This week's menu: July 16th-21st

I'll admit that I haven't had much experience of medieval texts, mainly for the same reasons that I think a lot of people tend to avoid them - medieval texts have a reputation for prioritising narrative, focusing on tedious historical detail, denying readers the engaging characters and punchy pace of contemporary literature. In an effort to change my preconceptions as to this time period's literature, I've chosen the subversive French novel The Book of the City of Ladies by Christine de Pizan, an attempt to argue women's value in society by presenting an allegorical 'city' of famous women throughout history. I'm very intrigued to see how this fares against my expectations, but if it doesn't sound like your cup of tea, I offer you The Book of Margery Kempe (autobiographical but third-person diary full of religious references) and the book of seminal early Irish historical literature, Lebor gabala Erenn.

I thought that this would be an interesting theme for the second course of this week's literary banquet. Lots of the YA fiction that I read includes LGBT+ characters, and much is written by LGBT+ authors, such as Patrick Ness or Juno Dawson, but it's by no means a new phenomenon, so I'm going to be sampling Jeannette Winterson's 1985 semi-autobiographical coming-of-age tale Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. Set near where I live in northern England, and perennially popular amongst curriculum compilers and readers alike, Winterson's novel promises to examine the discord between religion and same-sex relationships; I'll be keen to see how Winterson's own experiences feed into the narrative. Should you have already read it, however, my backup suggestions are Boy Meets Boy by the superb David Levithan, or the more obscure Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden, written and set in 1980s NYC.

Exemplified early in its literary existence by Defoe's classic Robinson Crusoe and represented contemporarily by one of my backup choices, survival fiction has remained popular for over three centuries, an exhilarating but perhaps predictable genre (thanks to the desert island castaway subgenre known as 'Robinsonade'), loved by readers of all ages. As my third read of the week, figuring that a substantial percentage of this blog's readers will already have read Robinson Crusoe, I'll be delving into Carol Ryrie Brink's Baby Island, which replicates the Crusoe story but with the addition of four babies! I'm not 100% convinced about this one, so I'll get back to you with my thoughts. Alternative reads to sample if you wish are Johann David Wyss' Robinsonade The Swiss Family Robinson and modern-day behemoth The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.

And here it is - the Reading Challenge's first dalliance with the Immortal Bard. So far, my experience of Shakespeare has extended only to two of his most famous works, Macbeth and Twelfth Night (both of which I've read as part of school studies). Perhaps it's just because I've had to read his plays through the prism of painstaking analysis with the looming prospect of remembering dozens of his quotes to reel off in exams, but Shakespeare just hasn't gripped me yet - so, having already read a tragedy and a comedy, I'm going to attempt a history play. I've chosen the relatively lofty Richard II, whose two plots detail the decline of the titular king and the rise of his successor Henry IV who deposed him. On quick inspection, it seems a relatively challenging play to get into, so I'll see how I do, and you could also plump for Henry V or King John as your pick.

By no means are the A Level English Literature set texts perfect, but on the whole, they're a much better lot than the GCSE spec, which is racist in its exclusion of non-British texts and includes pointless poems for the sake of an overly difficult exam. The A Level syllabus is subdivided into various themes and strands, with today's pick of Graham Greene's gritty 1930s-set Brighton Rock being from the 'Crime' selection which I'll start to study in September (hence my reason for choosing it!) All the GCSE and A Level texts I've studied have had a divisive effect upon the class, so I'll be interested to see how this murder thriller fares in the new school year - but until then, I'll enjoy the opening chapters! Alternative picks today are Andrea Levy's Small Island (part of the 'Comedy' strand), and Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, a modern classic which forms part of the AS Level tragedy syllabus.

During Week 1 of the Reading Challenge, I had lots of fun exploring the work of one of Ireland's finest modern writers, so today I'm turning to Russia for inspiration, the birthplace of such enduring scribes as Leo Tolstoy of War and Peace, short-story aficionado Anton Chekhov, and the political activist Maxim Gorky, whose 1906 tale of revolutionary factory workers Mother is the book I'm choosing to close out the second week of the Reading Challenge. Coming just a year after a failed Russian revolution, the socialist Gorky wrote Mother to try to combat the contemporary defeatist attitude and proliferate his political agenda - sounds interesting! If you've already read it, then I suggest Heart of a Dog, allegorical of communism and laced with satire by writer Mikhail Bulgakov, and Lyudmila Ulitskaya's 2001 Russian Booker Prize winner The Kukotsky Enigma, an investigation of abortion and Stalinism. Hope you enjoy!

As ever, on Sunday I invite you to pick your favourite book from over the course of the week, and read some more of it, or dig into the context - failing that, there are twelve tasty-looking backup books to delve into, should you have time! I hope you have a wonderful week reading this varied catalogue of creativity, and I'll be back to discuss my thoughts on it all early next week!