Proud Knight, Fair Lady: The Twelve Lais of Marie de France

Written by: Naomi Lewis and Angela Barrett

First line: You know that in bygone times the Bretons made lays of the happenings in their land.

Why you should read this book: Over 800 years ago, French and British nobility went crazy for these fantastic stories of brave knights and fair maidens and bold romance and strange magic. Written in the twelfth century, but ostensibly based on older oral musical tradition, these "lays" offer a fairy tale picture of a nearly forgotten aesthetic of courtly love, which faithful knights should offer to beautiful ladies, without expectation of reciprocation (but with interesting results when it was returned). Including ancient examples of tropes known to modern readers (an adventure set in King Arthur's court, a werewolf hell bent on vengeance, twins separated at birth) and offering salacious details of forbidden intimacy, tragic deaths, and joyful reunions, these twelve historical tales still resonate with readers ready to step outside standard fare. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: You are a jealous old man who married a beautiful young woman and then locked her away from the world but are still convinced she's betraying you. 

The Door in the Wall

Written by: Marguerite de Angeli

First line: Robin drew the coverlet about his head and turned his face to the wall.

Why you should read this book: With his father off to war and his mother waiting on the Queen, Robin is supposed to begin his training to become a knight, but his parents didn't make plans for Robin to become so sick he lost the use of his legs, and for every servant left to care for him to die of the plague. Brother Luke, a monk who is aware of Robin's situation (and that his father has generously donated to the monk's church) comes to rescue him, not just from starving to death in his own bed, but from his sense that disability means he can do nothing and has nothing to look forward to. With the help of the Brothers, Robin soon learns to swim, read, whittle, and eventually, to walk with crutches, so that eventually he has the confidence and ability to outwit an invading army and save England.

Why you shouldn't read this book: It's a bit of a quiet book, although there is a bit of action here and there. I seem to recall my mother trying to force me to read this book 40-odd years ago and me being so bored I didn't get through the first chapter. 

Fear of Flying

Written by: Erica Jong

First line: There were 117 psychoanalysts on the Pan Am flight to Vienna and I'd been treated by at least six of them. 

Why you should read this book: A woman whose neuroticism is only overshadowed by her horniness openly cheats on her husband while recounting pretty much every single thought she's ever had about sex and perseverating about every single sexual encounter she's ever experienced. This book was considered pretty groundbreaking when it was published in 1973: a female protagonist who speaks bluntly about intercourse, her desire for it, her experience of it, her disappointment in it, and so on, plus it coined the term "zipless fuck." The plot is pretty bare bones--she goes to a conference of psychoanalysts in Vienna with her husband, immediately enters into an affair with a psychoanalyst who is not her husband, and drives around with her lover (who isn't even good at sex, or anything else as far as the story tell us), thinking about guys she's had sex with and all the things that are probably wrong with her family, with some occasional thoughts about her career as a poet and what her own problem might be. 

Why you should read this book: While it actually contains a few kernels of surprising wisdom, the writing generally feels schizophrenic and practically nothing actually happens except, I guess, the 29-year-old protagonist grows up a little bit while deciding whether to pursue a second divorce. 

Animalia & Fantasia: The Magical Worlds & Fantastic Creatures of Professor Anton Seder, an Art Nouveau Bestiary 1886-1903

Written by: Thomas Negovan

First line: The first Anton Seder Artwork that I remember seeing was a welcome shock.

Why you should read this book: Mere words cannot do justice to the luscious, full color universe depicted in the pages of this oversized art book, based primary on a fin de siecle folio of animal illustrations by a largely forgotten master of the decorative arts. A series of short essays locate the work within its historical, geographical, and artistic contexts and describe the career and philosophy of Professor Seder and his innovative Ecole superieure des arts decoratifs de Strasbourg. Most of the folio pages include multiple close-ups to offer the reader insight into the absolutely insane level of detail of these astonishing illustrations, including numerous dragons. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: The main barrier here is the price, which is about what you'd expect to pay for a 10"x13.5", 200+ page full color coffee table book in 2025, but it's a shame that starving young artists might not have access to this work. 

October, October

Written by: Katya Balen

First line: We find the owl at the very edge of our woods, the morning after the storm. 

Why you should read this book: October has always lived in the woods with her father, searching for treasure (and finding it!), climbing trees, howling at the sky, and living her intentional, wild, off-the-grid existence (now with a baby owl whose life she's saved), until the day the woman who is her mother turns up to wish her a happy birthday. Now her entire life has been turned upside down, and October is forced to confront her own prejudices while simultaneously adapting to the strange new world that is modern London and the parent whose love she has chosen to reject for so long. This is a lovely, compelling story about that magical moment in our lives where we must take accounting of the inventory of our own childhoods, and determine what should be kept for the rest of our lives and what needs to be left behind in the dustbin of history.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You think children should just do what they're told the first time you ask. 

Maurice

Written by: E. M. Forster 

First Line: Once a term the whole school went for a walk--that is to say the three masters took part as well as all the boys. 

Why you should read this book: It's the early nineteen hundreds and Maurice Hall appears to be a typical suburban English boy--strong, snobbish, eager to conform--attending public school and then Cambridge, but within himself he recognizes a strange proclivity: Maurice is a homosexual, which, at the time was both a legal crime and an almost unspeakable moral offense. At Cambridge he carries on an emotionally intimate and romantic three-year relationship instigated by his friend Clive Durham, falls deeply in love, is eventually spurned when Durham determines to be "normal" and marries a nice girl. What's remarkable about this book is that, after grieving deeply and for more than a year, Maurice's heart heals and he is able to love again, passionately and without reserve, even knowing what fate may await a man of his desires in that time and place. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: It wasn't published for a half century after it was written because you couldn't publish a story about a gay person with a happy ending a hundred years ago; this is a story for people with intellectual sensitivity and without cruel prejudice. 

The Pomegranate Gate

 Written by: Ariel Kaplan

First line: Naftaly was dreaming again, in that strange dreamlandscape where the stars whirled overhead like snow on the win and the people he met all had square-pupiled eyes.

Why you should read this book: In this powerhouse fantasy epic beginning in the Spanish Inquisition with the expulsion of the Jews, the narrative moves between that world and a parallel world populated with magical beings, a strange and even more dangerous place which both mirrors and influences the human realm. Separated from her family and the group of Jews fleeing the country, a young woman named Toba, who is both clever and clumsy stumbles through the gate into the land of the Mazik. This new place is complex, and operates by rules that Toba does not quite understand, but if she wants to survive she will have to untangle the mystery of her own past, and events that took places a thousand years before she was born. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: If you don't like really long books that end when things are getting really interesting because they're the first tome in an epic series, you shouldn't read really long books in epic series. 

Moshkeleh the Thief

Written by: Sholom Aleichem

First line: Non-Jews called him Moshke.

Why you should read this book: Billed as a "lost" novel of the great Yiddish writer (more of a short story or novella in my estimation), this is a very exciting and non-traditional kind of love story that shines a light on the once-vibrant and now-extinct world of the Jewish shtetl. Moshkele is a horse thief who is held in disdain by the entire community, a community that calls on him to solve any problem that requires wit and strength, but refuses to let him marry any of their daughters; Tsireleh is the beautiful daughter of a tavern-keeper who has seen firsthand exactly what traditional marriage has done to her sisters and determines to have no part in it. When Tsireleh runs off with a goy and takes shelter in a monastery, her father engages Moshkeleh to bring her back, unaware that Moshkeleh has been in love with Tsireleh for a long time.

Why you shouldn't read this book: Your adult child has run off.

Satan in Goray

Written by: Isaac Bashevis Singer

First line: In the year 1648, the wicked Ukranian hetman, Bogdan Chmelnicki, and his followers besieged the city of Zamosc but could not take it because it was strongly fortified; the rebelling haidamak peasants moved on to spread havoc in Tomaszow, Bilgoraj, Krasnik, Turbin, Frampol--and in Goray, too, the town the lay in the midst of the hills at the end of the world.

Why you should read this book: When news comes that the messiah has arrived in the form of a man called Sabbatai Zevi, a strange religious mania overtakes the beleaguered shtetl of Goray, where Jews have long adhered to the biblical traditions of their ancestors. Turning away from their rabbi and the old ways, the people embrace mysticism and prophets and follow kabbalists who declare that the rules of decency and morality are suspended, creating a strange, lawless world in advance of the paradise to which they believe they will soon be delivered. But Zevi is no messiah, and their prophets are less holy than they had been led to believe, and the people of Goray will not be delivered to paradise.

Why you shouldn't read this book: If you haven't got a decent grounding in European Jewish tradition or history, a lot of this probably won't make much sense. 

Carmilla

Written by: Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

First line: In Styria, we, though by no means magnificent people, inhabit a castle, or schloss.

Why you should read this book: This is a vampire novel—a gothic vampire novel—a gothic LESBIAN vampire novel—a gothic lesbian vampire novel, which predates Bram Stoker's Dracula by a quarter century, which is likely enough information to sway the type of readers who would enjoy this book. The narrator, an innocent but isolated girl who craves the friendship of other girls, is enchanted by the random beautiful stranger who appears on her land while she's mourning the death of another girl she had hoped to visit. While constantly praising her new friend's looks and engaging in constant shows of physical affection, the protagonist begins to suffer a mysterious illness exactly like the strange malady that killed her old friend.

Why you shouldn't read this book: Can't handle the thought of girls engaging in trembling embraces and soft kisses.

The Nixie of the Mill-Pond and other European Stories: A Cautionary Fables & Fairy Tales Book

Edited by: Kel McDonald and Kate Ashwin

First line: Come on, at least try to look presentable.

Why you should read this book: While many of the stories in this book will likely be familiar to western readers, they are presented in novel ways, sometimes with surprising twists. Things do not always end well, for example, with the people of Hamelin refuse to pay their debt, although Jack still manages to get away with robbery. It a fun exploration of familiar themes, accessible for modern readers. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: Some pieces of it might be a bit intense for young readers, such as the part where a cheating wife gets her nose bitten off.

Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home

Written by: Nora Krug

First line: Hansaplast is a brand of bandage developed in 1922.

Why you should read this book: Meticulous and emotional, this graphic memoir seeks to solidify evanescent memory, combining the author's own recollections with painstakingly acquired material artifacts and oral histories, as she comes to terms with her German family's experiences in the Third Reich. As a child, Krug learned in school of the Nazi regime and the Holocaust, a carefully constructed narrative of national culpability relegated to the past, but after coming to America as a young woman, she begins to wonder about the particulars of guilt: what were her own grandparents doing during the rise and power of National Socialism? Through trips to Germany, deep dives into bureaucratic records and resources, thrift shop finds, photographs, letters, and interviews, she begins to create a picture of her own ancestry and the roles of ordinary Germans in a time of great tragedy. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: Cowardice.

Wise Child

Written by: Monica Furlong

First line: Juniper was different from us.

Why you should read this book: Wise Child's mother abandoned her long ago, her father is always away at sea, and her grandmother dies when she is nine, so by the customs of her medieval Scottish village, the community gathers to determine who will care for her, and the best candidate for the job is Juniper, the unmarried woman who lives outside of town, never attends mass, is quite obviously a witch. With some apprehension, Wise Child begins a new life, learning Latin and the healing arts and cleaning up after herself and a whole host of skills she could not imagine in her old life, until she finds that she loves her new foster mother and might even want to follow in her footsteps. But there are dangers in her new life—her biological mother, who is a very different kind of witch, wants her back, and the village priest doesn't want any kind of witches alive anywhere—and Wise Child must learn to solve problems and make fast, grown-up decisions while she is still a little girl.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You are one of those completely humorless Christians who believe that anyone who doesn't attend your particular church must be in league with the devil,

Healer and Witch

Written by: Nancy Werlin

First line: On a warm April morning, a week after the terrible day on which Grand-mère Sylvie died, Sylvie walked away from her home.

Why you should read this book: Sylvie grandmother warned her to be cautious with her new healing powers, but Sylvie was only trying to help, and her failure was so terrible that she's decided her only option is to run away from home and try to find a more powerful healer to teach her how to fix her mistakes. But the year is 1531 and life is dangerous enough for a girl on her own (or even accompanied by an annoying little boy who refuses to go home), let alone one who might be accused of witchcraft if the wrong people catch wind of what she can really do. What I loved most about this book is that it was never predictable, and always went in a surprising direction with every step.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You literally believe in the devil.

Bandette volume 1: Presto!

Written by: Tobin and Coover

First line: Presto!

Why you should read this book: It's a fun graphic novel about a teenage vigilante master thief who steals for both aesthetic and social justice purposes and has a gang of street urchins who worship her and will lay their lives on the line every time she gets into a jam. Although it's an English story, the authors go to great lengths to make it feel French, from characterization and landscape but especially in the way they use language. Bandette must decide whether to trust and team up with her greatest rival, an elderly master thief called Monsieur, to defeat a much more evil guy called Absinthe. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: It's marketed for ages 15 and up, but it feels quite a bit younger in many ways.

Between Shades of Gray: The Graphic Novel

Written by: Ruta Sepetys (adapted by Andrew Donkin and Dave Kopka)

First line: They took me in my nightgown.

Why you should read this book: This brutal and heart-rending story tells of the treatment of Lithuanian people by Russian invaders before and during World War II. I just grabbed it off the shelf without realizing it was a graphic novelization of a traditional novel, and such books often have to leave out a lot of details, but this work was terrifying enough to make me cry dozens of times in the brief span it took me to consume. Lina, her mother, and her younger brother are packed into livestock cars and shipped to Siberia, where they spend years being abused and nearly worked to death.

Why you shouldn't read this book: It is very, very hard to read: the bad things that happen are so awful, and the good things are so small and infrequent and don't seem to compensate for what Lina and her family and friends go through.

White Bird

Written by: RJ Palacio

First line: Julian, no more video games.

Why you should read this book: This is a graphic novelization of one of the sections of Palacio's Augie and Me: Three Wonder Stories, which stands alone as a one-off story (with a few additions), and is currently being made into a feature film. Julian's grandmother Sarah recounts the story of how she spent the latter days of World War II as a hidden child, confined to a barn and cared for by the family of an unpopular boy who had been universally bullied when they were in school together. Sarah recounts the terror and the tender moments, ending with an admonition to always stand up to injustice and remember to be kind.

Why you shouldn't read this book: There are plenty of nonfiction hidden child narratives that aren't actually publicity materials for upcoming films. 

Buy White Bird Now

Gris Grimly's Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus

Written by: Mary Shelley and Gris Grimly

First line: You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings.

Why you should read this book: Unquestionably one of the finest (if not the best) graphic novel adaptations of a classic work of literature I've ever had the pleasure of devouring, and not only because Grimly does an excellent job of preserving the original text while judiciously cutting bits that don't serve his work and won't be missed. With Victor and Elizabeth drawn as OG gothic punks (although this does highlight the fact that Victor is also, at heart, the OG emo kid), the monster looming more physically monstrous than in any other iteration (making his depiction somehow even more sympathetically pathetic), and the whole thing being set in a world that appears simultaneously pastoral and post-apocalyptic, naturalistic and steampunk-infused, this book seems to cut to the heart meat of the tale while also reviving its antique heartbeat for a modern audience. As always, this is a story about the price of being an irresponsible white guy with more money than common sense who isn't accountable to anyone and kind of gets away with murder until he horrifyingly doesn't.

Why you shouldn't read this book: I have to admit that I grabbed it off the shelf without really looking at what I was getting, because I just saw the G G of the author's name and my brain assumed it was a book from a completely different author whose title also contains the initials G G and which also has a powerful steampunk aesthetic (God bless the Foglios, my absolutely favorite webcomic creators of all time, but they simply haven't got the control/love of darkness needed for this undertaking).

Get Gris Grimly's Frankenstein now

The Unfinished Angel

Written by: Sharon Creech

First line: Peoples are strange!

Why you should read this book: The angel has been hanging out in this sleepy town in Switzerland for a long, long time, never entirely sure what its purpose might be, or how to fulfill it, or literally anything about being an angel, but the angel is basically content with existence until the day an American girl moves into the tower where it lives. Zola, unlike most humans, can see the angel, and unlike the angel, Zola has very specific ideas about what angels are supposed to do, and, being American, has no compunction about explaining what those things are and demanding action. With Zola's eye for social justice and the angel's ability to influence the course of human behavior, life is about to improve for everyone in this part of the Swiss Alps in an inspirational story that reminds us what it is to be human and what it is to be divine.

Why you shouldn't read this book: Although the author includes specific notes about how and why the angel's imperfect voice is written as it is, I couldn't help but constantly feel like the angel seemed to talk exactly like J.Lo from Adam Rex's The True Meaning of Smekday, which was a little distracting.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Written by: Susanna Clarke

First line: Some years ago there was in York a society of magicians.

Why you should read this book: Seventeen years ago, Neil Gaiman called it, "unquestionably the finest English novel of the fantastic written in the last seventy years," and, as usual, I don't think I can improve upon Gaiman; this is truly a perfect book, the sort of book about which the only honest criticism could be that, eventually, it ends (although at 782 pages, it does its best to avoid that failing for as long as it can). While much studied by learned gentlemen in the early nineteenth century, English magic has fallen into disuse until revived by the prickly, prejudiced, and pompous Mr Norrell, a man as enamored with his own beliefs about magic as he is by magic itself, a man willing to take a critically hypocritical misstep to promote his own worldview. His only match is his talented pupil, truest friend, and occasional enemy, Jonathan Strange, a very different kind of magician with very different perspectives on thaumaturgical practice, one that holds the entirety of English magic, along with the fate of England, in the balance. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: You never read the footnotes.