Here are 92 books that The Collector Collector fans have personally recommended if you like
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Visits to galleries, museums, and castles were an integral part of my childhood. These filled me with an enduring love for art, architecture, and archaeology. My initial studies covered all areas of art history, but I became drawn to the visual cultures of the Islamic world. I have been lucky enough to live and work in different parts of the Middle East. I am committed to sharing knowledge about the arts and archaeology of the Islamic world through books, exhibitions, and websites. I have always enjoyed fiction that involves art as part of a story, and the selections in this list are my current favorites. I hope you enjoy them!
It was only on a second attempt at reading it that I really appreciated this complex and wonderful book. Opening with the description of the murder of a manuscript gilder in sixteenth-century Istanbul, this book functions at one level as a captivating mystery. It is, of course, much more than that.
Made up of first-person narratives, I loved how animals and even inanimate objects are given their own voices. In one chapter, a counterfeit gold coin reflects on the intimate (and stomach-churning) ways such precious items interact with the human body. In what other novel can you find the drawing of a tree offering reflections about whether art should represent the outer forms or inner meanings of the natural world?
The bestselling murder mystery from Orhan Pamuk, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
** PRE-ORDER NIGHTS OF PLAGUE, THE NEW NOVEL FROM ORHAN PAMUK **
Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature
Winner of the International IMPAC Dublin Award
'Wonderful' The Spectator 'Magnificent' Observer 'Unforgettable' Guardian
My Name is Red is an unforgettable murder mystery, set amid the splendour of sixteenth century Istanbul, from the Nobel prizewinning author
In the late 1590s, the Sultan secretly commissions a great book: a celebration of his life and his empire, to be illuminated by the best artists of the day - in…
The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.
The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.
Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the…
Visits to galleries, museums, and castles were an integral part of my childhood. These filled me with an enduring love for art, architecture, and archaeology. My initial studies covered all areas of art history, but I became drawn to the visual cultures of the Islamic world. I have been lucky enough to live and work in different parts of the Middle East. I am committed to sharing knowledge about the arts and archaeology of the Islamic world through books, exhibitions, and websites. I have always enjoyed fiction that involves art as part of a story, and the selections in this list are my current favorites. I hope you enjoy them!
This book is one of my favorite novels, featuring unforgettable descriptive passages. Its plot is simple, focused on the experiences of an art conservator traumatized by his experiences in World War I. During his brief stay in the Yorkshire village of Oxgodby, an ancient church is both his workplace and home.
The building becomes a potent, if mute, character in the story. The evocations of rural life are beautiful, though I was captivated by the gradual uncovering of the medieval fresco depicting the Last Judgement. These slow revelations seem to mirror the central character’s search for meaning as he rebuilds his own life. I have returned to this moving, poetic work again and again.
Penguin Decades bring you the novels that helped shape modern Britain. When they were published, some were bestsellers, some were considered scandalous, and others were simply misunderstood. All represent their time and helped define their generation, while today each is considered a landmark work of storytelling.
J. L. Carr's A Month in the Country was first published in 1980. Tom Birkin, a damaged survivor of World War One, is spending the summer uncovering a huge medieval wall-painting in the village church of Oxgodby. Joined by another veteran, employed to look for a grave outside the churchyard, he uncovers old secrets…
Visits to galleries, museums, and castles were an integral part of my childhood. These filled me with an enduring love for art, architecture, and archaeology. My initial studies covered all areas of art history, but I became drawn to the visual cultures of the Islamic world. I have been lucky enough to live and work in different parts of the Middle East. I am committed to sharing knowledge about the arts and archaeology of the Islamic world through books, exhibitions, and websites. I have always enjoyed fiction that involves art as part of a story, and the selections in this list are my current favorites. I hope you enjoy them!
The themes of regret and the unstable nature of memory stayed with me long after I had finished the book. A renowned expert on the Arabian Nights, Irwin weaves stories within stories, leaving the reader unsure about what is real and what is the product of a character’s imagination.
The unreliable narrator is a mildly successful but ultimately second-rate twentieth-century British painter who refers to a creative practice employed by the surrealists. The book took me on a wonderful journey through the artistic culture of London. Edith Sitwell, Salvador Dalí, and André Breton are just a few of the famous names who populate this surprising story.
Caspar is a mildly promising surrealist painter living in 1930s London, who secretly longs for the ordinary. He meets Caroline who seems ordinary enough until she vanishes. Caspar's obsessive quest to find her leads him into a more surreal landscape than any he could imagine. The dazzling interplay of fiction and fact-within-fiction is at the heart of this wondrous work of imagination from one of the most intriguing writers at work today.
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
Visits to galleries, museums, and castles were an integral part of my childhood. These filled me with an enduring love for art, architecture, and archaeology. My initial studies covered all areas of art history, but I became drawn to the visual cultures of the Islamic world. I have been lucky enough to live and work in different parts of the Middle East. I am committed to sharing knowledge about the arts and archaeology of the Islamic world through books, exhibitions, and websites. I have always enjoyed fiction that involves art as part of a story, and the selections in this list are my current favorites. I hope you enjoy them!
I keep returning to this collection of essays because of the elegantly stark prose style and Berger’s willingness to go against popular opinion. Who else would choose to place modernist titans like Jackson Pollock, Naum Gabo, and Paul Klee in a chapter entitled “Artists defeated by the difficulties”?
My reason for including Permanent Red here is the first chapter, “To Be an Artist,” in which Berger asks the reader to imagine lying beneath a tree on a summer day. Describing the geometry of the leaves and branches and the play of form and space, he reflects on what it means to see the world as an artist. For me, it’s the most lyrical evocation of looking as a creative act.
I am Jeff Clarke, author and graphic designer. I have always been interested in origins and beginnings, whether it be the universe, life on Earth, military aviation and ancient societies. I possess a valuable private library of my own and generally prefer to use this rather than on-line sources as the authors’ qualifications are more easily ascertainable. I design the covers for all my novels.
History Begins at Sumerexplains lucidly how the Sumerian people, particularly the city of Uruk on the banks of the Euphrates River in what is now Iraq, the city over which Gilgamesh is said to have ruled, was responsible for many world firsts.
These included the use of the wheel, literature, organised schooling, an administrative structure, and many of those features that enable the functioning of what we now would consider a true city. An example that others were soon to follow.
Which civilization had the first system of law? The first formal educational system? The first tax cut? The first love song? The answers were found in excavations of ancient Sumer, a society so developed, resourceful, and enterprising that it, in a sense, created history. The book presents a cross section of the Sumerian "firsts" in all the major fields of human endeavor, including government and politics, education and literature, philosophy and ethics, law and justice, agriculture and medicine, even love and family.
History Begins at Sumer is the classic account of the achievements of the Sumerians, who lived in what…
I have always been interested in ancient civilizations and have studied extensively from Egypt to Hebrew. One of the great mysteries is why all of our ancestors seem to be so concerned with powerful gods from other realms. Do such other realms exist? Did the ancients experience physical or spiritual phenomena? It remains a great mystery. However, as I read the ancient stories it became clear that perhaps our normal ways of interpreting their own experiences may not be entirely accurate. Perhaps they deserve another reading with a fresh set of eyes.
Black et. al. have compiled what is generally considered the definitive collection of Sumerian myths. The editors are the creme de la creme of the academic community of Sumerian literary experts, and the collection consists of works translated by them under the auspices of the University of Oxford. This book is the gold standard of mainstream literary study and understanding of Sumerian literature.
This anthology of Sumerian literature constitutes the most comprehensive collection ever published, and includes examples of most of the different types of composition written in the language, from narrative myths and lyrical hymns to proverbs and love poetry. The translations have benefited both from the work of many scholars and from our ever-increasing understanding of Sumerian. In addition to reflecting the advances made by modern scholarship, the translations are written in clear, accessible English. An extensive introduction discusses the literary qualities of the works, the people who created and copied them in ancient Iraq, and how the study of Sumerian…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I have always been interested in ancient civilizations and have studied extensively from Egypt to Hebrew. One of the great mysteries is why all of our ancestors seem to be so concerned with powerful gods from other realms. Do such other realms exist? Did the ancients experience physical or spiritual phenomena? It remains a great mystery. However, as I read the ancient stories it became clear that perhaps our normal ways of interpreting their own experiences may not be entirely accurate. Perhaps they deserve another reading with a fresh set of eyes.
Crawford expands deeply on some of the ideas presented in Kramer, and really delves into more of the cultural aspects of agriculture, architecture, and writing to name a few. She clearly thinks of these ancient people as equals with whom we could easily empathize. Indeed, the book has a timeless quality of the human spirit which rings true even in a postmodern age.
Mesopotamia produced one of the best-known ancient civilizations, with a literate, urban culture and highly-developed political institutions. In this fully revised and expanded edition of her classic text, Sumer and the Sumerians, Harriet Crawford reviews the extraordinary social and technological developments in the region from 3800 to 2000 BC. Drawing on the most up-to-date historical and archaeological sources, she provides a thematic exploration of this ancient civilization, examining its physical and historical background, changing settlement patterns, public and private architecture and cultural developments of the period. In this new edition, the chapter on Manufacturing Industries and Trade has been enlarged…
My interest in the ancient Near East began when I was about 8 years old. One day, when couldn’t find anything to do, I started paging through a book on Assyrian art that I found in one of my parents’ bookcases. I was hooked. I wanted to know what made those mysterious ancients tick. How did they understand the world they inhabited? How did they live? What made them fight so hard and so often? I became an Assyriologist in order to answer those questions, and I’ve been working toward that goal ever since.
Beyond its initial purpose to support an exhibition at the British Museum, this book offers an excellent introduction to the Assyrian Empire at the height of its power and to Ashurbanipal, the empire’s last great king. Bereton’s cogent narrative and the volume’s beautiful photographs make for an extraordinarily appealing book. It is also full of accurate, detailed information about the Assyrians, their culture, and the various people they fought and conquered.
In 669 BC Ashurbanipal inherited the world's largest empire, which stretched from the shores of the eastern Mediterranean to the mountains of western Iran. He ruled from his massive capital at Nineveh, in present-day Iraq, where temples and palaces adorned with brilliantly carved sculptures dominated the citadel mound, and an elaborate system of aqueducts and canals brought water to the king's pleasure gardens. Ashurbanipal, proud of his scholarship, assembled the greatest library in existence during his reign. Guided by this knowledge, he defined the course of the Assyrian empire and asserted his claim to be `king of the world'.
Nataša Pantović holds an MSc in Economics and is a Maltese Serbian novelist, adoptive parent, and ancient worlds’ consciousness researcher. Using stories of ancient Greek and Egyptian philosophers and ancient artists she inspires researchers to reach beyond their self-imposed boundaries. In the last five years, she has published 3 historical fiction and 7 non-fiction books with the Ancient Worlds' focus. She speaks English, Serbian, all Balkan Slavic languages, Maltese and Italian. She has also helped build a school in a remote village of Ethiopia, and has since adopted two kids, as a single mum!
Scholars have disagreed when written records become literature, yet the earliest literary authors known by name are Ptahhotep (who wrote in Egyptian) and Enheduanna (who wrote in Sumerian), dating to around 2400 BC. Enheduanna is the earliest known Female Poet. She was the High Priestess of the goddess Inanna and the moon god Nanna (Sin). She lived in the Sumerian city-state of Ur in Syria. So this would be my 3rd recommendation for all the researchers of Ancient History.
Enheduanna's contributions to Sumerian literature, include the collection of hymns known as the "Sumerian Temple Hymns", 37 tablets to be exact, from 2,700 BC. The temple hymns were the first collection of their kind, the copying of the hymns indicates that they were used long after and held in very high esteem.
Sīn or Suen (Akkadian: EN.ZU or lord-ess of wisdom) or Nanna was the goddess of the moon in the…
The earliest known author of written literature was a woman named Enheduanna, who lived in ancient Mesopotamia around 2300 BCE. High Priestess to the moon god Nanna, Enheduanna came to venerate the goddess Inanna above all gods in the Sumerian pantheon. The hymns she wrote to Inanna constitute the earliest written portrayal of an ancient goddess. In their celebration of Enheduanna's relationship with Inanna, they also represent the first existing account of an individual's consciousness of her inner life.
This book provides the complete texts of Enheduanna's hymns to Inanna, skillfully and beautifully rendered by Betty De Shong Meador, who…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I’m a science researcher and writer living in London. My research field is astrobiology and the possibility of life on other planets – it brings together lots of different areas of science with engineering and space exploration and so is deeply ‘interdisciplinary’. And as a science writer, I try to bring this same broad perspective and unifying approach to other profound questions. My fascination with understanding our own origins was sparked by my childhood growing up in East Africa, the cradle of humanity. In Origins I explored different ways that planet Earth has influenced our human story across the millennia - it’s an example of ‘Big History’.
The historian William McNeill studied the effects on world history of diseases and contact between different civilizations; ideas which have been hugely influential on other books such as Guns, Germs and Steel (above). In this book, he teams up with his son John, to deliver one of the best overviews of the grand themes and trends within human history that I’ve read.
World-historical questions such as these, the subjects of major works by Jared Diamond, David Landes, and others, are now of great moment as global frictions increase. In a spirited and original contribution to this quickening discussion, two renowned historians, father and son, explore the webs that have drawn humans together in patterns of interaction and exchange, cooperation and competition, since earliest times. Whether small or large, loose or dense, these webs have provided the medium for the movement of ideas, goods, power, and money within and across cultures, societies, and nations. From the thin, localized webs that characterized agricultural communities…
