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Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston
1937 · 238 pages · Classics
How it reads
Their Eyes Were Watching God is classics (african american modernist classic, specifically), and its dominant mood is hopeful. Whatever it puts its people through, it believes things can get better. The pace is moderate — neither a page-turner nor a slow burn — so it holds up whether you read it in long sittings or short ones.
It's set in a rural setting, in the historical past, told in the third person, staying close to one character. Its central concerns are identity, love and coming of age. In weight it's heavy and literary — denser, more serious, and more demanding of you.
It stands alone, so there's nothing else you need to read first or after. The ending resolves happily. At 238 pages it's a quick read. It's a mega-bestseller — the book everyone seems to have read.
Pick it up if…
- you're in the mood for something hopeful
- you want something to chew on
- you want a complete story in one book
Maybe not if…
- you need something melancholy or dark
All 15 dimensions
- Genre
- classics
- Author gender
- female
- Author experience
- prolific veteran
- Setting: place
- rural
- Setting: time
- historical
- Mood / feeling
- hopeful
- Pace
- moderate
- Tone / weight
- heavy and literary
- Length
- short
- Narrative style
- third person, one viewpoint
- Publication era
- classic
- Popularity
- mega-bestseller
- Series vs standalone
- standalone
- Themes
- identity, love, coming of age
- Ending style
- resolved and happy
What these mean: the 15 dimensions of a book.
Books with a similar reading
The closest books in Match Book's catalogue across the same dimensions, and what they share.
The Great GatsbyF. Scott FitzgeraldShares: classics, heavy and literary tone, moderate pace, historical setting
Letter from the Birmingham JailMartin Luther King Jr.Shares: classics, hopeful mood, heavy and literary tone, resolved and happy ending- The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Lovebell hooksShares: hopeful mood, heavy and literary tone, moderate pace, resolved and happy ending
- The Reason I Jump: the Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with AutismNaoki HigashidaShares: hopeful mood, heavy and literary tone, moderate pace, resolved and happy ending
The GamblerFyodor DostoevskyShares: classics, heavy and literary tone, historical setting, identity as a theme- Georgia Rises: A Day in the Life of Georgia O'KeeffeKathryn LaskyShares: hopeful mood, moderate pace, resolved and happy ending, set in rural
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