# @oxford_uni on Instagram - **Type:** Video - **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DeeUc5_ovZE - **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/71631933-oxford-uni-instagram - **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/2c4c01cec2.jpg - **Posted:** 2026-10-14T11:54:24.000+00:00 - **Account Owner:** The University of Oxford (@oxford_uni) — https://gondola.cc/oxford_uni ## Caption Fantasy readers, we’ve got five more books for you 📚✨ Oxford English Literature Professor and Tolkien expert Stuart Lee is back with five more fantasy recommendations - from enchanting worlds and ancient myths to epic adventures and modern classics. His first video sparked plenty of discussion, so we asked Prof Lee to respond to some of your questions 👇 1. How do you choose just five fantasy books? ’Following my first video, I saw lots of comments asking why I’d chosen certain books, and why I’d left others out. ’When trying to choose just five, you could ask: were they influential? Were they innovative? Or did they have an impact on you personally? ’For me, it was largely the latter. I chose five books that I remember having an impact on me when I first read them. ‘I’d challenge you to try it yourself: choose your top five, then look at your bookshelves and ask, ‘Why did I leave that one out?’ You’ll quickly see how difficult it is!’ 2. Should Samantha Shannon’s The Priory of the Orange Tree be classed as romantasy? ’That’s a really fair question, as Samantha and her publishers clearly say it is not and it is high/epic fantasy. ’Fantasy is a huge genre with hundreds of subgenres, and where one ends and another begins isn’t always clear. ’You could certainly argue that The Priory of the Orange Tree isn’t romantasy. It operates on an epic scale, and while romance between two of its main characters is important, it doesn’t drive the entire plot. ’But you could equally argue that it is romantasy or at least sits on the borderline – because of the importance of that relationship. ’And perhaps that’s the more interesting question: what do we actually mean by genres and subgenres? ’Books might be marketed as belonging to a particular subgenre, but that doesn’t mean every reader will interpret them in the same way. Part of the joy of reading is what you take from a book yourself. ‘If you disagreed with me calling The Priory of the Orange Tree romantasy, that’s fair enough; I may even agree with you. Hopefully you can see why it opens up an interesting discussion.’ #oxforduniversity ## Stats - **Views:** 233,307 - **Likes:** 6,644 - **Shares:** 0 - **Comments:** 152 ## Credits No public credits are recorded here. This does not identify who made the post. ## Tags oxforduniversity --- Copyright (c) Gondola