"My hour for tea is half-past five, and my buttered toast waits for nobody." - Wilkie Collins

Funny how time works. April turned into May, May turned into June, and June turned into July. Huh. Does it do that every year? I’m baaaaaaack! Despite the end of the semester bringing me tons of free time (beautiful, wonderful free time), my reading slowed down (curse you, Netflix). The two books that I hoped to finish in April (shhhh) were both pretty long too, which didn’t help. This week I finished my 8^th book of the year which sets me a couple of books behind on the tentative schedule I had set myself. Since my last post I’ve read The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, and A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. I didn’t completely fall in love with either of them but they were definitely fun to read.

Big holla shout out to Tom for both recommending and lending (rhymes) A Prayer for Owen Meany to me. This is a book about faith, but in no way I’d ever read before. The story flicks about across the timeline of two best friends, John (I just had to look up his name because I couldn’t remember it – one of the issues of first person narratives...) and Owen, who is one of the strangest characters I’ve ever come across. Owen hits a foul baseball which kills John’s mother, and Owen doesn’t believe in accidents. He very much believes that everything happens for a reason, and this is what the book centres around. A Prayer for Owen Meany feels more like a biography than a linear story. Sometimes it’s not clear at first why a particular story is being told at that point in the book, but each tale of Owen’s life has a reason for being told, just like Owen believes the events have a reason for happening (I don’t know if that was intentional but I’m rolling with it – I sound intelligent, right?). This book is a little crass at times, but the writing is good and I did enjoy it. Long chapters, though. Really long chapters.

On the other hand, we have The Woman in White, which my mum and sister had both read and enjoyed. Victorian writing can be tough to read since it’s so wordy and descriptive and sometimes it feels kind of exhausting to get through a page where all that’s happened is that two people have made eye contact. …Okay, it wasn’t quite that bad. It’s written from the point of view of six or so different people and I’ve said before that I’m not a fan of books with split personalities, but it was really well done – each character had a very distinct style and there is actually a purpose to splitting up the story in that way. The story itself was gripping – it’s a mystery novel that feels predictable but takes confusing turns along the way, about (you guessed it) the elusive woman in white. The solution is laid out in a very matter-of-fact way and is a bit anticlimactic, but I sort of liked that. If you’re into old Victorian-type novels or want to try one out I would recommend it!

Now for the cheesy part. I’ve been thinking a lot this summer about how the experience of reading a book is about more than just the book itself. Re-reading a book brings back memories of the first time I read it, whether it’s of the place I read it in or when I smudged chocolate on the cover (oops). I’ll always remember that the first time I read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows I had to share it with Clare and I got annoyed at her when she overtook me (it was MY book); I’ll remember that I read Captain Corelli’s Mandolin for the first time in a tent in Italy in 2009; I’ll remember that I read A Prayer for Owen Meany and The Woman in White outside in the garden on sunny days in Washington while trying to stop Lily the dog from knocking over my water.