This week's menu: July 2nd-7th

We're going to kick off the week, and indeed the whole of this reading challenge, with any work of fiction published this year. It's been a pretty rich year for engaging new fiction; I've chosen Mark Billingham's The Killing Habit for my pick. Released earlier this month, the book is indicative of the current trend for subverting the overdone style of crime thriller - instead, this one asks 'How do you catch a killer that is yet to kill?'. With this challenge, I'll always be suggesting alternate reads, in case you've already read the work that I pick - in this case, my backup recommendations are Mary Lynn Bracht's superb debut White Chrysanthemum and the scathing, satirical children's book A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo.

For our second course, we're going to take a look at the origins of some literary greats. Perhaps an author's first book is that tale that they've been yearning for years to share with the world — or perhaps it's like a skeletal, half-formed demonstration of their latent potential that would later be unlocked? I guess we'll find out. My pick is The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens, since I'm very ashamed to have only read one or two of his books. Dickens remains one of the country's favourite authors, so I'll be interested to see how his first published work squares up to popular stories such as Oliver Twist. If you've already enjoyed this book (and if you have, please share your opinions on it!), then I will suggest Purdah, Imtiaz Dharker's first poetry collection published in 1989, and Fred and Madge, the first performed play by Joe Orton.

Alchemy is a topic which has entranced authors, philosophers and scientists for centuries, and thus is a common theme in many works from the Renaissance right up to the present day — I've chosen to sample William Godwin's St. Leon. Written by a philosopher, it's no surprise that this 1799 book revolves around complicated themes of guilt, honour and religion. If you're already familiar with this story, my backup options for you are Ben Jonson's relentlessly satirical play The Alchemist (which I obsessed over in my last post), which depicts the greed inspired by alchemical discoveries, and JK Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, a sublime children's book enjoyed by adults, which reflects the contemporary tradition of lumping together alchemy and magic, whilst exemplifying the enduring popularity of this mysterious theme among readers of all ages.

Over the years, Ireland has supplied some of the world's finest writers, and some of the most incredible works of literature as well. In choosing a book to sample for the fourth course this week, I wanted something set in the great country, as well as being written by one of its people, so I went with Colm Toíbín's Nora Webster, released in 2014 and praised by Tessa Hadley in The Guardian as "rare and tremendous". Depicting themes of grief and politics, it'll hopefully be a winner, written by arguably one of the finest exponents of modern Irish literature. I've got two more traditional choices for you, should you have already read Toíbín's book, which are Bernard Shaw's Heartbreak House and Finnegans Wake by the legendary James Joyce. The former a political play brought to us from Ireland via Russia (Shaw being inspired by Anton Chekhov), the latter an experimental novel, I hope you can enjoy them!

The poets of the Romantic movement (which peaked from 1800-1850 throughout Europe) are held in high regard by generation after generation of scholars and readers, so I thought it'd be good to sink my teeth into Percy Bysshe Shelley's Mont Blanc, whose vivid description of the Chamonix Valley scenery is pretty typical of the whole movement. If that doesn't sound like your thing, I can offer James Macpherson's epic poem Fingal, or the archetypal Romantic poetry collection, from the pen of two legends of the genre: Wordsworth and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads.

At a recent Durham University open day, I heard an English lecturer describe the stereotypical university English course as being "Beowulf to Virginia Woolf", so why not plunge right into that recent end with the great English novelist's final (and, in fact, posthumously-published) work, Between the Acts. In a quintessentially English pre-WW2 setting, the villagers prepare to put on their annual play, in Woolf's most lyrical book (much of it, indeed, is written in verse). As alternate reads for you, I've lined up two of Woolf's earlier works: To the Lighthouse has themes of family, the creative struggle, war, the passage of time, and feminism, whilst The Waves resembles a freeform prose poem, rather than being a traditional novel; it is broken up into six soliloquies with interludes in between, landing a label as Woolf's most experimental work. Should you choose to, I hope you enjoy reading it!

And, as is going to be the case every week for this Reading Challenge, the seventh and final course of the week is completely up to you - simply pick your favourite read from over the week, and read a bit more of it, or learn some of the context so you can better understand it, or pick something from one of the backup lists.

And the week after (July 9-15), you can just carry on reading whatever you've got lying around - maybe something you've been wanting to tuck into for ages, or something new that's piqued your interest. It's all up to you! Just make sure that whatever you're reading, it's rewarding, and challenging, and making you question things you've read and thought.

Best of luck with this week's challenge, and I'll see you on the other side!

Angus