"A Prayer for Owen Meany" - John Irving

Finished it. Amazing experience. An assortment of thoughts:

Ayn Rand would hate it. Don't think my dad would like it.

Although Owen Meany is certainly the focus, both of the book and of John Wheelwright's life, and is such a larger-than-life character, in retrospect I found myself thinking about what an odd duck John himself is. The course of his life is fascinating - the progression from Owen Meany's shadow, poor student, etc., to English professor, virgin curmudgeon, political critic. I really enjoyed his rants about literature and his students, in the later parts of the book. But what an odd fellow. How he doesn't seem to have gumption or really a life of his own. The way he drifts, doesn't have a sex life.

I am not a religious person and I tend not to believe in predestination, but I did find the book very powerful. The draw of such things is certainly very strong; people want to find reasons for things that happen to them. Was the fateful baseball game part of Owen Meany's "conversion"? Or did he believe even before that he was "God's instrument"? Was that the purpose of his fateful baseball hit - God's way of emphasizing the point? What other purpose did it serve? Did it play a role in John's life? Of course it must have.

"The Clockwise Man" - Justin Richards

This is a Doctor Who novel - another outlet for my mania. The writing is unsophisticated, although it does capture the essential Doctor-ness and Rose-ness (with the 9th Doctor and Rose as main characters), and certainly also captures the hectic pace of an average TV episode. There are loads of action and suspense. The danger never feels terribly dangerous, but I didn't hate it. I get the impression that it is not one of the better Who novels.

"A Prayer for Owen Meany" - John Irving

I'm currently reading this. More to follow.
I had tried to read it last year; it just wasn't the right time. Now is the right time. Moria - it is excellent. I hope you don't think less of me because I wasn't ready for it before.

"One Jump Ahead" - Mark L. Van Name

This ended up being a bit of a disappointment. I checked it out from the library after reading glowing reviews on amazon.com... not the first time that such reviews have turned out to be misleading, I might add. Overall, a fluffy bit of SF. A few interesting bits of technology, nice use of intelligent machines and such, but extremely unsophisticated. Ah well.