I’ve not posted here in a minute. I’ve been focused on non-fiction academic work, and it seems this trend will continue for at least a month or so, as I am subject to the constraints of time. This said, I still have time to listen to audiobooks, especially when I work out. I also listen to them when I am falling asleep and waking.
I just finished listening to the third book of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. It’s classified as LitRPG. which is new to me. I found a video of these blokes talking about it and sharing some samples. If you enjoy RPG culture and pointless diversion, this might be for you. I’m not sure how it reads, but it works well in dramatised audio.
Rather than listen to the fourth book in the series – I felt it was a bit indulgent to continue down this path, so I switched to Stoner by John Williams – presumably not the geezer who wrote the Star Wars music. I’m not familiar with Williams, but Stoner kept cropping up on lists, so I succumbed.
Here’s the blurb from the Audible product page:
William Stoner is born at the end of the 19th century into a dirt-poor Missouri farming family. Sent to the state university to study agronomy, he instead falls in love with English literature and embraces a scholar’s life, far different from the hardscrabble existence he has known. And yet as the years pass, Stoner encounters a succession of disappointments: marriage into a “proper” family estranges him from his parents; his career is stymied; his wife and daughter turn coldly away from him; a transforming experience of new love ends under threat of scandal. Driven ever deeper within himself, Stoner rediscovers the stoic silence of his forebears and confronts an essential solitude.
John Williams’s luminous and deeply moving novel is a work of quiet perfection. William Stoner emerges from it not only as an archetypal American, but as an unlikely existential hero, standing, like a figure in a painting by Edward Hopper, in stark relief against an unforgiving world.
I’ve only read the first two chapters, and it’s already got my interest. My first thoughts are on its existential nature. I am reminded of Camus’s Meursault from L’Étranger, except that Stoner, the protagonist, is more aware of his environment. Even so, he seems to drift through life with limited agency.
The blurb above already conveys more than I’ve yet read, but so far I appreciate the narration and unfolding.
I share an accounting on TikTok.
Ridley Park 