and true and natural. And the still moment, at the very heart of her heart-breaking story, transcends the factions that surround it and stays fixed for all time. This is… show more.

Basil II, who ruled as emperor from 976 to 1025, is an enigma. On the face of it, his reign was a great success which saw the Byzantine borders extended further than they had been for centuries. Yet no one at the time seems to have celebrated that success and we only know about his reign from accounts written a long time afterward by people who were either too young to remember his reign, like Michael Psellus, or who were not even born. It is this enigma that Holmes grapples with by analysing our most detailed source for Basil’s reign: the historian John Skylitzes who was writing around 1100. Her subtle uncovering of the cultural values that underlie the text reveal Basil not so much as a great conqueror but as a shrewd politician who knew exactly how to get what he wanted as much by persuasion as by force. 

People throw around the phrase “this book changed my life” far too easily, in my opinion, so when I say it about this book, please know that I mean it with all my being. I found this book while I was in a mental health crisis, and it helped link me to my ancestors, the good life they would wish for me, and forgiveness through intricately detailed rituals and folk traditions.

A must-read if you’re Italian-American–or even if you’re not–this book helped me structure my life in a way that felt true to who I am. 

Brian Levack is the leading authority on the history of witch-hunts in Europe.

Anyone seeking to fully understand the events of 1692 in Salem, needs to begin with a study of the 250 years of witch-hunts in Europe that preceded the outbreak in New England, which came late in the game but followed what occurred in many ways what preceded it. 

Levack’s book, now in its fourth edition, is the best source on this subject.  It includes information on the Salem witch trials in context of what happened in Europe. 

Nearly a century old now, this was one of the first books to open up this subject for me, and to connect witch-beliefs (and trials) in England and colonial America. It’s more of a collection of essays than a coherent monograph, but they’re thoughtful essays, and, crucially, not excessively lofty. Kittredge was at pains to understand witchcraft in the past rather than judging it from the vantage point of an enlightened present.

They are chapters on image magic, shape-shifting, diagnostic tests, witches’ sabbats, and many other subjects – all discursive explorations, drawing in examples from here and there, and presented in the leisurely style of the gentleman scholar. There’s some strong narrative, too, especially in the chapter on James I, which stands up as an account of how changing thinking about witchcraft, and its relationship to politics and religion, affected policy and legal practice. All in all, it’s stuffed with… show more.

This was the first occult book I ever bought, so it holds a special place in my heart. The title alone, drew me to it and I was not disappointed. The book is full of all kinds of spells and information on herbs, amulets and talismans, ceremonial magic, Satanism & Witchcraft, potions, and many other wicked goodies. I love old occult books and this one, first published in 1970, started my occult library which has continued to grow. 

I’ve enjoyed all of Helen Harper’s books that I’ve read (they are all quite humorous) but I especially loved her Lazy Girl’s Guide. Slouch Witch introduces us to a powerful witch who was kicked out of magic school due to being blamed for someone else’s mistake. Now she’s dedicated to being as lazy and shiftless as possible to stay out of trouble and keep herself away from using her magic. Oh, and she has a cat who may or may not know everything that is going on, and communicates in one-word pronouncements that all cat owners can relate to. There’s a cute romance and fun book-by-book adventures to follow.