Man after Man: An Anthropology of the Future by Dougal Dixon
An insane speculative-scifi fever dream about humanity, evolution, and the dark heart of nature. Don't just look at the brilliant and crazy illustrations, the narratives are easily twice as fascinating.
Baudolino, by Umberto Eco.
A little Italian boy in the Holy Roman Empire days proves to be good at words and better at bullshitting so he gets hired by Frederick Barbarossa. He spends a dissolute youth vainly using what power and connections he has by merit of his prodigy pursuing stories of dubious holy relics and fantasies of Prester John, the mythical Christian king of the far East. The whole story is told mainly by Baudolino himself, to this Greek dude he meets as the Crusades are sieging the Byzantine Empire at Constantinople. Really fascinating story of a dyed-in-the-wool super-grifter.
Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco
What if Sherlock Holmes was a British monk who came to an Italian monastery with his little Italian buddy to attend a theological disputation between the Pope and the Franciscans, and ends up having to use medieval scholastic reasoning to try and solve a murder mystery that goes to the very heart of ideas of heresy and faith in the medieval era? Well, if you read this book you will find out, and have a lot of fun doing it!
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