The most recommended books about the Holy Grail

While I was literally lost a few times in the multilayered plot, I loved being caught up in this frothy, intricate fantasy!

I was in awe of how Jones juggles intergalactic politics and Earth-bound Arthurian legends with her typical deft touch and consummate skill. The story of a young British girl exploring a mysterious estate in her hometown contains plenty of twists and turns, all held together with a cast of appealing characters.

Jones’ lyrical tone, dry wit, and lighthearted touch make the occasional dark and frightening scenes tolerable for sensitive readers. 

This is an early example of mythology being used for a deliberate purpose: in this case, the promotion of Christian chivalric virtue. Full of dreamlike images and allegories, it also had a great influence on early fantasy writing, even if those creating early fantasy tales had never read it. And then, of course, there’s Monty Python.

This novel gets to the heart of football’s importance to communities, in this case a small Scottish industrial town beset by poverty and unemployment in the 1950s.

In this comic novel Jenkins writes simply but evocatively about football, about its emotion, and its beauty.

But perhaps more importantly, his writing focuses on the town’s people and their relationships, with each other and with the town’s Junior football team as they dream of winning the Scottish Junior Cup.

While it would be unwise to overly romanticize how football was in the past, at the same time looking back does make you question whether everything about the modern game should be interpreted as progress.

I first read this book while at university. I re-read it after touring the Langue d’Òc region of France focusing on the folklore surrounding Mary Magdalene. This book advances the hypothesis that the historical Jesus married Mary Magdalene and travelled to the south of France, where their children married into nobility and established what became known as the Merovingian dynasty. This book provided a source of information as well as support, given my subject matter and the two entwining histories: the biblical era of Jesus and the 13th C siege of Montsegur. Its extensive bibliography provided a rich source of research, including academic articles, essays, and books.

Mark Twain’s King Arthur time travel novel led to numerous others.

While Twain’s novel is more of a veiled attempt to depict his own time, other authors have depicted Camelot as a utopian place and asked what the world would be like if it had not fallen. In The Forever King, a young boy, Arthur Blessing, turns out to be a reincarnated King Arthur. He travels back in time to Camelot to try to restore its past glory.

He failed in the past, but with the help of the Holy Grail, he is determined not to fail again. The novel led to two sequels. Like all these time travel novels, the goal is to change the past to create a better future. But utopias are always hard to achieve.

When wanting to understand the legend of Parzifal and the Grail, you can’t do better than Joseph Campbell. 

Not only does he retell the legendary story in an engaging way, but he draws on the different versions of it with ease and grace to bring more understanding, meaning, and context to its place in our own narrative.  

Bernard Cornwell’s fight scenes are what I would call emotional rather than technical. You feel his fights, the vibration of sword against shield, the panic of your feet slipping in the mud, the fear rising up in your guts that will allow only a half-crazed scream to come out of your mouth. If you’re looking for a manual on sword fighting, Cornwell is not your man. But if you want to be put in a character’s armor while someone is trying to skewer him with a spear, no one does it better. I was drawn to this book because it was about an archer, and I know how hard it is to write fight scenes with archers in them. I am an amateur bowyer and having made more than a few bows I know how much skill it takes to make and use these weapons. Cornwell did a lot of… show more.

This book is a blast to read and also packed with insight (the Holy Grail, no?) It’s a collection of short chapters on a wide range of questions that either a baby or seasoned memoirist might ask. How do I find my voice? How do I organize my material? Am I betraying my family? (When Karr asked her own mom if she minded being outed as a knife-wielding alcoholic who set her children’s toys on fire, Mrs. Karr apparently replied: “Oh hell, the whole town knew about that.”) Karr draws on her extensive experience as a best-selling memoirist and teacher of memoir, serving up hard-won wisdom and concrete practical advice. Reading The Art of Memoir is like trapping a celebrity genius in a hotel bar and getting the unvarnished version. You’ll love it.

Harry Dresden is a detective in modern day Chicago. He’s also a wizard.

Jim Butcher twists the fantasy genre by setting the story in modern times but creating an international subculture of vampires, Sidhe, archangels, demons, bigfoot, and pretty much any other mysterious bit of folklore. Heck, you’ll even meet Hades!

This series has hooked me from the beginning but not just because of all the mystical, cool, fantasy, creepy, awesomeness. It’s the cast of characters that connect so deeply with me. In Skin Game, Harry begins to fear that the use of his power is changing him, turning him into something of a monster. In a sense, he’s questioning his humanity and his heart.

I have gone through this self-exploration so many times. When I read Skin Games, I found myself in tears because Harry’s plight so closely connected with my own. It was deeply encouraging. Oh, and by… show more.

I can never understand why so many critics and readers are snooty about Dan Brown. For me, he does what every good storyteller should do: takes you on a page-turning journey. And his style is both readable and erudite, whatever the snobs might say.

Although this could technically be described as a crime thriller, it remains perhaps Brown’s best action-adventure so far, and regardless of whether Tom Hanks is your idea of Professor Robert Langdon or not, the thrills just keep on coming as you follow breathlessly through the streets and landmarks of Paris, London and beyond. Stylish and swaggering.