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Description
Leo Tolstoy wrote this short meditation on sadness and the meaning of life when he was middle aged. He had already completed his masterworks, Anna Karenina and War and Peace, reared fourteen children, and gained fame and acclaim in Russia as a man of letters. But despite having attained that success, he still found himself unhappy and always returning to the disturbing idea that all achievement is meaningless.
A Confession is his attempt to put these thoughts in words as he teetered on the brink of suicide. It forms the first in a four-volume series that included A Criticism of Dogmatic Theology, The Gospel in Brief, and What I Believe (also known as My Religion or My Faith).
Description
Philip K. Dick built an enduring literary reputation writing powerful science fiction in the pulp magazines of the 50s and beyond. This collection of several of his short works, arranged in chronological order and all published in now-defunct science fiction pulp magazines, is a slice from his early career. Many of these stories explore the themes of war and whether humanity is intrinsically violent and conflict-torn. Each of them is a fascinating jewel of speculative fiction.
Description
Sometimes described as thrilling, sometimes as comic, and sometimes as metaphysical or spiritual, The Man Who Was Thursday is perhaps a little of each. The tale begins when an undercover policeman infiltrates a mysterious Anarchist group. As the novel progresses, things become more comic and improbable, and eventually evolve in to a sort of abstract, dreamlike state. Filled with Christian allegory, Thursday is a glittering, fascinating exploration of good versus evil and theology through the lens of adventure, wit, and the surreal.
Description
Right Ho, Jeeves is the second novel to feature P. G. Wodehouse’s popular Bertie Wooster and Jeeves characters. Bertie, a member of the English upper class and one of the “idle rich,” tries his best to arrange relationships between two pairs of his friends. Though he means well, Bertie’s bumbling attempts wind up doing more harm than good (as usual), leaving it to his valet, Jeeves, to see if he can sort things out.
A smooth, easy, and often hilarious read, Right Ho, Jeeves is an excellent example of why Bertie Wooster and Jeeves have become such iconic literary figures.
Description
Initially serialized in Analog magazine between 1962 and 1963, Space Viking takes place after the events of H. Beam Piper’s earlier serialization, The Cosmic Computer. Space Viking is a classic space opera: what begins as an interstellar tale of revenge turns into a swashbuckling adventure yarn, and finally into a meditation on empire-building and galactic governance with direct allusions to our modern history.
This richness of content makes Space Viking a unique read. The reader begins by expecting a lighter sci-fi adventure, and early on the plot delivers; but as events transpire, the reader is deftly drawn away from action scenes and into a more nuanced discussion on governance and human nature.
Description
The Luck of Barry Lyndon was first published as a serial in Fraser’s Magazine, then later as a complete volume entitled The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq.—a title Thackeray disliked, but that was selected by his publisher. Thackeray had great difficulty composing the novel, and found himself frequently frustrated in his attempts to get Barry out of yet another jam. Ultimately he was displeased with his work, and considered it one of his lesser novels.
Despite Thackeray’s neglect, Barry Lyndon is a bright satire filled with many genuinely funny moments. Barry is the quintessential unreliable narrator, and through his outrageous boasts and tall tales he becomes not just the target of the satire, but its very agent as well. Fortunately modern critics have viewed Barry Lyndon in a much more favorable light than Thackeray’s contemporaries, and even Thackeray himself: today it’s considered by some critics as one of his finest works.
Description
Father Brown is a Catholic priest, but a slightly unusual one in that he’s also an amateur detective. Unlike his more famous literary cousin Sherlock, Father Brown takes a less analytical and more intuition-oriented approach to solving the many murders that he happens to come across.
This collection of short murder mysteries is Brown’s first appearance on the literary stage. In it we see him practicing his unique brand of sleuthing alongside his sometimes-partner, the reformed master criminal Flambeau.
Description
Rasselas is a fable-like story, more apologue than novel, written by Johnson in 1759 to help pay for the costs of his recently-deceased mother’s funeral. While the plot is basic and the characters are thin, the work is an important philosophical piece exploring whether or not humanity can attain happiness.
Rasselas, an Abyssinian prince, travels with his sister Nekayah, her handmaiden Pekuah, and the wise poet Imlac—a proxy for Johnson himself. Their exploration of happiness and the meaning of leading a happy life is a complex and subtle one, though the work ends with “nothing concluded.” Johnson leaves the reader to ponder: Can an individual ever attain happiness in any meaningful sense?
Description
P. T. Barnum, the legendary entertainer and co-founder of the Barnum and Bailey Circus, was not just a successful businessman, but a philanthropist and writer as well. This short, pamphlet-length work distills Barnum’s advice on achieving success and wealth, in his own words.
Description
The Jungle Book is a short collection of stories published by Kipling in various magazines between 1893 and 1894. Kipling spent both his early years and his late teenage years in India, and that upbringing is front and center in these stories—despite them being written while he was living in Vermont, in the United States.
The stories are fable-like, with most of them centering on the lives of anthropomorphised jungle animals and a few focused on human characters in India. The stories were popular from the start, and have since been adapted in countless ways in print, screen, and other media.