If I Could Have Written It or my hypothetical unreal post

okay, maybe this isn’t allowed, but I’m going to pick two

because one just doesn’t seem like enough

The Little Prince by St. Antoine de Saint Exupéry Yep.  There it is.  Awful sweet, but full of fantastic goodness and some real death and darkness too.  And holy aviation, what imagination.  The rose section can get a bit tedious, but he more than makes up for it with the fox and all those planets and our unforgettable hero.  Everyone who’s ever read this book, remembers something about it.  Even if it’s just the drawing of the not-hat.  That’s something I’d like to be able to do some day.

The Gold Bug Variations by Richard Powers. Not everyone considers this ’speculative fiction.’  But outstanding science, outstanding love stories, outstanding nuggets of erudition and compelling characters, and while some folks think Powers’ prose is a little cold, I’m not one of those folks.  There’s such intelligence at work in this novel–on the sentence-level as well as the more macro-level–absolutely breath-taking.  And wrapped up inside all that dazzling intelligence and deft musicality, such a heart, the novel brought me to my knees.

You?