I happened to slide the spine of “The Wind-up Bird Chronicle” by Haruki Murakami out from the array of old books. Had I ever heard of him before? No. Was the cover of the book particularly appealing? No, it was merely a dark murky grey with a bright orange title. Well, I began to read. Did I know what was awaiting me deep inside the dusty pages of my first-ever Murakami? Not to be dramatic, but no, I had no idea what I would be faced with.

Anna Akhmatova is often described as one of Russia's greatest poets. She started her journey as a poet at the young age of eleven, under a pseudonym as requested by her father. In 1912 she published her first collection of poems titled “Evening”. The poems addressed themes from love to grief and life as an intellectual and creative woman in the 1910s. 

Lovesickness is a term ensconced in our dictionaries, unquestionably proving that illness and infatuation have a history of association. Gabriel García Márquez takes this connection one step further in his esteemed novel “Love in the Time of Cholera” first published in 1985. 

The Poem “Bar Napkin Sonnet #11”, by Moira Egan is able to capture themes of intoxication, love, and internal conflict through her use of symbolism and figurative language. “Bar Napkin Sonnet #11” explores a woman's sexuality and the struggles she faces at a bar and within herself.

Shirley Jackson’s “We Have Always Lived in the Castle” (1962) is a true masterpiece of gothic suspense. The reader is immediately intimately addressed by the main protagonist Mary Katherine (Merricat) Blackwood. Her first-person narration becomes an equally haunting as fascinating experience that leaves a psychedelic thrill in the reader. 

Spectacularly mundane is arguably the only way to describe John Williams 20th century work of unassuming brilliance. 

Before starting to divulge details of the how and why, we must establish that Stoner is a novel that echoes. 

Mary Shelley described her world-renowned novel “Frankenstein” published in 1818 as “a cautionary tale of what happens when men play god.” Frankenstein is essentially the story of how intellectual arrogance leads to total destruction. Nevertheless, in 1818 society was still unquestionably perceiving the product of this arrogance as a monster.