100 books like Shakespeare for Every Day of the Year

I recommend this 93-page book because Defoe provides some convincing evidence for Thomas Cecil being a contender for the role of the author of Shakespeare.

Although I believe he was just one of many aliases of the Bard, she definitely nails this one!

Another reason I enjoyed this book is that it includes a proper book index, which is becoming more rare these days. I know how long it takes to create a good index and Defoe has produced a very usable one in my opinion. It shows she cares about her readers!

Alan Green hosts a popular Youtube channel that explores the mysteries and secret codes built into the works of Shakespeare and his decryptions are quite extraordinary in their depth.

Green has been investigating these hidden “Bard codes” for more than 15 years and his book reflects the incredible effort he has put into his work. He was at one time the musical director of The Monkees!)

Helen Moorwood digs deep into the connections between “William Shakespeare” and the Stanley family whose massive marble tombs in Tong church are a sight to behold and weave a tale worthy of any detective novel.

She digs deep into the genealogy of the Stanleys and explores each and every rabbit hole to get to the truth!

This book contains an incredible amount of detail and diagrams about the enigmatic “Dr Robert Fludd” who I regard as just another alias of the Bard.

Fludd, like Sir Francis Bacon was a proto scientist - way ahead of his time - with a background matching closely my own beliefs about the true origin of the polymath. It offers a whole new perspective on what the Bard actually knew in addition to writing poems and plays

People often ask themselves, why study literature. What’s the use?

This is the only book I have ever read that attempts to show how literature applies to leadership and management. The authors, one a professor of Shakespearian literature, and the other a management consultant, attempts to show how Shakespeare’s play contain practical lessons for leaders.

The chapter I liked most talks about how and why the CEO doesn’t always want their successor to succeed, and how they sometimes sabotage their successor’s success.

De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem ["On the Fabric of the Human Body in Seven Books"] will likely catch you by surprise since, unlike most books featured on this website, this one was printed back in 1543. Fortunately, this means that anyone with a working Internet connection and web browser can access this mystifying medical atlas from the sixteenth century. Annotated editions of On the Fabric of the Human Body are available online from numerous medical colleges, so please take the time to find and appreciate this masterpiece of anatomy and artistic imagination.

This book is a beautifully illustrated work of art. I absolutely adore the well-chosen excerpts from some of the Bard's most famous plays, including his fantasy ones (The Tempest and Midsummer Night’s Dream). This book contains some of the most beautiful passages in the English language. If you love the language of Shakespeare, you will swoon over this book. I do every single time.

A very early effort at a blood-soaked Roman tragedy written (at least partly) by England’s poet laureate. It throws its characters into a boiling cauldron of destructive evil, devising ghastly ways of killing most of them, and features one of the Elizabethan theatre’s most uncompromising villainous monsters, the racially profiled Aaron. It is customary among Shakespeare scholars to try to disown Titus for its lurid gratuitousness, but it does contain some fine poetic writing, brief flashes of the riches to come, and an anticipation of the subtler malevolence that would come to dominate the English stage in the succeeding Jacobean era. Those inclined to celebrate chaos as a purely constructive force might profit from lingering amid Shakespeare’s horrors.

This volume of essays about Shakespeare and historical drama catalyzed my doctoral research and my first book. It has been, without a doubt, the single most influential book on my research and early career as an academic.

The contributions are all distinctive, engaging, and carefully researched–and the volume offers an excellent introduction to the contexts of historical drama and writing ‘history’ during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, covering a wide range of plays and other primary texts.

It is often one of my top recommendations for students who are starting to work on historical culture. After each encounter with this book, my mind is still left brimming with ideas to explore. 

Even though The Lord of the Rings is recognized as the classic of high fantasy, Tolkien himself was deeply influenced by Eddison’s book. It is here that the first concepts of the hero’s journey, while encased in a thrilling saga of protagonists against impossible odds are sown, and of the great worldbuilding that encapsulates such an epic.

Even though the story itself (a never-ending war between the honorable demon princes and an immortal witch king) is pure simplicity, Eddison added an amazing twist: he wrote it in 16th-century English. If you can imagine William Shakespeare writing Lord of the Rings, then this is it.

Some people may get turned off by the archaic prose, but once you get into it, the novel becomes a highly enjoyable romp, filled with action and adventure.