Aching

I started reading The Passage, by Justin Cronin.  With foresight and luck, I put myself on the library list before the buzz really hit, so I was only 35 on a list that eventually cleared 100.  I got my copy when I had 20 other books out.  I picked it up to read with just a few days left before it had to go back.

And kids, it's so good.  I only got 70 pages into its 700, but each chapter is like a novella, full of tension and detail and character development and emotion.  So far I've met most of the main characters (I think), but I don't really know how they're going to come together.  I just barely learned that there's anything supernatural about the story, though the slightly dystopic future (highway checkpoints; New Orleans underwater) is both convincing and thought provoking.

But then I had to give it back.  Curse them!  I don't want to read anything else--I want to read this book, right now.  I would,  hand to god, go out and buy it, except that as we all know that would be the kiss of death.  I never read books I own.  They don't have a deadline, you see.

So I'm waiting for my number to come back up.  I'm also stalking the speed read copies--two weeks, no renewals.  If I check every day, I should be able to run over and get one from Cambridge when it comes back in.  Or Chelsea.  I'm almost ready to drive out to Franklin and check out their speed read copy, and I don't actually know where the heck Franklin is.

But if anyone owns a copy, and would like to lend it to me (anyone who hasn't succumbed to the Kindle, Brenda), that would be enough of a deadline for me.  Please?

Really good book.  Like what you imagine Stephen King might write, if he'd gotten better and better over the years.  Like the Platonic ideal of a thriller/horror with literary weight behind it.  Like I don't know what.  Want.