This week's menu: July 30th-August 4th

We're going to start the week off with a bildungsroman - which, for those of you who don't know, is a text examining how, over the course of a person's life, they have become the person that they are now, often commencing with some form of emotional trauma and concluding with the protagonist having overcome societal troubles to achieve maturity. I have selected the colossal nine-volume The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman as the bildungsroman with which to begin the week - written by Laurence Sterne from 1759 to 1767, it is presented as a humorous autobiography characterised by digression and double entendre. If you prefer, you could also read what is possibly the most famous and iconic bildungsroman, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, or the French political bildungsroman Les Aventures de Télémaque, which brings out the backstory from Homer's Odyssey.

The 17th century was a turbulent one in literature, seeing the death of Shakespeare and the writing of Samuel Pepys' diary, amongst other events. Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne who managed to be both a philosopher and a scientist as well as an aristocrat and writer of all kinds of fiction, penned her Poems and Fancies, which covered a broad range of topics from science to love and back again, presenting some poems in the form of dialogues between abstract concepts such as peace and war. I'll be reading selected poems as the second course of this week's literary banquet, and I've lined up two of the century's most famous British writers as backup options: I offer you John Dryden's Annus Mirabilis (a poem composed of decasyllabic quatrains which describes the events of 1665-6) and Thomas Dekker's play The Pleasant Comedie of Old Fortunatus, based on an old German legend.

The seven deadly sins, usually given by Christian teachers as pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth, are listed as the most severe of vices and, as such, provide a basis for much of fiction, even if their use is subtle. I'm serving up a lovely slice of contemporary YA fiction to demonstrate this, with E. Lockhart's 2014 Goodreads Choice Award-winning We Were Liars, which revolves around the ideas of consequences and of family morals, using as its protagonists a wealthy, privileged family called the Sinclairs, who presumably exhibit these vices. Alternative picks for you today include Charles Bukowski's 1978 novel Women, which focuses on the semi-autobiographical protagonist Henry Chinaski's dissatisfaction with the women with whom he has relationships (and, presumably, therefore focuses on the sins of lust and gluttony), and Shakespeare's great tragedy Othello, which bases itself on envy.

The Beat Generation was a group of around 150 artists and intellectuals active in late-1950s America, part of the counterculture which defied the prevailing conformist views in favour of self-expression, drugs and jazz. The works of art produced by this movement frequently include increased liberation, psychedelia and exploration of other cultures. Literature such as Jack Kerouac's autobiographical On the Road is emblematic of this group but, wary of neglecting the female beats, I'm going to be reading some of Diane di Prima's poems, published in the collection Loba, in which the activist and writer characterises herself as the 'loba' (Spanish for she-wolf). Other Beat Generation literature to sample today could be Allen Ginsberg's massively influential epic poem Howl and Joyce Johnson's memoir Minor Characters, which gives an intimate portrayal of Kerouac.

Music is an important theme in many works of literature, whether it's mentioned in passing, sets the tone for crucial scenes, or provides the main subject matter for the entire text. Being a musical person myself, I'm keen to sample some literature which takes music as its theme, and so today I'll be reading Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad, which won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize and describes the lives of thirteen people who are all connected to record company executive Bennie Salazar in a Love, Actually kind of way. My other ideas for musical reads today are Station Eleven, a dystopian sci-fi novel by Emily St. John Mandel, where a small group of actors and musicians fight to keep culture alive, and Nick Hornby's High Fidelity, a novel released during the millennium year which has as its protagonist the newly-single pop music junkie Rob, who owns a failing record shop.

Based on the writings of Aristotle, classicists developed the idea of the classical unities - these are the unity of action (a play should have one main plot and minimal subplots), the unity of time (a play's action should begin and end within a 24-hour period) and the unity of place (a play's action should exist only in one space). The idea was that a good play obeys all three unities. I'm focusing on the second of these today, reading works of fiction which obey the classical unity of time - therefore, ones which take place over the course of a day. My prime choice is Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors, which balances low comedy slapstick elements with puns and wordplay to create an ultimately enjoyable farce. If you've already read it, you could return to Virginia Woolf with Mrs. Dalloway, or try two of Harold Pinter's short plays, The Room and Celebration.

I hope you have a wonderful week reading these varied texts, and I'll be back here the week after next to publish my thoughts on what I've read - see you then! (Until then, feel free to follow me on Twitter @Banquetofbooks for all the latest updates.)