Books like The Portrait of a Lady

01

The Age of Innocence

Edith Wharton · Literary fiction

Newland Archer is a well-meaning, intelligent young man preparing to marry May Welland — a suitable, beautiful, entirely conventional young woman from his own social world — when her cousin Ellen Olenska arrives in New York.

A kindred literary fiction read.

02

A Moveable Feast

Ernest Hemingway · Memoir

A Moveable Feast is Hemingway's posthumously published account of his years in Paris during the 1920s, when he and his first wife Hadley lived cheaply in Montparnasse while he apprenticed himself to the work of becoming a writer.

A kindred literary fiction read.

03

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

Azar Nafisi · Memoir

Azar Nafisi spent years teaching literature at universities in Tehran before the restrictions on what she could teach — and who she could teach — became intolerable.

A kindred literary fiction read.

04

Homage to Catalonia

George Orwell · Memoir

Homage to Catalonia is George Orwell's firsthand account of fighting in the Spanish Civil War, which he joined in late 1936 as a volunteer with the POUM militia — a Trotskyist revolutionary organization that was later suppressed by the Soviet-backed Stalinist wing of the Republican forces.

A kindred literary fiction read.

05

The Lincoln Highway

Amor Towles · Literary fiction

The Lincoln Highway unfolds over ten days in June 1954.

Both dig into freedom and constraint.

06

Better Than Before

Gretchen Rubin · Self-help

Better Than Before is Gretchen Rubin's synthesis of years of research and personal experimentation on habits.

Both dig into self-knowledge.

07

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

Lori Gottlieb · Memoir

Lori Gottlieb is a psychotherapist who, after a sudden and shattering breakup, found herself in therapy of her own.

Both dig into self-knowledge.

08

On Becoming a Leader

Warren Bennis · Business

On Becoming a Leader is Warren Bennis's argument that leadership is not a set of techniques to be mastered but a continuous process of self-discovery — and that the most important leadership development work is inner rather than outer.

Both dig into self-knowledge.

09

Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious

Timothy D. Wilson · Psychology

Timothy Wilson's central argument is uncomfortable: we don't know ourselves as well as we think we do.

Both dig into self-knowledge.

10

The Dance of Anger

Harriet Lerner · Psychology

Harriet Lerner's central argument is that anger is a signal, not a problem.

Both dig into self-knowledge.

11

The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves

Stephen Grosz · Psychology

The Examined Life is a collection of short psychoanalytic case studies drawn from Stephen Grosz's 25 years of practice as a psychoanalyst in London.

Both dig into self-knowledge.

12

The Interior Castle

Teresa of Ávila · Religion & Spirituality

The Interior Castle was written in 1577, when Teresa of Ávila was sixty-two and had already spent decades as a Carmelite reformer.

Both dig into self-knowledge.