Stoner by John Williams

There is a moment when you finish a powerful book where you finish the last page and simply sit with the experience you just had. It doesn’t happen with every book, and that’s okay, but it’s the type of feeling I chase with every novel.

Stoner by John Williams is one of those books for me. Set in the early 1900s it follows a college professor through what from the outside might seem like a mediocre life. Maybe it resonates with me so deeply because I’ve been reflecting on my own life and decisions and where I’m at, but I don’t know if I’ve ever read such a beautiful study of the emotions and feelings that go on inside a person that by all accounts might seem “average.”

“After all, what did you expect?”