LitQueuelitqueue

After

A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories

Isaac Bashevis Singer1974

6 of 6 directions open

More like it

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  • The Razor's Edge

    William Somerset Maugham1944

    A veteran of the Great War travels through Europe and India seeking spiritual enlightenment. He rejects his social standing for manual labor.

    Same meditative register

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Denser prose

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  • Ulysses

    James Joyce1914

    Three characters wander through Dublin on a single day in 1904. Each chapter uses a different literary style to mimic thoughts and sensations.

    meditative → playful

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  • The Sound and the Fury

    William Faulkner1929

    The decline of a Southern family told through four perspectives, including a non-linear stream of consciousness from a man with a disability.

    meditative → elegiac

    pace0·prose+2·bleak+2

  • Briefing for a Descent into Hell

    Doris Lessing1971

    A man is found wandering London and placed in a psychiatric ward. The narrative shifts between the hospital and his internal cosmic hallucinations.

    meditative → dreamlike

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To recover

3 more ↓

  • Love Comes Softly

    Janette Oke1979

    A widow on the 19th-century frontier enters a marriage of convenience with a widower to survive the winter and care for his daughter.

    meditative → tender

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  • The perfect Christmas

    Debbie Macomber2009

    A woman hires a grumpy matchmaker to find a husband. He assigns her three tasks to complete before he will introduce her to his chosen candidate.

    meditative → warm

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak-1

  • The time keeper

    Mitch Albom2011

    The inventor of the first clock is released from a cave to help two people in the modern world. He teaches them the value of their remaining time.

    meditative → earnest, still magical realism

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Faster

3 more ↓

  • Candide

    Voltaire

    A naive young man travels the world while his tutor insists that everything is for the best. He encounters a series of global catastrophes.

    meditative → sardonic

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  • The Da Vinci Code

    Dan Brown2003

    A symbologist and a cryptologist flee the police while solving puzzles hidden in art. They search for a secret regarding the Holy Grail.

    meditative → propulsive

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  • The Martian

    Andy Weir2011

    A man does arithmetic to stay alive on Mars. Problem, attempt, result, repeat.

    meditative → wry

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Slower

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  • Umbrella

    Will Self2013

    A psychiatrist in 1971 treats a woman who has been catatonic for decades. The prose shifts between eras and consciousnesses without paragraph breaks.

    meditative → clinical

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak+1

  • Translated Accounts

    James Kelman2001

    Anonymous witnesses describe life under a military regime. The prose uses broken, bureaucratic syntax to mimic a literal translation.

    meditative → bleak

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak+2

  • Invisible Cities

    Italo Calvino1972

    Marco Polo describes fifty-five imaginary cities to Kublai Khan. The book is a series of short, prose-poem meditations on urban existence.

    Same meditative register, still magical realism

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak0

Heavier

3 more ↓

  • The Summer that Melted Everything

    Tiffany McDaniel2016

    A boy claiming to be the devil arrives in a small Ohio town during a 1984 heatwave. His presence triggers a series of local tragedies.

    meditative → elegiac, still magical realism

    pace0·prose+1·bleak+2

  • The Road

    Cormac McCarthy2006

    A father and son walk through a landscape of ash and scavengers toward the coast. They carry only what fits in a shopping cart.

    meditative → bleak

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  • Oryx and Crake

    Margaret Atwood2003

    A man survives a genetic apocalypse in a world of engineered creatures. He remembers his past with a scientist and the woman they both loved.

    meditative → sardonic

    pace+1·prose+1·bleak+2