A Book a Day

[bookdaily]

book collection 8 by bookdaily

[bookdaily]

Notes from Underground (1864) by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Publisher: Vintage Books

"I am a sick man.... I am a wicked man." With this sentence Fyodor Dostoevsky began one of the most revolutionary novels ever written, a work that marks the frontier, not only between nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction, but between two centuries' vision of the self. For the unnamed narrator of Notes from Underground is a multiplicity of selves, each at war with the others – all at war with everything else.

Now Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, whose translations of Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov have become the standard versions in English, give us a superb new edition of Dostoevsky's classic that conveys both the tragedy and the tormented comedy of the original Russian.

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Orlando (1928) by Virginia Woolf

Publisher: Vintage Books

As his tale begins, Orlando is a passionate young nobleman whose days are spent in rowdy revelry, filled with the colourful delights of Queen Elizabeth's court. By the close, he will have transformed into a modern woman and three centuries will have passed. Orlando is Woolf's most extraordinary creation, and through him we see an intimate portrait of history in the making. Orlando's journey will also be an internal one – he is an impulsive poet who learns patience in matters of the heart, and a woman who knows what it is to be a man. Orlando is a funny, exuberant tale that examines the very nature of sexuality.

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Battle Royale (1999) by Koushun Takami

Publisher: Orion Publishing

Koushun Takami's notorious high-octane thriller is based on an irresistible premise: a class of junior high school students is taken to a deserted island where, as part of a ruthless authoritarian program, they are provided with weapons and forced to kill one another until only one survivor is left standing.

Criticised as violent exploitation when first published in Japan – where it then proceeded to become a runaway bestseller – Battle Royale is Lord of the Flies for the 21st century, a potent allegory of what it means to be young and (barely) alive in a dog-eat-dog world. Made into a controversial hit movie of the same name, Battle Royale is already a contemporary Japanese pulp classic, now available for the first time in the UK.

[bookdaily]

book collection 7 by bookdaily

[bookdaily]

The Discreetly Plumper Second Book of General Ignorance (2012) by John Lloyd & John Mitchinson, Introduction by Stephen Fry

Publisher: Faber and Faber

A brand-new edition with 13.51% more ignorance, inspired by the BBC's smash-hit comedy quiz game QI.

Everything you think you know is still wrong.

• Octopuses have two legs

• Oranges aren't orange

• Bats aren't blind

• Napoleon wasn't short

• Jeeves is not a butler

• Diamond isn't the hardest substance

• There is no such thing as a fish

[bookdaily]

The Noticeably Stouter Book of General Ignorance (2008) by John Lloyd & John Mitchinson, Foreword by Stephen Fry and Four Words by Alan Davies

Publisher: Faber and Faber

A brand-new edition of the UK No. 1 bestseller, inspired by BBC 2's smash-hit comedy quiz game QI. This comprehensive catalogue of all the misconceptions, mistakes and misunderstandings in 'common knowledge' will make you wonder why anyone bothers going to school.

More than 25% longer, with extra cartoons, hilarious extracts from the TV show, and 50 new things you didn't know, including:

• No one has ever slid down a banister

• There are 613 commandments in the Bible

• Vipers, cobras and rattlesnakes are not poisonous

• Newborn babies are indifferent to their mothers

• The Swiss Family weren't called Robinson

• The unluckiest date is Monday the 27th

• You have no muscles in your fingers

• Coffee isn't made from beans

Everything you think you know is wrong.

[bookdaily]

Northanger Abbey (1817) by Jane Austen

Publisher: Vintage Books

Northanger Abbey is both a perfectly aimed literary parody and a withering satire of the commercial aspects of marriage among the English gentry at the turn of the nineteenth century. But most of all, it is the story of the initiation into life of its naïve but sweetly appealing heroine, Catherine Morland, a willing victim of the contemporary craze for Gothic literature who is determined to see herself as the heroine of a dark and thrilling romance.

When Catherine is invited to Northanger Abbey, the grand though forbidding ancestral seat of her suitor, Henry Tilney, she finds herself embroiled in a real drama of misapprehension, mistreatment, and mortification, until common sense and humour – and a crucial clarification of Catherine's financial status – puts all to right. Written in 1798 but not published until after Austen's death in 1817, Northanger Abbey is characteristically clearheaded and strong, and infinitely subtle in its comedy.

[bookdaily]

Wuthering Heights (1847) by Emily Brontë

Publisher: Penguin Books

Wuthering Heights has achieved an almost mythical status as a love story, yet it is also a unique masterpiece of the imagination: an unsettling, transgressive novel about obsession, violence and death.

It begins as a man is forced to shelter at a strange, grim house on the Yorkshire moors during a snowstorm. There he discovers the tempestuous events that took place there years before: the intense love between Catherine Earnshaw and the founding Heathcliff, her betrayal of him and how his terrible revenge continues to haunt the present.

[bookdaily]

Crime and Punishment (1966) by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Publisher: Vintage Books

A troubled young man commits the perfect crime – the murder of a vile pawnbroker no one will miss. Raskolnikov is desperate for money but convinces himself that his motive for the killing is to benefit mankind. So begins one of the greatest novels ever written, a journey into the criminal mind, a police thriller, and a philosophical meditation on morality and redemption.

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To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) by Harper Lee

Publisher: Arrow Books

A lawyer's advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of this enchanting classic – a black man charged with the rape of a white girl. Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with exuberant humour the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class in the Deep South of the thirties. The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina of one man's stuggle for justice. But the weight of history will only tolerate so much...

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A Midsummer Night's Dream (Study Edition) (1590-1596) by William Shakespeare, edited by Robert Wilks

Publisher: Pansing

In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare stages the workings of love. Theseus and Hippolyta, figures from mythology, are about to marry. In the woods outside Theseus' Athens, two young men and two young women sort themselves out into couples – but not before they form first one love triangle, and then another. In the woods, the king and queen of fairyland, Oberon and Titania, battle over custody of an orphan boy.

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A Christmas Carol (1843) by Charles Dickens

Publisher: Penguin Books

With A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens created a modern fairy tale and shaped our ideas of Christmas. The tale of the solitary miser Ebenezer Scrooge, who is taught the true meaning of the season by a series of ghostly visitors and given a second chance, was conjured up by Dickens during one of his London night walks, who 'wept and laughed' as he composed it. Taken to readers' hearts for its humour, compassion and message of redemption, it remains his best-loved book.

[bookdaily]

House Rules (2010) by Jodi Picoult

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Teenager Jacob Hunt has Asperger's syndrome, making him hopeless at reading social cues or expressing himself well to others. He is brilliant in many ways, but is specially focused on forensic analysis. He's always showing up at local crime scenes and telling the cops what to do. He's usually right, too.

Then, his small town is rocked by a terrible murder. This time, law enforcement comes to Jacob. Jacob's behaviours are hallmark Asperger's, but they look a lot like guilt to the local police. Suddenly the Hunt family, who only want to fit in, are directly in the spotlight. For Jacob's mother, Emma, it's a brutal reminder of the intolerance and misunderstanding that always threaten her family. For his brother, Theo, it's another indication why nothing can be normal with Jacob as a brother.

And over this small family the soul-searing question looms: Did Jacob commit murder?

[bookdaily]

The Phantom of the Opera (1910) by Gaston Leroux

Publisher: Puffin Books

A gripping story of mystery and suspense set in the Paris Opera House.

The legendary rumours of an 'opera ghost' take on a terrifying reality when the beautiful young singer, Christine Daaé, suddenly disappears after her triumphant performance. An ever increasing pattern of fear and violence pervades the dim backstage areas of the Opera House, as the phantom threatens to strike once more.

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The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824) by James Hogg

Publisher: Penguin Books

A nightmarish tale of religious fanaticism and darkness, this chilling classic of the macabre tells the tale of Robert Wringhim, drawn in his moral confusion into committing the most monstrous acts by an evil doppelgänger.

James Hogg's masterpiece is as troublingly duplicitous as Wringhim himself, and was ignored and bowdlerised before becoming a hugely influential work of Scottish literature.

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The Miserable Mill (A Series of Unfortunate Events #4) (2000) by Lemony Snicket

Publisher: Harper Collins

Dear Reader,

I hope, for your sake, that you have not chosen to read this book because you are in the mood for a pleasant experience. If this is the case, I advise you to put this book down instantaneously, because of all the books describing the unhappy lives of the Baudelaire orphans, The Miserable Mill might be the unhappiest yet. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire are sent to Paltrywille to work in a lumber mill, and they find disaster and misfortune lurking behind every log.

The pages of this book, I'm sorry to inform you, contain such unpleasantries as a giant pincher machine, a bad casserole, a man with a cloud of smoke where his head should be, a hypnotist, a terrible accident resulting in injury, and coupons.

I have promised to write down the entire history of these poor children, but you haven't, so if you prefer stories that are more heartwarming, please feel free to make another selection.

With all due respect,

Lemony Snicket