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The Book that gave us “The World…”
I know a Good Story / November 5, 2014

If you ever run across a group of serious readers,  those people who see books as magic carpets and TARDIS boxes that guide us to understanding, you will always find they accord certain books special significance.   “This book,” they’ll say, “was my world at one time.  This is the book I picked up, read and re-read for weeks.  This book dominated my imagination. It changed the way I looked at life, at least for awhile.  I’m a different person now for reading it then and reading some of it now takes back to when it was new.”  For me, one of those books is The World According to Garp by John Irving. Garp’s first wave of popularity had already crested when I first picked it up.  It was one of the first “adult” novels I read as an adult.  As a precocious reader I had consumed many adult volumes before then (YA lit was a thing of the future) but I approached those stories from the perspective of a child with parents and authority figures to tried to regulate my reading.  I doubt if any of them would have recommended The World According to Garp .  Luckily, I didn’t have to…