- A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
- Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell
A Prayer for Owen Meany is a novel about faith and the meaning of life and lack thereof, set during the Vietnam War Era. I've never read anything by John Irving before, but apparently he is quite a famous author worldwide (incidentally more popular in Europe than here in the United States). Irving has been called a Dickensian author and rightly so. His characters are larger-than-life and well-developed. Irving uses language cleverly and grabs the reader. He also makes maximum use of the flashback to drive home his theme of faith; the events are mostly in chronological order, but they jump around a little.
The story is about an abnormally small boy named Owen Meany who grows up into a Christ-like figure. The narrator is Owen's best friend, who gradually becomes a "believer" in miracles. I found the first 3/4 of the book fun, but not striking. However, the ending was shocking and moving. It made me want to go back to the beginning and read the book over again. Overall, a very well-written story with a strong, moving message (no, I won't give it away).
Blink is a pop-psychology book, but well-written compared to others in the genre. The theme of the book is the split-second decision or judgment. Gladwell doesn't really have a coherent message, which makes the work feel more like a biography of split-second decisions. He says that sometimes quick decisions can be amazingly accurate or incredibly wrong, depending on the situation and the knowledge of the observer. The lack of a strong conclusion may be disappointing to some, but as a scientist, I was relieved to read a book that didn't make grand statements and I appreciated Gladwell's patience and throughness in covering all the nuances of his subject. Gladwell has a gift for researching vivid examples and writing eloquently. For once, I wasn't bored by a popular science book.
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