Here are 100 books that The Name of the Rose fans have personally recommended if you like
The Name of the Rose.
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I have always loved stories about King Arthur–what’s not to love–Arthurian stories are about the underdog triumphing, destiny, knights and quests, swords (and stones, or lakes), great heroes and villains, and magic. My university studies made me into a military historian (among other things–including an opera singer and a historian of film), and I loved revisiting my love of Arthur in various guises. I have sung him on stage, played him in roleplaying games and miniature wargames, and I have written articles and books about him in film and history. I hope my list of recommendations provokes you to think about King Arthur in new ways!
There have been too many novels featuring the story of King Arthur to count; this is my favorite. I found it (and the following two books in the series) really captured the idea of who Arthur was, why he was needed, and why he did what he did at the time for me.
It was the first Cornwell novel I read, and he has become my favourite novellist. I think he writes battle scenes better than anyone–he puts you in the middle of the action and makes you feel the visceral nature of combat (especially in his Arthurian and medieval books). If anyone is looking for a place to start with Arthurian fiction but doesn’t know where to begin, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this book and series.
Uther, the High King of Britain, has died, leaving the infant Mordred as his only heir. His uncle, the loyal and gifted warlord Arthur, now rules as caretaker for a country which has fallen into chaos - threats emerge from within the British kingdoms while vicious Saxon armies stand ready to invade. As he struggles to unite Britain and hold back the Saxon enemy, Arthur is embroiled in a doomed romance with beautiful Guinevere.
I have always loved historical fiction as a reader, but my passion to write it caught fire during the years I lived in Venice, Italy, when I discovered the curious institution of the ballot boy within the Byzantine complexities of the thousand-year Venetian Republic. Since ballot boys were randomly chosen over a period of six hundred years, choosing my particular Doge and ballot boy required a survey of the entire field before I circled in on Venice, 1368, IMHO the peak brilliance of that maritime empire. It is a peculiarity of history that the names of all 130 doges of Venice are recorded, but none of their ballot boys are mentioned. The challenge was irresistible.
It’s not Hadrian’s love affair with the beautiful boy Antinous that swept me off my feet, nor the way Hadrian makes him a god after his mysterious death and builds a city dedicated to worshiping him.
That’s only a small part of a book overflowing with the emperor’s interior life, his fears and doubts and dreams. Yourcenar spent most of her life on and off writing this book, her life’s work. Filled with the exhilaration and perplexity of achieving absolute power and then holding onto it, we experience Hadrian as a profoundly paradoxical genius from the inside out.
Framed as a letter from the Roman Emperor Hadrian to his successor, Marcus Aurelius, Marguerite Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian is translated from the French by Grace Frick with an introduction by Paul Bailey in Penguin Modern Classics.
In her magnificent novel, Marguerite Yourcenor recreates the life and death of one of the great rulers of the ancient world. The Emperor Hadrian, aware his demise is imminent, writes a long valedictory letter to Marcus Aurelius, his future successor. The Emperor meditates on his past, describing his accession, military triumphs, love of poetry and music, and the philosophy that informed his powerful…
I am a retired university professor who taught creative writing at the Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade, and a not-yet-retired author, although I have on several occasions solemnly stated that I have written my last prose book. I believe these two qualities make me competent to create a list of 5 books that I have reread the most often.
This is, in my humble view, the best science fiction novel ever written. I have read it no less than ten times so far and intend to keep rereading it. What nowadays seems incredible is that it was written back in 1961, when most science fiction was still in its age of innocence, full of naïve assumptions about extraterrestrials and their malevolent ambitions.
It will be many years before the first ideas of benevolent aliens appear and even more before we fully realize Lem's wisdom from Solaris: there isn't going to be any First Contact because Others are neither bad nor good, but indifferent, as it is the planetary intelligent ocean on Solaris. We aren't still mature enough even for contacts with ourselves, let alone Others.
When Kris Kelvin arrives at the planet Solaris to study the ocean that covers its surface he is forced to confront a painful, hitherto unconscious memory embodied in the physical likeness of a long-dead lover. Others suffer from the same affliction and speculation rises among scientists that the Solaris ocean may be a massive brain that creates incarnate memories, but its purpose in doing so remains a mystery . . .
Solaris raises a question that has been at the heart of human experience and literature for centuries: can we truly understand the universe around us without first understanding what…
I have been studying Celtic myth and history since I was in college and took a class on Arthurian literature. Drawing heavily from Irish and Welsh lore to build my “land beyond the veil” known as the Five Quarters, I have always been intrigued by the Celtic view of the land of the dead as a distinct world to which we go and then return, like two sides of the mirrored surface of a well. I hope you enjoy these mythic fantasy books as much as I did!
I read this book so many years ago, but it has stayed with me. It struck me then, as it does now, as revolutionary in that it was one of the first retellings of the Arthurian myth from the female perspective.
I took a class on Arthurian Literature in university, and the tales of the period are obviously male-dominated. But The Mists of Avalon showed me a way into the female characters in the tale, and they are fascinating.
Here is the tragic tale of the rise and fall of Camelot - but seen through the eyes of Camelot's women: The devout Gwenhwyfar, Arthur's Queen; Vivane, High priestess of Avalon and the Lady of the Lake; above all, Morgaine, possessor of the sight, the wise, the wise-woman fated to bring ruin on them all...
I am a historian at the University of St Andrews, and an expert in the history of books, media, and communication. My working life has revolved around libraries: I stacked shelves at my local university library while I was an undergraduate, and have since worked as a researcher in some hundred reading rooms in twenty countries (and I am therefore the proud owner of many library cards, expired and current). I am also an avid book collector, and have a growing collection of seventeenth and eighteenth-century books, mostly printed in my native Netherlands. Writing a history of libraries was an enjoyable tribute to those fine institutions, historic and present.
Why do our libraries, those at home, at university, or in the public library network, look the way they do? Many people would agree that books are best stored upright on shelves, spine out, but how did we come to that conclusion? This delightful book offers all the answers, and incidentally reveals more than you could ever think of to ask about the manner in which we take care of, store, and display books. It might even give you some inspiration on how to arrange your own collection.
He has been called "the poet laureate of technology" and a writer who is "erudite, witty, thoughtful, and accessible." Now Henry Petroski turns to the subject of books and bookshelves, and wonders whether it was inevitable that books would come to be arranged vertically as they are today on horizontal shelves. As we learn how the ancient scroll became the codex became the volume we are used to, we explore the ways in which the housing of books evolved. Petroski takes us into the pre-Gutenberg world, where books were so scarce they were chained to lecterns for security. He explains…
I write as Robert J. Lloyd, but my friends call me Rob. Having studied Fine Art at a BA degree level (starting as a landscape painter but becoming a sculpture/photography/installation/performance generalist), I then moved to writing. During my MA degree in The History of Ideas, I happened to read Robert Hooke’s diary, detailing the life and experiments of this extraordinary and fascinating man. My MA thesis and my Hooke & Hunt series of historical thrillers are all about him. I’m fascinated by early science, which was the initial ‘pull’ into writing these stories, but the political background of the times (The Popish Plot and the Exclusion Crisis, for example) is just as enticing.
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!
'A fictional tour de force which combines erudition with mystery' PD James
Set in Oxford in the 1660s - a time and place of great intellectual, religious, scientific and political ferment - this remarkable novel centres around a young woman, Sarah Blundy, who stands accused of the murder of Robert Grove, a fellow of New College. Four witnesses describe the events surrounding his death: Marco da Cola, a Venetian Catholic intent on claiming credit for the invention of blood transfusion;Jack Prescott, the son of a supposed traitor to the Royalist cause, determined to vindicate his father; John Wallis, chief cryptographer…
An avid reader, I began a project in 2012 to read one short story a week in supernatural mysteries, ghost stories, and quiet horror genres. I began with the classic authors: Poe, MR James, Lovecraft, Shelley, Stoker, du Maurier, etc. I began a blog, Reading Fiction Blog, and posted these free stories with my reviews (I’m still posting today). Over the years, it turned into a compendium of fiction. Today, I have nearly 400 short stories by over 150 classic and now contemporary authors in the blog Index. I did this because I wanted to learn more about writing dark fiction and who better to learn from than the masters?
I adore reading atmospheric adventures of mystery, supernatural, and ghostly powers; this book has these values in abundance. Noemi’s alluring character is smart, savvy, and admirably vulnerable. Loved her. At High House in the Mexican countryside, Noemi discovers ghostly entities repeatedly forming blisters across the walls. How mysterious and threatening; I was fascinated.
The best part of the novel for me was the emotional intelligence of the characters because their behavior is both suspiciously rational and heart-stopping clever. Gripping as all heck. This family was obsessed with a relentless desire to rule and control their destiny at all costs via Otherworld powers. Absolutely compelling. I was breathless along with Noemi at every step as she was drawn into the dangers and treacherous family secrets that threatened to kill her.
The award-winning author of Gods of Jade and Shadow (one of the 100 best fantasy novels of all time, TIME magazine) returns with a mesmerising feminist Gothic fantasy, in which a glamorous young socialite discovers the haunting secrets of a beautiful old mansion in 1950s Mexico.
He is trying to poison me. You must come for me, Noemi. You have to save me.
When glamorous socialite Noemi Taboada receives a frantic letter from her newlywed cousin begging to be rescued from a mysterious doom, it's clear something is desperately amiss. Catalina has always had a flair for the dramatic, but…
I adore historical fiction but find that it is often (like many things) still centered around male experiences. I love getting to read stories and recommend ones that bring to light women’s roles is moving society forward or the un-sung contributions women have made throughout history.
As an 80s kid, it pains a small part of me to recommend a historical fiction book that takes place in 1984, but this book goes into so much more than simply the tragic fire that destroyed part of the LA Central Library. While I found those aspects compelling, what really drew me in was the history of library sciences and how women played—and got pushed out of—the history of such beloved institutions.
There is also a nice bonus of humanity restored for all those who helped salvage as many books as they could after the tragedy. I found it to be a really gripping and informative read.
Susan Orlean’s bestseller and New York Times Notable Book is “a sheer delight…as rich in insight and as varied as the treasures contained on the shelves in any local library” (USA TODAY)—a dazzling love letter to a beloved institution and an investigation into one of its greatest mysteries. “Everybody who loves books should check out The Library Book” (The Washington Post).
On the morning of April 28, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. The fire was disastrous: it reached two thousand degrees and burned for more than seven hours. By the time it was extinguished,…
I love historical settings and detail – I love coming away from a novel feeling like I’ve also learned something about the world. But I also like lots and lots of plot and intensity. Historical fiction slash mystery novels hit the spot just right. Though my own work thus far is more on the historical fiction side, I do try to plot it like a mystery, with lots of questions, revelations, and discoveries to be made as you go along.
A gorgeous, extravagant dual-timeline historical mystery about late-20th-century academics researching a pair of (fictional) Victorian poets – did they or didn’t they?
If you like library settings, fictional documents (letters, poems – lots of poems), and a good dose of poking-fun-at-academia, you’ll love it. Yes, it is also a movie (though I can’t speak to it).
Possession is an exhilarating novel of wit and romance, at once a literary detective novel and a triumphant love story. It is the tale of a pair of young scholars investigating the lives of two Victorian poets. Following a trail of letters, journals and poems they uncover a web of passion, deceit and tragedy, and their quest becomes a battle against time.
I am a physician assistant and paramedic with ten brothers and sisters, an all-consuming love of the outdoors and adventure, and a fascination with history, particularly early US history. I love reading and writing the kind of books that I would like to read. My debut novel, Firefax, was written in large part as an escape from the horrors of serving in the hospital as a physician assistant during the delta wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. I hope it provides my readers with an escape from their own struggles as well.
Each of the heroes is a deep, fully realized person, plagued with flaws, some of them almost unforgiveable. Each character must face their own demons in this fast-paced, mysterious adventure. This book has espionage, swordplay, constant danger, friendship, even romance, everything you could wish for.
It is a swashbuckling tale following the impetuous and brave-to-a-fault D’Artagnan as he grows from an idealistic boy to a man, chasing his calling to fight among the hallowed ranks of the King’s musketeers.
"We read The Three Musketeers to experience a sense of romance and for the sheer excitement of the story," reflected Clifton Fadiman. "In these violent pages all is action, intrigue, suspense, surprise--an almost endless chain of duels, murders, love affairs, unmaskings, ambushes, hairbreadth escapes, wild rides. It is all impossible and it is all magnificent."
First published in 1844, Alexandre Dumas's swashbuckling epic chronicles the adventures of D'Artagnan, a gallant young nobleman who journeys to Paris in 1625 hoping to join the ranks of musketeers guarding Louis XIII. He soon finds himself fighting alongside three heroic comrades--Athos, Porthos, and Aramis--who…
