Here are 34 books that The Odes of John Keats fans have personally recommended if you like The Odes of John Keats. Book DNA is a community of 13,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Destiny's Journey

Ruth Schwertfeger Author Of A Nazi Camp Near Danzig: Perspectives on Shame and on the Holocaust from Stutthof

From my list on authors shaped by education in medicine.

Why am I passionate about this?

I find that one of the advantages of having worked as a professor (now Emerita ) of German at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, is that it helped me gain perspective. When I study literature–especially in languages other than English–I am forced to step outside of my everyday world to identify the motif and leitmotif of the author. I am proposing that the medical training of these five authors helped them do the same: to dig below the surface to find other structures and root causes and to present their findings and unique diagnoses.  

Ruth's book list on authors shaped by education in medicine

Ruth Schwertfeger Why Ruth loves this book

Döblin was a practicing Jewish psychiatrist in Berlin when the Nazi regime drove him and his family into exile in France. Already an established and prolific writer, he was forced into a clandestine existence on the run in France. 

This memoir essentially depicts the anatomy of life in exile, the isolation from community, whether in France or later as one of the many exiles from Nazi Germany living and working as writers for the film industry in Hollywood. Döblin returned after the war to work in the French zone of a shattered Germany in the uniform of a French officer. His commentary is a masterpiece of psychological analysis both at the personal and collective level. 

By Alfred Döblin , Edna McCown (translator) ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Destiny's Journey as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Reissued as a paperback by Plunkett Lake Press, Destiny's Journey is a memoir reconstructed partly from notebooks that Döblin kept from the time he worked in the French Ministry of Information in the spring of 1940 and partly written without notes in Los Angeles where he took refuge during the Second World War. It tells the personal and generational story of the flight of Jewish and anti-Nazi intellectuals from Europe to America, their fear and frustration, isolation, and inability to work. Döblin’s story differs from that of other Jewish intellectuals and artists in that his family converts to Catholicism in…


If you love The Odes of John Keats...

Book cover of December on 5C4

December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

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…

Book cover of Trust: Knowing When to Give It, When to Withhold It, How to Earn It, and How to Fix It When It Gets Broken

Ruth Schwertfeger Author Of A Nazi Camp Near Danzig: Perspectives on Shame and on the Holocaust from Stutthof

From my list on authors shaped by education in medicine.

Why am I passionate about this?

I find that one of the advantages of having worked as a professor (now Emerita ) of German at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, is that it helped me gain perspective. When I study literature–especially in languages other than English–I am forced to step outside of my everyday world to identify the motif and leitmotif of the author. I am proposing that the medical training of these five authors helped them do the same: to dig below the surface to find other structures and root causes and to present their findings and unique diagnoses.  

Ruth's book list on authors shaped by education in medicine

Ruth Schwertfeger Why Ruth loves this book

Written by a clinical psychologist with a keen eye for dissection, Cloud explores the concept of trust and its components, which he presents as understanding, motive, ability, character, and track record.

The loss of trust is a key issue in today’s world, and this author puts the personal and societal implications under his microscope. Cloud’s book will make you think twice before you make a major decision.  

By Henry Cloud ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Trust as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Trust is the fuel for all of life. We are wired biologically, neurologically, emotionally, spiritually, and psychologically to trust. Trust is the currency that drives every relationship, beginning with the foundational bond between infants and their mothers, extending to the trust networks that undergird every human endeavour - art, science, commerce - and binding together every relationship we have ever had or ever will have. Nothing in our world works without trust.

It is tempting to think that trust is simple, that we should be able to spot a lack of trustworthiness relatively easily. But we all have our stories…


Book cover of At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances

Ruth Schwertfeger Author Of A Nazi Camp Near Danzig: Perspectives on Shame and on the Holocaust from Stutthof

From my list on authors shaped by education in medicine.

Why am I passionate about this?

I find that one of the advantages of having worked as a professor (now Emerita ) of German at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, is that it helped me gain perspective. When I study literature–especially in languages other than English–I am forced to step outside of my everyday world to identify the motif and leitmotif of the author. I am proposing that the medical training of these five authors helped them do the same: to dig below the surface to find other structures and root causes and to present their findings and unique diagnoses.  

Ruth's book list on authors shaped by education in medicine

Ruth Schwertfeger Why Ruth loves this book

A professor of Medical Law and prolific writer, McCall has entertained and delighted many readers in the UK. He is at his most amusing when he dissects the learned community. His depiction of the anatomy of academic pomposity is essential reading for anyone who has ever stood behind a podium. Yet his satire is never bitter or mean-spirited. 

The book listed above is guaranteed to make you laugh, whether you are a student who is required to take certain humanities courses from an indescribably boring professor or a colleague of one. Sadly, you will quickly recognize that your obsession with irregular verbs in another language places you in the same surgical ward. 

By Alexander McCall Smith ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The third novel in the 'Portuguese Irregular Verbs' trilogy sees von Igelfeld suffering the slings of academic intrigue as a visiting fellow at Cambridge, and the arrows of outrageous fortune in an eventful Columbian adventure. Between trips, von Igelfeld returns to his beloved Regensburg only that to discover while he has been away his murine colleagues have been at play.


If you love Helen Vendler...

Book cover of Crossing: A Chinese Family Railroad Novel

Crossing by Lisa Redfern,

Crossing is a vividly human re-imagining of the love, sacrifices, and accomplishments that two Chinese brothers - American Immigrants - experience as they travel to California to build the Transcontinental Railroad. 

Book cover of Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov

Ruth Schwertfeger Author Of A Nazi Camp Near Danzig: Perspectives on Shame and on the Holocaust from Stutthof

From my list on authors shaped by education in medicine.

Why am I passionate about this?

I find that one of the advantages of having worked as a professor (now Emerita ) of German at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, is that it helped me gain perspective. When I study literature–especially in languages other than English–I am forced to step outside of my everyday world to identify the motif and leitmotif of the author. I am proposing that the medical training of these five authors helped them do the same: to dig below the surface to find other structures and root causes and to present their findings and unique diagnoses.  

Ruth's book list on authors shaped by education in medicine

Ruth Schwertfeger Why Ruth loves this book

I recommend these short stories for both younger and older readers. In the latter case, they may well be re-reads and if so, they are essential reading in that they lead the reader to reevaluate past aspirations and ambitions. Chekhov’s medical training is immediately apparent in his uncanny ability to dissect both personal and societal issues. 

Though the diagnosis is frequently abrupt and unexpected, the treatment is less obvious. For example, in Gooseberries, written in 1898 as part of a trilogy, the reader is left with no doubt about the diagnosis of the social pretentiousness and even cruelty of the central character, but the possibility that happiness is elusive lingers like the pervasive smell of tobacco on the armchair. These stories are a must-read by the fireside on a rainy night, with the wind howling outside.  

By Anton Chekhov , Richard Pevear (translator) , Larissa Volokhonsky (translator)

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, the highly acclaimed translators of War and Peace, Doctor Zhivago, and Anna Karenina, which was an Oprah Book Club pick and million-copy bestseller, bring their unmatched talents to The Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov, a collection of thirty of Chekhov’s best tales from the major periods of his creative life.
 
Considered the greatest short story writer, Anton Chekhov changed the genre itself with his spare, impressionistic depictions of Russian life and the human condition. From characteristically brief, evocative early pieces such as “The Huntsman” and the tour de force “A Boring Story,” to his…


Book cover of Kin Types

Joy Neal Kidney Author Of Meadowlark Songs

From my list on compelling poetic genealogy.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am the keeper of the family stories, letters, photos, terrible telegrams, and diaries. What began as genealogy and chasing ancestors became a desire to learn the personal stories behind the names and dates, what their lives were like, and what character traits I may have inherited from them. 

Joy's book list on compelling poetic genealogy

Joy Neal Kidney Why Joy loves this book

This was my first eye-opening introduction to family history imaginatively shared through lyric poetry, prose poetry, and flash prose. 

Stories of women and men from Michigan to Illinois to the Netherlands, women dealing with infant mortality, vanity, housewife skills, divorce and other hidden stories, even a brave heroine saving a family's home. 

By Luanne Castle ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Kin Types as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Eric Hoffer Award Finalist Kin Types is a collection of lyric poetry, prose poetry, and flash prose that imaginatively retells the lives of private individuals from previous generations. Using family history research, the writer has reconstructed the stories of women and men from Michigan to Illinois to the Netherlands. Read together, the pieces create a history of women dealing with infant mortality, vanity, housewife skills, divorce, secret abortion, the artist versus mother dilemma, mysterious death, wife beating, and a brave heroine saving a family's home.


Book cover of Hafiz and His Contemporaries: Poetry, Performance and Patronage in Fourteenth Century Iran

James Howard-Johnston Author Of The Last Great War of Antiquity

From my list on Iran, past and present.

Why am I passionate about this?

My career has taken me zero millimeters from a large college, Christ Church, to a small, adjacent one, Corpus Christi, in 1971. In my mind, though, I have crisscrossed the world, leaping back in time to late antiquity and the Middle Ages, and nowhere proved more fascinating than Iran, which I have visited twice, in 1998 and 2002. I have written about different facets of its history at the end of antiquity, in particular its dominant role in the India trade and the coming of the Arabs.

James' book list on Iran, past and present

James Howard-Johnston Why James loves this book

Great writers of the past are revered in Iran, none more so than Hafiz. One of the most magical places in the country is the garden around his alabaster tomb in Shiraz. Dominic Brookshank whisks one far from the Western present into an extraordinary world of high culture in Shiraz in the fourteenth century.

He has helped me understand Hafiz’s ghazals, short lyric poems full of cryptic allusions. I am still dumbfounded at what they reveal of small elite gatherings of the court, at which wine is drunk (and praised), and Hafiz casts rapt, homoerotic gazes at young males. What an extraordinary disjunction with ordinary life in the Islamic world!

By Dominic Parviz Brookshaw ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Hafiz and His Contemporaries as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Despite his towering presence in premodern Persian letters, Shams al-Din Muhammad Hafiz of Shiraz (d. 1390) remains an elusive and opaque character for many. In order to look behind the hyperbole that surrounds Hafiz's poetry and penetrate the quasi-hagiographical film that obscures the poet himself, this book attempts a contextualisation of Hafiz that is at once socio-political, historical, and literary. Here, Hafiz's ghazals (short, monorhyme, broadly amorous lyric poems) are read comparatively against similar texts composed by his less-studied rivals in the hyper competitive, imitative, and profoundly intertextual environment of fourteenth-century Shiraz. By bringing Hafiz's lyric poetry into productive, detailed…


If you love The Odes of John Keats...

Book cover of Almost Home

Almost Home by Howard Means,

Almost Home is a fictional retelling of the last great tragedy of the Civil War.

In late April 1865, almost 2,000 newly freed Union prisoners of war are packed onto the steamer Sultana, in poor repair and with a listed capacity of 376 passengers. Among them are four Indiana soldiers…

Book cover of Dover Beach and Other Poems

Cassia Hall Author Of Songs of Love & Longing: Poem & Songs from the Seasons Cycle

From my list on romantic fantasy poetry to make you swoon and sigh.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up loving the works of Shakespeare and the Romantic poets. Now I write romantic fantasy with a lyrical, fairy-tale vibe. The Seasons Cycle is a spin-off series from my main Lake Traveler saga. My poetry includes Poems of Myth & Magick, and Songs of Love & Longing. I compose songs and background music for key scenes in my stories. My music has been described as GoT meets LoTR with a lyrical twist and a musical theatre vibe. You can check out my songs and instrumental pieces on my youtube channel and my music website.

Cassia's book list on romantic fantasy poetry to make you swoon and sigh

Cassia Hall Why Cassia loves this book

"The Forsaken Merman" is one of the most beautiful and saddest fantasy poems I have ever read. Being a songwriter, I have a keen ear for music in words. This is a lyrical poem that sings in rhyme and meter. It’s a tragic song to love lost. The longing is real. You will feel it and you will be moved by it.

By Matthew Arnold ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Dover Beach and Other Poems as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Dover Beach & Other Poems (94) by Arnold, Matthew [Paperback (2012)]


Book cover of Pioneer Species

Deirdre Heekin Author Of An Unlikely Vineyard: The Education of a Farmer and Her Quest for Terroir

From my list on wine, love, and landscape.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a winegrower, farmer, writer, photographer, and pop-upeuse. I fell in love with food and wine while living and working in Italy, then returned stateside to create an homage to the people and place that embraced us and taught us so much. That endeavor--the restaurant osteria pane e salute opened with my chef husband Caleb Barber—was where I curated the wine program and became passionate about wines farmed artfully. I began working as a winegrower in 2007, a personal landscape experiment that led me down the rabbit hole of growing and making wine from hybrid varieties focused on regenerative viticulture and low intervention winemaking.

Deirdre's book list on wine, love, and landscape

Deirdre Heekin Why Deirdre loves this book

Pioneer Species is a book of poems by friend and farmer-poet Ross Thurber. A small vineyard I work with in southern Vermont, my own agricultural essay and investigation on a sense of place different than my own, is part of Ross’s Lilac Ridge Farm. Like Mary Oliver, Ross is intensely bound to the natural and cultivated world of his farm in which he lives and his poems capture a language that brings forward the light, the shadow, the fog, the till, the butterfly, the flower, the cow. I am constantly inspired by his poems to be out in my own fields and to contemplate and communicate my own place in them. A delicious collection about a deeply personal and lyrical view of farm life.

By Ross Thurber ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Pioneer Species as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This collection of poems from Vermont farmer Ross Thurber is divided into four sections: "Green Popplewood," "Sunburnt Juniper," "Stag Horn Sumac," and "Snow Melt, Black Brook." Each section represents a seasonal form of succession that is both literal and abstract. Ultimately the poems in this manuscript have been winnowed to represent a narrative that echoes the idea that, like a lyric poem, stability is only a moment in time―one to be cherished.


Book cover of Mega-Galaxies

Lucille Lang Day Author Of The Cosmos and Me

From my list on discovering your place in the universe.

Why am I passionate about this?

Starting in childhood, I wanted to know more about the universe and the creatures of Earth, and I often asked adults questions that they couldn’t answer. At age six, I started writing poetry to record my thoughts and observations. I had a turbulent adolescence marked by juvenile delinquency, marriage at age 14, and teen motherhood. Where does one go from there? Back to school! After finishing high school, I studied science in college, hoping to learn answers to some of those early questions. Ultimately, I earned a Ph.D. in science/mathematics education and also continued studying and writing poetry. The books on my list embody my enthusiasm for science and poetry. 

Lucille's book list on discovering your place in the universe

Lucille Lang Day Why Lucille loves this book

In the title poem of Mega-Galaxies, Coleman compares galaxies weighing a billion times more than our sun to individual humans lined up side by side in their boxes in a Zoom meeting.

Think about that: we each contain the limitlessness of the universe! This reminds me of Walt Whitman, who called himself “a kosmos.” I first discovered Coleman’s poetry in 2019 when the anthology she edited, HERE: Poems for the Planet, was published, and I immediately recognized her as a kindred poet.

She is concerned with both understanding the universe and preserving the ecosystems of Earth—all the interrelated plants, animals, and microorganisms, both the humble and the magnificent.

Mega-Galaxies is a slender volume; I look forward to reading more of Coleman’s work.

By Elizabeth J. Coleman ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Mega-Galaxies as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Elizabeth J. Coleman's chapbook length poetry collection Mega-Galaxies, selected as winner of the Driftwood PressAdrift Chapbook Prize by Matthew Olzmann, is a lyrical exploration of ageing, community, and the natural world.

Coleman's free verse and musical poems blend scientific research and lived experience in unique and interesting ways.

This collection, in its exploration of life, is tender and full of images, with themes of natural preservation, travel, music, art, religion, and ageing. The speaker travels through spaces, with a focus on New York City, illuminating the beauty of our world and its creatures.

Coleman's voice is wise and prophetic, as…


If you love Helen Vendler...

Book cover of Creativity, Teaching, and Natural Inspiration

Creativity, Teaching, and Natural Inspiration by Mark Doherty,

I have woven numerous delightful and descriptive true life stories, many from my adventures as an outdoorsman and singer songwriter, into my life as a high school English teacher. I think you'll find this work both entertaining as well as informative, and I hope you enjoy the often lighthearted repartee…

Book cover of Felon: Poems

Keri Blakinger Author Of Corrections in Ink: A Memoir

From my list on to read in prison.

Why am I passionate about this?

Now, I’m a journalist who covers prisons—but a decade ago I was in prison myself. I’d landed there on a heroin charge after years of struggling with addiction as I bumbled my way through college. Behind bars, I read voraciously, almost as if making up for all the assignments I’d left half-done during my drug years. As I slowly learned to rebuild and reinvent myself, I also learned about recovery and hope, and the reality of our nation’s carceral system really is. Hopefully, these books might help you learn those things, too.

Keri's book list on to read in prison

Keri Blakinger Why Keri loves this book

I read so much poetry in prison—words about survival, and loss, and absence. But one thing I did not read was poetry about people who’d been in prison like me, and wish I had. This poetry collection wasn’t out then, but I think I would have loved it if it were. 

By Reginald Dwayne Betts ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Felon as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In fierce, agile poems, Felon tells the story of the effects of incarceration-canvassing a wide range of emotions and experiences through homelessness, underemployment, love, drug abuse, domestic violence, fatherhood and grace-and, in doing so, creates a travelogue for an imagined life. Reginald Dwayne Betts confronts the funk of post-incarceration existence in traditional and newfound forms, from revolutionary found poems created by redacting court documents to the astonishing crown of sonnets that serves as the volume's radiant conclusion.


Book cover of Destiny's Journey
Book cover of Trust: Knowing When to Give It, When to Withhold It, How to Earn It, and How to Fix It When It Gets Broken
Book cover of At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances

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