Books like

Books like Walden or, Life in the Woods

12 books with a reading profile close to Walden or, Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau. Deep, inward-looking and contemplative; a moderate read.

1

Walden

by Henry David Thoreau

Also deep and inward-looking · personal growth, philosophy

Henry David Thoreau documents his two-year experiment living in a self-built cabin near Walden Pond to practice deliberate self-reliance.
2

Letters to a young poet

by Rainer Maria Rilke

Also deep and inward-looking · personal growth, philosophy

This collection consists of ten letters written between 1903 and 1908 by Rainer Maria Rilke to Franz Xaver Kappus, a military student seeking literary feedback.
3

Songs of innocence and of experience

by William Blake

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, literary

William Blake’s hand-colored collection contrasts two differing states of the human soul.
4

Alcestis

by Euripides

Also deep and contemplative · philosophy, literary

In this tragedy, King Admetus is granted a reprieve from his impending death on the condition that someone else dies in his place.
5

Fathers and Sons

by Ivan Turgenev

Also deep and contemplative · philosophy, literary

Arkady Kirsanov returns from university to his father's estate in 1859, bringing his friend Yevgeny Bazarov, a medical student and self-declared nihilist who rejects authority, art, and tradition.
6

Death in Venice

by Thomas Mann

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, literary

Gustav von Aschenbach, a disciplined German writer who has prioritized rigorous intellect over sensory pleasure, travels to Venice to escape a creative drought.
7

Eugene Onegin

by Alexander Pushkin

Also deep and contemplative · philosophy, literary

Alexander Pushkin’s novel in verse follows Eugene Onegin, a cynical aristocrat weary of Saint Petersburg’s high society.
8

Macbeth

by William Shakespeare

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, literary

After receiving a prophecy from three witches that he will become King of Scotland, a general named Macbeth murders King Duncan to seize the throne.
9

The power and the Glory

by Graham Greene

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, literary

Set in 1930s Mexico during the Cristero War, the narrative follows a nameless whiskey priest fleeing a paramilitary police force.
10

Poems by John Keats

by John Keats

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, literary

John Keats’s debut collection, published in March 1817 rather than 1800, organizes lyrical meditations on the restorative capacity of the natural world and the permanence of classical mythology.
11

The Old Man and the Sea

by Ernest Hemingway

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, literary

Set in a small Cuban fishing village in 1952, the story follows Santiago, an aging fisherman who has gone eighty-four days without a catch.
12

East of Eden

by John Steinbeck

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, literary

Set in the Salinas Valley between the Civil War and World War I, the narrative tracks the interconnected fates of the Trask and Hamilton families.

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