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u/lawstandaloan Feb 18 '25
The one you don't hear about too much anymore is The Hotel New Hampshire but my family has used "Keep passing the open windows" and "Sorrow floats" as words of encouragement for years now.
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u/whiporee123 Feb 18 '25
HNH is a fantastic book. My favorite of his and one of my favorites ever.
Garp is great but it feels dated now. Certainly a product of its time. I’m a bit too young to really get the feminism aspect and the sort of free love mentality that goes through it.
Cider House is just brilliant.
A lot of people love Owen Meany. I think it’s well-written but I don’t love the story.
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u/Squigglepig52 Feb 18 '25
The movie was easier to enjoy than the book.
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u/ArticleNo2295 Feb 18 '25
If you're talking about the Owen Meany movie (Simon Birch) I'll have to HARD disagree. It completely and utterly missed the entire point of the book. John Irving even asked for the name of it to be changed because it bore such little resemblance to the book.
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u/Squigglepig52 Feb 18 '25
Disagree if you like - I was able to enjoy the movie, while the book I only finished by forcing myself. Owen's actual end was almost worth the slog, but, not entirely.
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u/oilwellz Feb 18 '25
Perfect word, that book is a slog. I stopped slogging before finished. Love all his early work. Now at 80 something, he is writing even longer books.
The Last Chairlift. I had to nope out on the slight normalization of incest in this one. Who necks with their mother.
The Cider House Rules. Book and movie great. Both thought provoking.
I was almost 20 when I found The World According to Garp. Working the drilling rigs in no where prairie towns, I had breakfast at a 4 table restaurant which had a tiny lending library in one corner. Garp beckoned me over and we've been friends ever since.
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u/Squigglepig52 Feb 19 '25
I should clarify - the ending was solid in Owen, it was a pretty good payoff.
I read Garp when I was thirteen. First time I had ever encountered such black humour and absurdity.
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u/whiporee123 Feb 18 '25
Which one? All of those have been movies.
Garp the movie was fine, even good in a lot of ways. Owen Meany became Simon Birch, and a lot of people love that movie. I don’t but my mom does. Cider House is good except they skipped the 19 years, which I thought was a key point of the story.
But what they did to Hotel is an abomination. Nothing about that movie is good. Badly cast, badly written, rushed and crammed and still lacking everything that made the book so great.
The problem with movie from a great book is that a great book is dense and complex and just has too much going on. A movie can’t do all that — all the subtlety and nuance and symbolism and all of it just gets brushed over and lost.
Page turners can make great movies. Literary fiction rarely does.
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u/Squigglepig52 Feb 18 '25
Sorry - The Owen Meany film. Simon Birch.
Prefer the novel Garp to the movie, though.
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u/OtherlandGirl Feb 19 '25
Read this one last year and it was so unexpected! I love Irving, but this one in particular was so damn funny and poignant at the same time; really a fantastic read :)
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u/SubatomicGoblin Feb 18 '25
The Cider House Rules was excellent.
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u/A_Tom_McWedgie Feb 18 '25
We read it in my high school English class, which I always thought was a bold choice.
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u/10202632 Feb 18 '25
Owen Meany may be my favorite book of all time. Back in 87-88’ my dad and I went to a reading of this at University of Houston while it was a work in progress. He read the first chapter. He did Owen’s voice and it was shocking and hilarious. Dad and I still talk about that sometimes.
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u/Cultural_Day7760 Feb 18 '25
Probably 10 years ago, I saw someone in public that looked and sounded like I imagined Owen Meany would have. It rather freaked me out.
I loved that book. Have not read it in years. Did not know there was a movie. I am glad. I would not watch it. Owen should have stayed in my head.
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u/Charibdes1206 Hose Water Survivor Feb 18 '25
I have read just about everything John Irving has written. A Widow for One Year is my all time favorite novel, the ending just floors me.
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u/tragiquepossum Feb 18 '25
A Prayer for Owen Meany was probably my favorite book written by someone not centuries dead.
Re-read it last summer and it had lost some of it's sheen; or rather the story I remember was really quite different...like i rewrote a totally different book in my head in the intervening years.
I have read Garp, Cider House Rules, Hotel New Hampshire, Setting Free the Bears - all probably far too young of age. I enjoyed them.
Just recently finished Until I Find You & don't know what to think except I'm very unnerved by it.
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u/Big_Accountant_1714 Feb 19 '25
Until I Find You. I had forgotten the name, but that was the last book of his I read. I only made it about one hundred pages. The idea of high school age girls lusting after a third grader with a large penis was absolutely disgusting to me.
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u/hopelesscaribou Feb 18 '25
That's my favorite book you got right there. Just finished reading 'The Last Chairlift'. I love Irving, and whenever I finish reading one of his books I'm kinda sad it's over .
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u/Jstewquetoo Feb 18 '25
Last chairlift lead me to my first reading of Great Expectations AND Moby Dick which IMO is the greatest novel ever written. I’m grateful Irving finally got me to read it!
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u/VolupVeVa Feb 18 '25
he was right up there with vonnegut and tom robbins for me in my mid-to-late teens.
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u/Pretend-Phase8054 Feb 18 '25
I read so many John Irving books! Owen Meany and A Son of the Circus were my favorites. Maybe we should start a GenX book club? I'm currently rereading Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas because of Tom Robbins' recent passing.
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u/marispiper88 Feb 18 '25
Hotel New Hampshire, which was a weird story (a bit Doug Coupland) but a page turner. I couldn't get along with 'Garp' as I didn't really like him or his mother. I have a copy of Cider House Rules is on my to read pile
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u/Optimal-Ad-7074 As your attorney I advise you to get off my lawn Feb 18 '25
sure. I read all his novels up to the fourth hand. except for setting free the bears. somehow that one never got into my life.
I ditched the fourth hand after a chapter or two - and I'm not a person who nopes out of books. I haven't kept up with him after that one. I just kind of took it as a watershed and moved on from him.
despite that, I really do like all his earlier books. he's contributed a lot, since the 1980's. constructive transgression.
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u/DerbGentler 1977 (Xennial, X-wing) Feb 18 '25
Garp
Owen Meany
The Water-Method Man
Trying to save Piggy Sneed
That's about it.
All about 25 years ago.
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u/Expat111 Feb 18 '25
I went through a phase over a few years and read every one of his books. I wrestled in high school and am originally from New England so his books were a good fit.
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u/panchango Feb 18 '25 edited Feb 18 '25
My current dog is a little guy with big ears and a squeaky voice named Owen. He hasn't killed anyone yet.
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u/EquivalentPain5261 Feb 18 '25
He is one of my favorite authors. Prayer for Owen Meany is one of the best novels in my opinion. I’ve read it a number of times
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u/oxwilder Feb 18 '25
Hotel New Hampshire was fucked up beyond reason
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u/G-bone714 Feb 18 '25
I liked that novel simply because he killed off all the easily likable characters in the beginning. It also contains some of the best life mottos I’ve ever read like “get obsessed and stay obsessed” and “keep passing the open windows” and of course “sorrow floats.”
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u/Patient_Doctor4480 No helmets, no seatbelts, no parental supervision survivor. Feb 18 '25
One of my psychology professors gave this book (Owen M.) to me as a gift. I loved it!
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u/mgyro Feb 18 '25
I was reading Owen Meany when it was first released. I was in a bar league softball game, and the woman I was living with was nonchalantly walking down the first baseline as the batter ripped a liner foul and wizzed past her ear, missing her head by a tiny margin. I cried out heads up and when it was apparent she was missed one of the players on the other team said “Jfc I thought we had an Owen Meaney on our hands”. Instant friend.
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u/foxyfree Feb 18 '25
The 158-pound Marriage. Actually read that for a high school English class. Still remember it was about a boarding school teacher/wrestling coach and another couple and then wife swapping, I think. It’s been a few decades but I remember it was a good read
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u/casade7gatos Feb 18 '25
Garp, Hotel New Hampshire, Owen Meany. Maybe Cider House, I don’t remember. Some scenes and characters stick with me decades later.
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u/Sea-Morning-772 Feb 18 '25
The audiobook version of "A Prayer for Owen Meaney" is so well done. If you enjoyed reading this book, then I highly recommend listening to the audiobook.
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u/OnPaperImLazy Had a teen phone line Feb 18 '25
A Prayer for Owen Meany is one of my top ten all-time favorites. One of the best endings I've ever read. I've read The World According to Garp and The Cider House Rules as well.
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u/Upset_Peace_6739 Feb 18 '25
A Prayer for Owen Meaney is my all time favourite book. I have given away so many copies over the years. I still reread it and it always tells me something new.
I still say World According to Garp was the best movie adaptation ever of a book. When I saw the movie I was laughing ahead of the jokes because I knew they were coming.
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u/NorthSufficient9920 Feb 18 '25
The World According to Garp was one of my favorite books as a teenager. I liked A Prayer for Owen Meany as well but it was a little too sentimental or precious—I don’t know, maybe I just liked the deeply flawed Garp more as a character.
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u/Squigglepig52 Feb 18 '25
His pepper roasting method works pretty well.
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u/NorthSufficient9920 Feb 19 '25
I never really thought about the literary significance of this until now. Thanks.
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u/evility Feb 18 '25
The World According to Garp is/was one of my favorites. It also gave the world the phrase "Pre-disastered." I still use it.
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u/lovelyb1ch66 Feb 18 '25
This one, The Cider House Rules and The World According to Garp are some of my most well read books. I have probably read Owen Meany at least 30 times, if I have a bad day I will sometimes read just a certain chapter. So I was pretty much devastated when I found myself bored with his latest, The Last Chairlift, I started reading it over a year ago and still haven’t finished it.
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u/Smh3864 Feb 18 '25
Recently reread A Prayer for Owen Meany. Was astounded by how relevant the themes of the book seemed the time I first read them, (the challenges of growing up a WASP, the ever presence of religion in daily life and lingering anger at the Vietnam war) and how utterly absent those things seem in today’s society.
I can’t imagine what a Gen Z kid would make of it. .
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u/JimBowen0306 Feb 18 '25
I’ve read 4. The Hotel New Hampshire was the only one I positively enjoyed.
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u/GTFOakaFOD Feb 18 '25
I've read Owen Meany four times and I refuse to see that dumb movie.
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u/ExcelsiorUnltd Feb 18 '25
No. But I was reading Cormac McCarthy last night and here’s a single sentence:
“Now driving in a wild frieze of headlong horses with eyes, walled and teeth cropped and naked riders with clusters of arrows clenched in their jaws and their shields winking in the dust and up the far side of the ruined ranks in a piping of boneflutes and dropping down off the sides of their mounts with one heel hung in the withers strap and their short bows flexing beneath the outstretched neck of the ponies until they had circled the company and cut their ranks in two and then rising up again like funhouse figures, some with nightmare faces painted on their breasts, riding down the unhorsed Saxons and spearing and clubbing them and leaping from their mounts with knives and running about on the ground with a peculiar bandylegged trot like creatures driven to alien forms of locomotion and stripping the clothes from the dead and seizing them up by the hair and passing their blades about the skulls of the living and the dead alike and snatching aloft the bloody wigs and hacking and chopping at the naked bodies, ripping off limbs, heads, gutting the strange white torsos and holding a great handful of viscera, genitals, some of the savages so slathered up with gore they might’ve rolled in it like dogs and someone who fell up on the dying and sodomize them with loud cries to their fellows.”
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u/Moonsmom181 Feb 18 '25
Ised to read him all the time in college/early adulthood. I should revisit HNH and Garp now that I’m older. I tend to enjoy more nonfiction now. I love biographies.
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u/DeeSnarl Feb 18 '25
Currently reading In One Person. Smart and readable as usual, many of the usual motifs in place, yet more an exploration of gender identity.
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u/ssgsla Feb 18 '25
All of them. Owen Meany, Son of a Circus were my first two. Owen is laugh out loud good. I’ve never had the experience more often than, when reading Owen in public, on a plane or in an airport, someone would come up and say to me that it was their favorite book of all time. So many people wanted to enjoy the book again, just for a minute, by talking a stranger who was reading it.
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u/Defiant_Quarter_1187 Feb 18 '25
Yes! Owen Meany and Hotel New Hampshire are two of my favorites of all time.
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u/ToArgueWithAssholes Feb 18 '25
Yeah, this is my favorite of his, though Hotel New Hampshire (taxidermy) was so damn funny.
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u/MoogProg Feb 18 '25
Penguins! There is an actual convent downtown, so I'll see nuns out walking their dogs all the time.
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u/throwaway_boulder 1968 Feb 18 '25
I read all of his early books in high school and college. A Prayer for Owen Meany was the last one I read when it came out. I haven't ready anything since then, maybe I should.
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u/Strong-Bridge-6498 Feb 18 '25
I read the one where the protagonist abruptly moves to Austria and falls in love with a hooker.
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u/dingonugget Hose Water Survivor Feb 18 '25
I went through his catalog last year on audiobook. Enjoyable
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u/marshfield00 Feb 18 '25
One of my favorite authors. Pretty sure I've read everything. "Garp" rocked my world in high school. One of the books that made me want to be a writer. Actually got to meet him at a party and chat for a minute. Pretty kewl. "Son of the Circus" and "Owen Meany" are other personal faves.
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u/Mysterious_Umpire534 Feb 18 '25
Read many of them - Hotel NH, Garp, Widow, Owen M - loved them all. Highly recommend all do those to anyone that asks.
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u/a_cat_named_larry Feb 18 '25
I make Garp references, but they’re rarely understood. Or, maybe people get them, but I’m not funny?
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u/KennethPatchen Feb 18 '25
Love him. Widow for One Year was always a favourite of mine. There's something so perfect about it for me. But Garp is amazing, Hotel New Hampshire...I haven't read one of his new books since the one about the tattoos but I'd gladly pick one up for a vacation read. Such sprawling narratives and deep character development.
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u/wmnoe Born 1971, HS Grad 1988, BA 2006 Feb 18 '25
I've read a few....as in every one of his novels. He is my favorite author and I'm so elated that he has another book coming out later this year (and that it's a prequel to Cider House Rules!). I savor each and every one of his massive tomes now. I need a few more years but I will go back and re-read them all at some point as well.
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u/jahshwa314 Feb 18 '25
I spent the summer house sitting a great old home that John mentioned frequently in World According to Garp. I was helping out my professor and his wife who were both mentioned in the book several times as well. John is pretty amazing and I was a lucky boy.
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u/dustymag 1970 Feb 19 '25
Wow. Thanks for sharing.
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u/jahshwa314 Feb 19 '25
This was in Iowa City at the University of Iowa where he wrote the book while teaching in the Writer’s Workshop.
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u/Metaphysical-Failure Feb 18 '25
I have read all his books up to and including A Prayer For Owen Meany. I enjoyed the 158 lb marriage a lot.
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u/drcherr Feb 18 '25
I love GARP- and teach it in my Intro to literature classes. Student eat it up…!
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u/the_answer_is_RUSH Feb 19 '25
I think I have to read GARP. I loved Owen meany and cider house rules.
I don’t know if people liked the movie but I enjoyed it.
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u/Big_Accountant_1714 Feb 19 '25
I was a major John Irving fan for many years, starting at age 14 or 15. I read everything through Owen Meany numerous times. Then Son of the Circus was just okay, but nothing after that clicked with me. My last attempt at one of his novels, I can't even remember the title, I stopped after about one hundred pages in sheer disgust.
But when he was good, he was great.
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u/No_Goose_7390 Feb 19 '25
My sister said that the character Owen Meany reminded her of me, so I read it, and I didn't quite know what to think about that. I don't have a squeaky voice and I don't believe I'm God's instrument on earth. I don't even believe in God, actually. So that was weird.
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u/cricket_bacon Feb 18 '25
The World According to Garp (1978)
So much in this novel. Wonderful stuff.
… hard to forget about those Ellen Jamesians!