This week's menu: November 19th-24th

It's time for our ninth week of exciting new fiction from all over the place,

encompassing centuries' worth of stories in multiple forms, embodying multiple themes -

get ready to broaden your literary horizons, because here's what's coming up!

The 1980s were an exciting decade in the world of fiction, with sideways forays into the exciting world of science-fiction equally matched by juicy gritty reads which took a long, hard look at the world around them. I've been looking around to find the best the decade has to offer, and my top pick comes right from the start: Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose is a medieval monastery murder mystery originally published (in Italian!) in 1980. It's also a frightfully clever work drawing together all sorts of intellectual literary techniques and fields of study. Hope you enjoy it! If you've already had a go at this famous text, why not try Alice Walker's equally influential The Color Purple (an unflinchingly explicit investigation of attitudes to African-American women in the early 20th century), or playwright Tom Stoppard's biggest 80s work, The Real Thing?

Ah, well. If this post had been up as scheduled, two weeks ago, then this one would've fallen on my birthday. Hence - celebrations! But Christmas is round the corner, so why not have our celebrations now anyway? When we think of festive writing, one writer who undoubtedly springs quickly to mind is Charles Dickens, so naturally I'll be reading him on Tuesday - not a carol, though, but a tree: A Christmas Tree. Dickens' short story is sometimes heralded as a counterpart to his more famous Christmas work, and consists of an elderly narrator reminiscing on Christmases past. Dickens has a clever thematic twist up his sleeve, as each reminiscence links to an ornament on the Christmas tree. If it's not sounding like your cup of tea, feel free to pursue AIJOSI Raczka's festive haikus in Santa Clauses, or release your inner child with David Baddiel's recent children's book Birthday Boy.

It's an interesting concept, if you think about it. Don't stories rely on interactions between characters? What happens if you remove all those other characters and just focus on the one protagonist, all alone without any help or company? I guess we'll find out, because to demonstrate the idea I'll be sampling some of Gerard Donovan's book Julius Winsome, whose protagonist lives all alone in a cabin in the woods with his dog... until one day, when he wakes up to find the dog has been shot, and Julius feels obliged to take his revenge. If that's all sounding a bit portentous, then have I got some alternative reads for you: Michelle Magorian's Goodnight Mister Tom is a kids' book with a difference, a poignant tale of WW2 evacuation, and Kashuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day which is on just about every syllabus going, and for good reason. 

I went down to the University of Oxford open day back in June, and had such a fun time in the first of their 20-minute taster lectures that I sat through the second as well. In that second lecture, they were talking about a really intriguing, not very well known medieval text called The Erl of Tolous (The Earl of Toulouse) - so we're gonna give that a go today. A traditional medieval chivalric romance which embellishes its true source material, it is a narrative about the Queen of Almayne, who is accused of adultery by the two knights whom she rejected. Her innocence is asserted by a champion, who the King later discovers to be his old enemy, the eponymous earl. Alternatively, there are a couple of good finds from the Balliol College reading list that you could sample: from opposite ends of the literary timeline, I give you that ancient classic Beowulf, and The New Oxford Book of Victorian Verse.

Despite only having technically existed as a country for a century and a half, Canada has a wide-ranging, vibrant literary history and continues to churn out classics. I'll be investigating some of the country's best literature (known as 'CanLit' to you cool cats), starting with The Selected Stories of Mavis Gallant. Regarded by those in the know as the country's best writer of short stories, Gallant was somewhat overlooked during the early stages of her career, as despite being from Montreal, she lived in France for much of her life. If short stories just aren't your bag, then my other options are Kathy Page's Dear Evelyn, which won the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize (which celebrates the very best of Canadian literature) only last week, or Mary Novik's historical novel Conceit, which is about the 17th century London metaphysical poet John Donne's daughter Peggy.

Ah, here we go! My all-time favourite literary genre is a swirling maelstrom of imagery and symbolic ingredients - pick your favourite ones, inject a chilling dose of 'the uncanny' (Freud's term for 'the psychological experience of something as strangely familiar, rather than simply mysterious'), and you're good to go. For Saturday's festivities, we'll be diving headfirst into possibly the best known example of contemporary Gothic writing, Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories. The stories aim to 'extract the latent content' from traditional fairytales, notably subverting the 'weak female' stereotype found in both fairy stories and Gothic fiction (in the sexualised form of the virginal maiden archetype in the latter). If you'd prefer something else, try William Beckford's Orient-inspired Vathek or Horace Walpole's Gothic blueprint The Castle of Otranto.

For more recommended Gothic reads, please check out last week's post on it here. I hope you enjoy this week's texts - they certainly look la creme de la creme - and I'll be back in about two weeks' time (FINGERS CROSSED!) to share my thoughts on this tasty-looking banquet of books. Until then, feel free to follow me on Twitter @Banquetofbooks for notifications and updates, and happy reading!