October’s What Are You Reading?

Congratulations, Cheryl Strayed!

This has turned into one of my favorite posts each month. There’s an abundance of giving and receiving in your responses, and I am grateful for that.

Today, I am thrilled because I have fallen in with an old friend I have not been around for quite some time.

I did not become a reader until I turned thirty. Since then, I’ve done my best to catch up. One of the first novels capturing my heart was John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. Before long, I was devouring anything he and Tom Robbins created. There was something about their broken and, in Irving’s case, Dickensian characters that gave me something to grab onto.

Since Irving won the Academy Award for The Cider House Rules, I’ve not been able to get past the first fifty pages of any of his newer books.

I am only a third of the way through his latest, The Last Chairlift, and my heart is filled once again.

And no wonder, the book has bits of Garp, Owen Meany, the Hotel New Hampshire, and even the India-based Son of the Circus within it. …