Reader recommendation: Angle of Repose

Monitor readers share their favorite book picks.

I read Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner over and over; it's the story that I would choose to write if I were a writer, and it hadn't already been written. Written in a direct prose, with palpable rhythm, and raw, honest characters, Stegner manages to convey the sorrows and ecstasies that characterize human existence without betraying the particularity of his story, or diluting his characters with generalizations.