Angle of Repose

My Ántonia

Willa Cather1818

An orphan moves to the Nebraska prairie and befriends the daughter of Bohemian immigrants. The story follows their lives over several decades.

meditative → elegiac, still historical fiction

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Gravity's Rainbow

Thomas Pynchon1973

During the end of WWII, an American lieutenant's sexual encounters seem to predict where German V-2 rockets will fall. The narrative is fragmented.

meditative → sardonic, still historical fiction

pace0·prose+1·bleak+1

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+1·bleak+1

The Mirror and the Light

Hilary Mantel2020

Thomas Cromwell navigates the final four years of his life in Henry VIII's court. He attempts to maintain power as his allies and influence erode.

meditative → elegiac, still historical fiction

pace0·prose+1·bleak+1

Flip This Zombie

Jesse Petersen2011

A married couple runs a zombie extermination and 'flipping' business. They treat the apocalypse as a series of domestic and financial hurdles.

meditative → playful

pace+1·prose-2·bleak-1

Montana

Debbie Macomber1997

A single mother moves to her grandfather's Montana ranch and falls for a mysterious farmhand while investigating his past.

meditative → warm, still western

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Montana Creeds

Linda Lael Miller2009

A professional bull rider returns to his family ranch to raise the young daughter he barely knows. He must transition from athlete to father.

meditative → warm, still western

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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

pace+2·prose-2·bleak-1

The Martian

Andy Weir2011

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

meditative → wry

pace+2·prose-2·bleak-1

The English Patient

Michael Ondaatje1992

Four people shelter in a ruined Italian villa at the end of WWII. They care for a burned, anonymous man who recounts his past in the desert.

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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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Lila

Marilynne Robinson2014

A woman with a traumatic, nomadic past settles in a small Iowa town and marries a minister. She struggles to reconcile her history with his faith.

meditative → tender, still historical fiction

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The Confessions of Nat Turner

William Styron1967

A fictionalized confession of the leader of an 1831 slave revolt while he awaits execution in a Virginia jail cell.

meditative → bleak, still historical fiction

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The Known World

Edward P. Jones2003

A black man who was once a slave becomes a slave owner in antebellum Virginia. The story follows the fallout on the plantation after his death.

Same meditative register, still historical fiction

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The Crossing

Cormac McCarthy1994

A teenager makes three trips between New Mexico and Mexico, starting with an attempt to return a trapped wolf to the wild. The prose is dense.

meditative → elegiac, still western

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