I practice the endurance sport of museum marathons, and sometimes the friends I drag along with me tell me my stories on painters and pieces of art are helpful in appreciating them (though they also tell me I spend too long in there!) so I'm sharing some of them in this blog.
Fiction:
The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas (for good old-fashioned revenge)
Julius Caesar, by William Shakespeare (for political drama, but poetic)
Dune, by Frank Herbert (for exquisite worldbuilding)
Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas, by Machado de Assis (for the memoir of a very bitter man, written by him after death)
Non-fiction:
Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman, by Robert K. Massie
The Chosen Few: How Education Shaped Jewish History, 70-1492, by Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein
Long Walk to Freedom, by Nelson Mandela
Leadership in War: Essential Lessons from Those Who Made History, by Andrew Roberts
The Secret World: A History of Intelligence, by Christopher Andrew