100 Books Like Serious Entertainments

Chibnall was a fantastic writer, and she was the authority on Orderic Vitalis, one of the most important historians of the early twelfth century.

I love this book because Chibnall uses Orderic’s history to explore the world he wrote in, a world in which monks mingled with knights and kings, and she examines the rapid social changes taking place in the early twelfth century. This book is at once an examination of Orderic’s work, a biography of a famous chronicler, and an exploration of Anglo-Norman society in the early twelfth century.

It’s a fantastic place to start if you’ve never read anything on Anglo-Norman England, and it’s a great way to deepen your knowledge if you’re already familiar with this corner of the past.

This book isn’t just about historians or history writing, but I love it because it addresses some really important questions related to history writing: why was the preservation of memory gendered labor, with different types of memorialization expected of men and women, and how was the past preserved in forms other than chronicles?

It also grapples with the fact that some events and people were purposely forgotten or intentionally left uncommemorated. This practice of collective amnesia or whitewashing the past is something I find particularly compelling. It’s a fascinating look at the gendered practices of memory, and a great reminder that chronicles were not the only means by which the past was preserved for posterity.

This is one of those books that completely changes the way you understand a subject.

Clanchy looks at how the growth of bureaucracy in England fostered the growth of literacy and changed the world in the process. That’s an important subject in its own right, but I love this book for all of the little details it includes.

It’s full of information about how the definition of literacy has changed over time, how knights and kings were educated, how courts functioned, how oral testimony was heard, how records were kept, how books were produced, how much it cost to produce them, and how forgery developed.

This is very much an academic book, but it explores a whole range of practices and attitudes that have shaped the world we live in.

Any book by Robert Bartlett is worth reading (check out The Hanged Man and Trial by Fire and Water as well), but I love this one because it examines one of the most interesting and entertaining historians of the twelfth century, Gerald of Wales.

Gerald was famously opinionated, prejudiced (mainly against the Irish – check out his History of Ireland), and gossipy. Bartlett explores Gerald’s attitudes, experiences, and works to paint a compelling picture of the wider world around him. Much like Chibnall’s book on Orderic, this is a fascinating portrait of an important historian and the complicated world he lived in.

Crispin is a young serf in Medieval England--an orphan despised by everyone for reasons he does not understand. Though I never had problems as dire as Crispin faced, I frequently felt mistreated as a child, and like him, the forest was my comfort and refuge. Like him, I had a lively curiosity about the lives of others and many times learned important lessons through observation. I shared Crispin's tendency to hero worship those who befriended me, and like him, I generally chose my role models well.

Ariès was a masterful medieval historian, and in this slim volume, based on a series of lectures he gave at Johns Hopkins University, he traced big cultural shifts in the way Western culture has thought about death and dying.

Medieval traditions lauded a so-called “tame death,” in which the dying person calmly accepted their fate, received visitors at home, and directed the rituals and ceremonies that would accompany their impending demise. Death was a normal part of domestic life, witnessed by young and old alike.

This is eventually contrasted with the modern way of dying, in which people die in hospitals, not at home, hidden away from most of a society that has come to believe people need to be shielded from sad and upsetting matters like illness and death. It is a fascinating work of history and a powerful critique of contemporary mores around mortality.     

I first came upon this book about twenty years ago, and it's one I've read cover-to-cover so many times that the cover is barely still attached.

It starts in the year 1218, when a Welsh princess, Eleyne, is born in a castle amidst a huge fire. The story follows her very eventful life through marriages, politics, and love affairs with Kings. And as you'd expect from medieval times, it's hardly plain sailing. As a woman, she doesn't hold much power over her own life, and there are many throughout the story who make it their mission to break her spirit–but no matter how hard they try or what they put her through, they all fail.

She is fierce and powerful and my rebellious side felt such a strong connection with her. It's a long book but one I'd highly recommend to anyone who loves powerful women and historical fiction. 

I enjoyed this comparatively short book as it portrays Medieval England from an unusual perspective – that of a young apprentice to a midwife in a small village.

The main character, a young girl named “Brat” (rechristened “Beetle”), serves as an apprentice to Jane the Midwife, and the book is remarkable for its incorporation of lots of fascinating detail about medieval medicine and herbal remedies associated with childbirth – a world rarely seen in children’s books.

It is difficult to imagine a list of great novels about the Middle Ages that does not include this book.

I read it first when I was in graduate school, and it brought so much of what I was studying to life – the monastic world of its setting with all its contradictions and spectacular architecture; fights over religion and the true nature of spirituality; the non-linear nature of medieval literature. 

I love how it can be read on one level as a page-turny murder mystery and on another as a post-modern novel that explores the nature of signs and meaning. Its mystificatory preface reveals the distance between the medieval world and what we can say about it.

This book is not just a rich and detailed portrait of various times and places throughout the medieval period—it explains how history itself is written, how certain stories are told (and prioritized), and how certain individuals are remembered.

From page 1, Ramirez draws you in with her irresistible storytelling, making historical figures seem like the real people they were. She corrects popular misconceptions about the Middle Ages as well as how history is itself created.

Each chapter begins with a discovery, which is just as dramatic and exciting as the medieval subject matter. I love how Ramirez paints a picture of the past using sight, sound, and smell, drawing on the evidence provided by jewelry, weaponry, coins, manuscripts, and even human remains.