puritan prayers

I'm on the hunt for good prayers to pray. I've lost my BCP and was trawling the shelves this morning for other prayer books.

I found my copy of 'Valley of Vision: A collection of puritan prayers'. I've used this in the past and it is good, but...

Here are my issues with it.
1.) when I use pre-written prayers, I'm often after something to lift me out of myself and give me a wider perspective. These prayers don't do that. They encourage naval gazing, which is no doubt useful for some, but I'm plenty good at it already.
2.) They are really long. Seems the policy is, if something is worth saying once, it's worth saying 15 times. These puritans love their parallel phrases. Adore sentences which say the same thing as the last one. Delight to find another way to present the same idea. Appreciate close range repetition...
3.) I'm all for confessing sin but in these prayers it almost feels like the pray-er is trying to earn his or her forgiveness by so thoroughly stating how rotten he or she is. And once again, this may be useful for some, but it not great for me. I'm already convinced.
4.) The nice words are a distraction. I'm constantly stopping and thinking 'I could steal that phrase for a song!'

Has anyone else encountered these prayers? What's your experience? Got anything better for me to try?