A warning about the Aubrey-Maturin books: once you start them, you will have to force yourself to read other books (my strategy is to read something else between every book but it is not easy). And every circumnavigation of the series reveals depths you had missed on prior readings. If you like audiobooks, the versions narrated by Patrick Tull are perfect, in my opinion. Because he understands the jargon (and the jokes) his narration helps you get the feel for what's happening before you fully absorb the language.

On Zweig (you may already know this), but The Grand Budapest Hotel was based on a long-short-story of his and the Kirsten Dunst Marie Antoinette movie was based on his biography of her (Marie Antoinette, not KD). The World of Yesterday is a really special book though. Zweig was a collector of original manuscripts and an art critic more than an artist himself. He lived in Austria before, during and after WWI. However, he had to escape from Austria and then from Europe fleeing the Nazis. He wrote this book, his memoirs, in Rio de Janeiro without any of his collections or note or anything and all from memory. He and his lady friend committed suicide shortly after he finished the book and before WWII had ended, so unlike most writers, his backwards-looking lens was not refracted through the defeat of the Nazis.