Books like

Books like Stoner

12 books with a reading profile close to Stoner by John Williams. Deep, inward-looking, contemplative and thought-provoking; a moderate read.

1

Dear Life

by Alice Munro

Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, classic literature

Dear Life is Alice Munro's last collection, with ten stories of rural and small-town Canada.
2

Interpreter of Maladies

by Jhumpa Lahiri

Also inward-looking and contemplative · narrative, classic literature

In this collection of nine short stories, Jhumpa Lahiri depicts the domestic lives of Indian immigrants and their first-generation children navigating the friction between traditional heritage and American secularism.
3

Their Eyes Were Watching God

by Zora Neale Hurston

Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, classic literature

Janie Crawford returns to Eatonville, Florida, and recounts her life to her friend Pheoby Watson.
4

The Lowland

by Jhumpa Lahiri

Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, classic literature

Subhash and Udayan are brothers born in Calcutta, separated by temperament and political conviction.
5

A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories

by Lucia Berlin

Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, classic literature

Lucia Berlin's collected short stories draw on her own life: a childhood in mining towns, years in El Paso and Chile, work as a cleaning woman, hospital switchboard operator and teacher, and struggles with alcoholism an…
6

Tokyo Ueno Station

by Yū Miri

Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, classic literature

Kazu is a ghost who haunts the grounds of Tokyo’s Ueno Park, mirroring the era he spent living there as a homeless laborer.
7

Winesburg, Ohio

by Sherwood Anderson

Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, classic literature

Set in a small Midwestern town at the turn of the century, this collection of interconnected stories centers on George Willard, a young reporter for the local newspaper.
8

A Raisin in the Sun

by Lorraine Hansberry

Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, classic literature

Set in Chicago’s South Side during the late 1950s, the play follows the Younger family as they await a ten-thousand-dollar life insurance check following the patriarch's death.
9

Martin Eden

by Jack London

Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, classic literature

Martin Eden, a coarse and uneducated sailor, decides to overhaul his entire identity after meeting Ruth Morse, a woman from a refined bourgeois family.
10

Out Stealing Horses

by Per Petterson

Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, classic literature

Trond Sander, a sixty-seven-year-old man, has moved to a remote cabin in eastern Norway to live alone with his dog.
11

Train Dreams

by Denis Johnson

Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, classic literature

Robert Grainier is a day laborer in the American West during the early twentieth century.
12

Cathedral

by Raymond Carver

Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, classic literature

Raymond Carver’s collection presents twelve short stories centered on blue-collar domesticity, alcoholism, and isolation in the American Pacific Northwest.

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