just a couple of days

Here is a short list of fictional books that made my brain orgasm and rattle my skull; books that wove a tight, gripping narrative with a philosophy or cosmology so compelling I decided there should be entire college courses devoted to these books:

• Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
• 1984, George Orwell (OK, there probably are, at groovier universities, classes in these first two.)
• The Sparrow/Children of God, Mary Doria Russell
• The Illuminatus Trilogy, Robert Anton Wilson
• Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein
• Tex & Molly in the Afterlife, Richard Grant
• The Time-Traveller's Wife, Audrey Niffeneger
• Woman on the Edge of Time, Marge Piercy
• Steppenwolf, Herman Hesse
• The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
• The Fifth Sacred Thing, Starhawk
• Just a Couple of Days, Tony Vigorito (it is a hellish frames site, but ignore it and go anyway because the author is charming to an extent way beyond his big green eyes which, honestly, are just too lovely not to crush on for a second.)

Those are in random, as-they-popped-into-my-head order, but Just a Couple of Days is fresh and raw and warm in my mind, which is reeling on twenty three or so levels of meta just utterly geeking out on the fabulosity of the verbage and the kickass WIN of the plot. Also, I am giddy with anticipation as I've just ordered free ('cept for $0.75 for shipping) bumper stickers with slogans from the story. Finally, Goldie will begin her sticker collection!

I'm thinking quite seriously about rereading this immediately without passing in on to Bu, with a pencil in hand to circle the choicy words that flew right above my vocabulary so I can pursue their definitions- also because now that I know the story I can slow down and savor the language of it. I Can. Not. Slow. Down. when I'm sucked into a great book, and consequently my recall will be about 30% this time next week.

It's difficult to avoid spoilers (and I really want you to read this book) but the language is so perfectly used to enhance the concept of the book I kind of want to scream and rant and cry and jump up and down with former-lit-major happiness. On the first two or three pages I was thinking that it was so clever and sexy, all the tangles of alliteration and rhyming and punning, but that it made for such a dense read I'd never fall into the story but by the time that thought condensed into its own form I was transfixed by the narrative.

I will also say that the use of second person and self-references to the text are done in a direct enough way to make me come in my brain- again! because I love that- but also not enough to remove the reader from the story. I need a thesaurus: plot, story, narrative- what else!?

Also, all the best books have apples.