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Books like A Swim in a Pond in the Rain
An intimate, generous masterclass on the mechanics of fiction that doubles as a profound guide to being a more empathetic human. These 12 books are the closest matches in mood, pace and themes, with what each one shares with A Swim in a Pond in the Rain.
- intimate
- contemplative
- cozy
- intellectually stimulating
- 01
Reading Like a Writer
Francine Prose
An invitation to slow down, pull up a chair, and marvel at the architecture of a perfectly crafted sentence.
- 02
Tenth of December
George Saunders
A surreal, darkly funny, and ultimately tender exploration of the bizarre moral obstacle course of modern life.
- 03
Upstream
Mary Oliver
A quiet, luminous invitation to step into the woods, slow down, and pay fierce attention to the beauty of the world.
- 04
These Precious Days
Ann Patchett
A warm and intimate meditation on the unexpected bonds that shape our lives and the fleeting beauty of our days.
- 05
How to read literature like a professor
Thomas C. Foster · 2003
A friendly, fireside chat with your favorite English teacher that permanently changes how you consume stories.
- 06
Pastoralia
George Saunders · 2000
A hilarious, heartbreaking funhouse mirror reflecting the soul-crushing absurdities of modern work and life.
- 07
The Anthropocene Reviewed
John Green
A tender, open-hearted catalog of the human experience that finds profound meaning in the mundane.
- 08
Consider the lobster, and other essays
David Foster Wallace · 2005
A dizzying, hyper-articulate plunge into the absurdities and moral anxieties of modern American life.
- 09
The Night Swim
Megan Goldin
A gripping, ripped-from-the-headlines thriller that captures the obsessive, late-night bingeability of a hit true-crime podcast.
- 10
How to read and why
Harold Bloom
An impassioned, erudite invitation to treat the reading of great literature as a profound act of self-discovery.
- 11
The art of memoir
Mary Karr
An illuminating and cathartic exploration of how we shape our memories and how our memories shape us.
- 12
Artful
Ali Smith
A ghostly, genre-defying conversation about love, loss, and the literature that keeps us alive.
