Books like

Books like Walden

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

1

Walden or, Life in the Woods

by Henry David Thoreau

Also deep and inward-looking · personal growth, philosophy

Henry David Thoreau details his two-year experiment in self-reliance beginning in 1845 on the shores of Walden Pond.
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

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.
4

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.
5

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.
6

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.
7

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.
8

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.
9

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.
10

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.
11

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.
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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