Give a goodly chunk of your reading time to the chronicles of the life of Nathaniel Bumpo and read all five of the "Leatherstocking Tales." Do NOT read them in the order of their publication. You'll be jumping around in his life that way. Cooper didn't write them from first to last in Bumpo's life. Here's the proper order:
The Deerslayer
The Last of the Mohicans
The Pathfinder
The Pioneers
The Prarie
Cooper was an interesting man. His writings of the sea rise from his own days before the mast. He first went to sea at age 17, IIRC, and wrangled a commission as a Midshipman in the Navy by virtue of his wealthy father's time as a Congressman. Cooper inherited fairly vast wealth at about the age of 20, which afforded him the freedom to write, although how he came to pen his first novel is an interesting, but separate, tale.
A couple of his novels of which I'm sort of fond are "Wing and Wing" (sea tale) and "Oak Openings or the Bee Hunter" (set in Michigan in 1812). A lot of Cooper can be had as free downloads these days.
Cooper was born after much of what he wrote about, and was totally fiction when it was first published, some of it rather deep into the 19th century. He was pretty popular in Europe at the time. Fun reading once you adapt to the language of another time. But, hey, we go after those times in clothing, food, firearms, tentage, and so forth, so why not immerse yourself in the written language of the time as well. Just takes diving in and devoting a little time to it, just like those other skills and endeavors.
