reality?

last night i finished my ántonia by willa cather, my first finished book here. washing out a long, long reading dry spell. i liked it a lot, but i'm not sure that cather "created one of the most winning heroines in american fiction" [or that "'no romantic novel ever written in america, by man or woman, is one half so beautiful as my ántonia.'"] nonetheless, there were a couple great lines toward the end.

"'Do you know, Ántonia, since I've been away, I think of you more often than of anyone else in this part of the world. I'd have liked to have you for a sweetheart, or a wife, or my mother or my sister--anything that a woman can be to a man. The idea of you is a part of my mind; you influence my likes and dislikes, all my tastes, hundreds of times when I don't realize it. You really are a part of me.'"

"She lent herself to immemorial human attitudes which we recognize by instinct as universal and true. I had not been mistaken. She was a battered woman now, not a lovely girl; but she still had that something which fires the imagination, could still stop one's breath for a moment by a look or gesture that somehow revealed the meaning in common things."

i need suggestions for something else now. fiction, please.