John Williams
You need to travel light when you move about as we do. The book rule 'unless you read it more than once, you don't buy it'. I thought Stoner was a book about weed. It sat on my Kindle for a month or so. I don't recall how it got there. I was in no rush to read it. I started reading it and could not put it down. In Bangkok, I went to the second-hand bookstore. They had two of William's books, Stoner and Butcher's Crossing. I grabbed both. I am beginning to realise that 20th-century US literature is what I prefer. It is an impressive list. Twain, Steinbeck, London, Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, Kerouac. On it goes. More recently, Easton Ellis and McCarthy. Easton Ellis wrote the introduction to Butcher's Crossing. I recall my favourite McCarthy books. Blood Meridian, No Country for Old Men, and All the Pretty Horses. Along with True Grit by Portis, westerns were written with a clarity and detachment to violence that I admired. ...