LitQueuelitqueue

After

The Old Man and the Sea

Ernest Hemingway1952

6 of 6 directions open

More like it

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  • Atlas Shrugged

    Ayn Rand1957

    Industrialists go on strike against a collapsing collectivist society. The book features long philosophical monologues on ego and capitalism.

    Same earnest register

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Denser prose

3 more ↓

  • 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.

    earnest → playful, still literary fiction

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak0

  • The Sea

    John Banville2005

    A widower returns to a coastal resort to reflect on a childhood summer and his wife's death. The narrator's memory is fluid and dense.

    earnest → elegiac, still literary fiction

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak+1

  • 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.

    earnest → sardonic

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To recover

3 more ↓

  • Medusa

    Clive Cussler2009

    The NUMA team investigates a missing undersea lab and a bathysphere attack. They uncover a corporate plot involving a deadly virus and jellyfish.

    earnest → propulsive, still adventure

    pace+2·prose-1·bleak-1

  • Master of the Five Magics

    Lyndon Hardy1980

    A man attempts to master five distinct disciplines of magic by following their strict logical laws to save a kingdom.

    Same earnest register

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak-1

  • The Last Question

    Isaac Asimov2007

    A short story told in seven vignettes spanning billions of years. Humanity asks a supercomputer if the heat death of the universe can be avoided.

    earnest → meditative

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak-1

Faster

3 more ↓

  • Child 44

    Tom Rob Smith2008

    A Soviet security officer investigates a serial killer in a state that officially claims murder does not exist.

    earnest → tense

    pace+2·prose0·bleak+1

  • 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.

    earnest → sardonic

    pace+2·prose0·bleak0

  • The Jester

    James Patterson2003

    A man returns from the Crusades to find his village destroyed and his wife abducted. He assumes a new identity to hunt the killers.

    earnest → propulsive, still adventure

    pace+2·prose-1·bleak0

Slower

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  • Blackouts

    Justin Torres2023

    A young man cares for a dying elder in a medical facility. They use a 1930s study on homosexuality to reconstruct their personal histories.

    earnest → elegiac, still literary fiction

    pace-1·prose+1·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.

    earnest → elegiac, still literary fiction

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak+1

  • To the Lighthouse

    Virginia Woolf1927

    A family and their guests visit a house in the Hebrides. The narrative follows their internal thoughts over two days separated by ten years.

    earnest → elegiac, still literary fiction

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak+1

Heavier

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  • A Distant Shore

    Caryl Phillips2003

    A retired teacher and an African refugee form a quiet bond in a xenophobic English village. Their past traumas emerge through alternating stories.

    earnest → bleak, still literary fiction

    pace0·prose+1·bleak+2

  • A Little Life

    Hanya Yanagihara2015

    Four friends in New York over thirty years. One of them is being destroyed, and the book does not look away.

    earnest → bleak, still literary fiction

    pace0·prose+1·bleak+2

  • The Nickel Boys

    Colson Whitehead2019

    A studious black teenager in 1960s Florida is sent to a brutal reform school where physical abuse is systemic.

    earnest → elegiac, still literary fiction

    pace+1·prose+1·bleak+2