Thomas Hardy novels like The Mayor of Casterbridge. My teen self being forced to read it in highschool absolutely rebelled against the way it was written and the subject matter itself. Fastforward 30 years and I adore his novels because I’m a subsistence farmer eking out a simple living and value nothing more than the love of my wife. Together we have realized the old-fashioned good life portrayed in his novels, the beautiful simplicity of how things used to be, and found books like the aforementioned, plus Return of the Native and Far From the Madding Crowd, and Tess to be extremely engaging food for thought.
The Woman in the Dunes is an existential novel worth considering which I enjoyed reading as a young man.