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I’ve had Stoner on my shelf for years and always forget about it. I have to get around to it sooner than later. Thanks for the reminder!
NP, dude. I've put it off for too long, myself. Williams' prose doesn't quite pull you in, but I feel like it pays to stick with him.
Came here to post my books but saw this and got stoked. I picked up Stoner on a whim one time when I was at Powell’s in Portland. Read it not too long after and boy did it hit me hard, in a way maybe only East of Eden or the Corrections ever did. Definitely a book too under-appreciated today.
As for what I’ve been reading:
Recently read The Fan Man by William Kotzwinkle. It follows a down-and-out guy for a little while as he trapezes around NYC. It was fun with a couple killer lines, but nothing too strenuous.
Also read It Can’t Happen Here, by Sinclair Lewis. Lined up almost perfectly with all of the craziness happening in Portland right now. The parallels between the fascist landscape of the book and today are downright scary.
Right now I’m about 150 pages into On Earth We’re Briefly Beautiful by Ocean Vuong. The guy was awarded a Macarthur grant (or something similar) last year pretty much on this book alone. It’s a letter from the narrator to his mother, a Vietnamese immigrant. Deals with memory and family and the capriciousness of life, I guess. I can already tell it’s gonna make me cry.
I’m gonna try Ducksworth, Ohio next. It’s a big boy, like 900 pages long, most of which is just a single sentence. It’s crazy to flip through and just read for a second, but I’m not sure how it’ll sustain itself over such a length. We’ll see. Has anyone read this book? Any thoughts?