an (online) cabinet of curiosities

Fiction:

• The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas (for good old-fashioned revenge)

• Julius Caesar and Richard II, both 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

• Medici Money: Banking, Metaphysics, and Art in Fifteenth-Century Florence, by Tim Parks

• Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic, by Tom Holland