Ten books to feed a well-read Renaissance mind

A university friend recently posed a tricky question to our Facebook chat group. What are the Top 10 books that could help someone become “well read”? 

This normally triggers a list of classic literature, and while some titles pop up with a high frequency, the lists will be as diverse as the people offering them. Her question got me thinking about what "well read" actually means, how much the meaning of the term has changed since my school days, and how many modern people could claim the attribute.  In a digitised world of short attention spans and fragmented interests, where British students start dropping whole disciplines in their early teens and everyone leans increasingly into the personalised content streams curated on their phone apps, does "well read" have any relevance beyond the pub quiz?

I'd argue it does. I received what was once known as a classical education, with the intent of creating a "Renaissance person" who would know a little about, and be able to converse intelligently, on anything. Anything, of course, meant Western European civilisation, dominated by giants of history who were overwhelmingly white men. Rather than doing me any harm, I like to think that the time I spent studying, digging into and debating about those things sharpened my ability to appreciate cultures beyond mine. When I encountered them, I had the intellectual curiosity to appreciate and want to learn more about the glories of  everything from West African art to ancient Indian mathematics to to Japanese literature.

So "well read" for me is a list that creates a broad base of knowledge and stimulates the desire for more. It makes you think. It gives you the ability to talk to anyone you may meet and, more importantly, ask them intelligent questions. My list, like my early education, leans to Western European culture ... because that's my culture, not because I'm denying anyone else's. But it's suffused with themes, questions and eternal truths that cut across the human experience. 

ONE Lives of the Artists, Giorgio Vasari

This is generally acknowledged to be the first work of art history, full of ripping tales of colourful people and definitive judgements that shaped the whole idea of the Renaissance. Would Michelangelo and Da Vinci still be household names without Vasari's 16th century PR spin? Who knows. In the past century battalions of art historians have argued that the Renaissance was more of a pan-European evolution than a Florentine explosion, that there were many artists just as good as Vasari's favourites, and that what was happening in Northern Europe was just as spectacular. General knowledge and the queues at the Uffizi and the Sistine Chapel, however, prove that Vasari may have been the greatest publicist of all time. Read him and make up your own mind.

TWO Persuasion, Jane Austen 

Austen is arguably the first truly modern novelist and her books remain palatable to modern audiences when so many Georgian and Victorian novels are turgid trials. She's essential for understanding the development of the novel, particularly in characterisation and dialogue. She's a master class in satire. I think this is her best work, though oddly much lesser known. (Probably because it's never had a major film treatment and hasn't had a good adaptation since the BBC's production in 1995.) It has her most searing social commentary, her hero and heroine with the most interesting character development and her most odious antagonists. But most enduring is the examination of the difference between how men and women love, and the question of whether one is hard wired to love more faithfully than the other. It could be one hell of a date night conversation.

THREE Sophie’s World, Jostein Gaarder

A surprise to everyone as the best selling book of the year in 1995, this quirky novel manages to introduce you to the entire history of Western philosophy as the key to unlocking a strange mystery. There’s more than a touch of A Wrinkle in Time here, one of my favourite children’s books and probably the first that had me asking big questions beyond the straight line of a plot. While enough of a page turner to keep you engaged as fiction, this is one that would spark amazing discussions in a book club.

FOUR And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie

Depending on how you’re counting, either Agatha Christie or William Shakespeare win the prize for the best selling author of all time. More important, perhaps, is that nobody else comes close. While almost everyone probably read one or two of her murder mysteries at school, if you haven’t read her recently you might have forgotten just how good her prose is. Lean, elegant, beautifully descriptive and exquisitely plotted and paced. She invented almost everything that’s now become the trademarks of the murder mystery genre and this, IMHO, is one of the best. If you are lucky enough to not know this plot already, your first reading will thrill you with one of the greatest plot twists of all time; completely unguessable in advance but brilliantly plausible in retrospect.

FIVE The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli

To hell with modern management books. A thoughtful acquaintance with this slim volume will give you all you need to understand and navigate organisational politics. I wouldn’t advocate some of the more ruthless options explored, but the Renaissance diplomat’s insight into power, politics and human motivation remains spot on. Replace the conquest of new cities with mergers and acquisitions, or joining a new company and having to lead a team, and it all makes sense.

SIX In the Shadow of the Sword, Tom Holland

This is a controversial one. Though Holland is a respected historian, he is not a specialist on the Islamic world and some Islamic experts question scholarship and the conclusions he draws. He is, however, a fantastic writer, having started as a novelist before taking up history full time. That makes this exploration of the history of Islam a real page turner, and I found its insights revelatory for understanding Middle Eastern conflict, terrorism, extremism and religious strife in our world today.

SEVEN To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

My favourite coming of age novel still teaches important lessons. The beloved American classic gives us both the best and the worst of human behaviour but, comfortingly, sees good prevail. It was my introduction to the difficult questions around race in America, and to the socially isolated, first encountered when the book was about 15 years’ old. I don’t think I imagined it would still be so relevant when I was the age my grandmother was then. While all the slideware of the many inclusion and diversity classes I’ve encountered in the corporate world has the right idea, getting people to read (or re-read) Mockingbird and talk about it seriously would probably have a bigger impact.

EIGHT A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson

American expat turned British citizen, former journalist, lover of and writer about the best of Britain … Bill Bryson holds a very special place in my heart. Better known for comedy, personal opinion columns and travel literature, this is his take on science. What everyone should know, presented in an entertaining, easily digestible way.  If it had been around in my university days, it might have been the “science for journalists” class we all took to cover our requirements in that daunting field.

NINE Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain

My pick for my home state of Missouri’s greatest citizen (sorry, Harry Truman), Twain is best known for his works of fiction about early America. This personal memoir is one of the first great works of travel literature. It remains wildly entertaining as a collection of great tales. Even 100 years on, however, it’s the observations of the American character and how it interacts with the rest of the world that’s particularly fascinating. And still, too often, relevant.

TEN The Lord of the Rings trilogy, JRR Tolkien

It all started here. The fantasy franchises that stream through media sites, the blockbuster movies, the computer games, the cosplay communities. But these three novels are about more than fantasy. They stand on their own as classic coming of age stories. They are glittering examples of how archaic myths get perpetually recycled. Explorations of good versus evil. And the ultimate example of creating new worlds from imagination. They're also beautifully written by a master storyteller. If you've dismissed them because you "don't do fantasy" you're missing something special.

And here are five that just missed the list: The Tale of Genji (11th c Japanese novel by a female author); Heart of Darkness (exploring how evil deeds can warp the human soul); Shakespeare’s sonnets (love, explained); Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations (wise words to live by); The Castle of Otranto (the world's first gothic novel)