Mother Night vs Stoner: Which Should You Read?
Both live on shelves: Fiction
Mother Night
Mother Night is a daring challenge to our moral sense. American Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a spy during World War II, is now on trial in Israel as a Nazi war criminal. But is he really guilty? In this brilliant book rife…
1 film adaptation
vs
Stoner
“William Stoner entered the University of Missouri as a freshman in the year 1910, at the age of nineteen.”
William Stoner is born at the end of the nineteenth century into a dirt-poor Missouri farming family. Sent to the state university to study agronomy, he instead falls in love with English literature and embraces a…
The verdict
- Ratings are close across the board — any is a safe pick by score.
- Mother Night is the quickest read — about 3 hours vs 6 for Stoner.
- Stoner has the widest readership — 295163 ratings behind its score.
- Mother Night runs the darker storyline; Stoner stays the lighter read.
How to choose
Scores by source
| Mother Night | Stoner | |
|---|---|---|
| Goodreads | 4.2 (110884) | 4.4 (295163) |
| Hardcover | 4.2 (376) | 4.0 (1) |
| Google Books | 5.0 (1) | 4.5 (2) |
| Apple Books | 4.5 (398) | 4.5 (771) |
Reception
| Mother Night | Stoner | |
|---|---|---|
| Ratings | 110884 | 295163 |
| Editions | 60 | 49 |
| Film adaptations | 1 | 1 |
| Want to read | 96533 | — |
| Reading it now | 2696 | — |
| Written reviews | 6424 | — |
| Wikipedia attention | 5376 | 33354 |
| Pages | 206 | 336 |