Book: A Prayer for Owen Meany

A Prayer for Owen Meany

by John Irving

Length: 640

Format: eBook
Price: $2.99 on Amazon

How I heard about it: It's on my list.

Basic Premise: Johnny Wheelwright tells the story of his life in terms of his best friend, Owen Meany, whose presence in his life affects everything from the existence of his mother to discovering his long-lost father to developing his own unwavering faith.

My Take: 5 out of 10 (scale here)
I looked, and I originally downloaded this book in March of 2015. MARCH. I just finished at the end of November. Want to know why? Because this book was soooooooooooooooooo long. On your Kindle, you can't really tell how long a book is. It has a page counter, but sometimes pages are multiple screens long. It also has a percentage count, but sometimes there is an interview with the author or the first chapter of another book or something, so you can't exactly tell when the book is going to end. All I know is that, after reading solidly on the drive to and from my aunt and uncle's over break (5 hours total), I had read only 10% of this book. UGH.

Aside from the length, the book was well written. The language was such that it would have been very pleasant to listen to someone read it aloud. It took FOREVER for the conflict (finding out how his real father was) to emerge, and I've come to hate books like this that spend too much time on introductory details. As often happens with books like this, the second half was much better and easier than the first half. The ending was satisfactory, I suppose, but it just took so long to get there. I feel like the editor could have axed at least 40% of this book and my rating would go up to a 7.5.

List Progress:

1. I Am Malala by Christina Lamb and Malala Yousafzai
2. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
3. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
4. Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher
5. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
6. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving review here
7. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
8.  Does My Head Look Big in This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah review here
9. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Timeby Mark Haddon
10. Uglies by Scott Westerfeld (read before I started blogging)
11. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
12. Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
13. Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson (read before I started blogging)
14. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
15. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer review here
16. Bossypants by Tina Fey
17. Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey
18. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (read before I started blogging)
19. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd (read before I started blogging)
20. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen *abandoned*
21. Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell review here
22. She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb
23. Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling - can we have a moment for whoever created this list? "Harry Potter" is not a book. It's a series of books. Sheesh.
24. Looking for Alaska by John Green review here
25. The Book Thief by Markus Zuzak review here
26. The Kite Runner by Khaled Housseini review here