I like to binge read and self educate. When coming to a new topic (let’s say History of Western Art or Pharmacology) I’ve never found a single place where I could look up the key texts that a university student would be reading to get into the subject. Usually I search around and find an actual university’s reading list or something equally well put together but it’s hit and miss.
Had anyone ever come across a single place that holds this kind of info over a wide range of subjects? (Books specifically)
I find it’s more often than not ‘heavyweight’ texts, especially on history articles where really really niche researchers have books or papers on the matter. That’s useful. But I’m generally more after what a professor would assign first year students as an introduction to The Romantics or English Painters. Sometimes Wikipedia has that, sometimes it has “Brush techniques employed by Turner in the summer of 1798 by Prof George Bannister, Prof Rodger Walker et al.”