John Williams, Stoner *** 1/2

The website Vulture occasionally asks actors, musicians, or artists for their ten favorite books. I learned about Stoner from Michael C. Hall's list. It is a portrait of an unremarkable English professor in Missouri during the first part of the 20th century. He grows up on a farm, finds his mind expanded by literature, falls in love with a banker's daughter, and experiences career setbacks.

It sounds strange to say, but the greatest strength of Stoner is how it doesn't explain the characters' various epiphanies. The author allows the experience to be as mysterious to us as it is to the characters. For example, Stoner's transformation from a farmer to a scholar happens after he fails to answer a question in class. Williams describes the incident and Stoner's dazed stroll after class, but doesn't attempt to plumb the depths of his motivations. The book is as inarticulate as the characters are when they are asked to explain themselves.

Another strength is Stoner's quietly positive attitude. Many apparently bad things happen to poor William Stoner, but as he says late in the book, he sees the events as his life and he can't regret them. He remains stoic-ly optimistic.

Ottessa Moshfegh, Homesick for Another World *** 1/2

The title, the unusual author's name, and the flying saucer on the cover all conspired to make me expect "eerily unsettling... delightful and funny" science-fiction stories. Not at all. Moshfegh's stories are firmly of this world, with characters who are unapologetically depraved or cruel. A drunk who keeps a sleeping bag in the classroom where she tries to teach high-school math; a women whose summer house is in a town she despises except for its meth dealers; an old man scheming to make a move on the young woman who moved in next door.

I find unselfconscious cruelty hilarious, because of how surprising it is when you're used to conventional characters. I liked these stories for the same reason I like reading Schopenhauer: great writing whose bitterness is over-the-top funny.

On the other hand, most of the stories lacked the narrative shape that would make them more than sketches. I'm definitely going to read Moshfegh's Booker-Prize nominated novel Eileen, in hopes that it pairs her dry humor with a complete story.

Donald Richie, The Inland Sea *** 1/2

The cover refers to The Inland Sea as "a masterwork of travel fiction by the West's finest writer on Japan." I think it's misleading to call it a travel book even though Richie does take a trip through the islands of the Inland Sea between Osaka and Hiroshima. (It's only as I'm writing this review that I notice the word "fiction" in there.) Richie is more interested in trying to convey something about the Japanese spirit than about Japan; the folklore and sociological generalizations are far more vivid than the physical descriptions. Its tone often reminded me of Sebald's The Rings of Saturn.  Richie's own peculiarities start to take over in the later pages, about the time he realizes that travel is really an attempt to find yourself.

Brian Doyle, The Plover ***

The Plover has a lot of elements that I really like. It's the story of a sea voyage, written with aplomb in an additive prose style, whose optimistic theme is the connectedness of all people and creatures. One character has a vision of a nation called Pacifica, which gives Doyle a chance to describe the Pacific Ocean from an interesting new perspective. Each chapter has a nice little woodcut illustration.

Unfortunately, though, the characters and the plot are underdeveloped. The Plover is the kind of novel where every character has a quirky trait -- the large silent deckhand, the finance minister who makes up words, the father with the long thin beard, the young girl who can communicate with birds -- and is completely defined by that trait. Not much happens in the plot, and what does happen depends on coincidences and "magic realism." None of this would be a problem if the outlandish elements interacted and added up to something, but they don't. Plus there's very little sailing talk.