I read the Annales in grad school as well.
Bloch's Feudal Society isn't bad if you can handle his
style, it's a little dry. Which leads me to another
question, we ask 19th century American historians--who were
of no merit as historians but perhaps had some
literary qualities--Parkman et al and we ask Burckhardt
and Mommeson as we should, but I've never heard Ranke
come up and in terms of historiography post the
classical Greeks and maybe Ibn Khaldun (and we always ask
Battuta instead of Khaldun--why?) there's no one more
important than Ranke and Burckhardt...How these QB memes
start I've never figured out.