New favorite book

For what it's worth, this one just might have leapt to the head of the class - if you've got some free time, you won't regret looking up "The Elegance of the Hedgehog," by Muriel Barbery. Here's the review I did on my Facebook "books" app below:

I'm not certain yet, but I think this book might have just displaced such treasures as A Prayer for Owen Meany, Catch-22, and Mark Helprin's Soldier of the Great War as my favorite book. I'm still blown away by Ms. Barbery's writing style, the description, characterization, and layers within layers that exist in a novel that is, well, so intensely and brilliantly observed and recorded by the author in the form of a collection of writings and thoughts on all manner of lofty philosophic and quotidian matters that are _also_ intensely and brilliantly observed and journaled by the two main characters (an autodidact concierge and a precocious 12 year old girl in Paris). It's not the hall of mirrors that my own poor prose seems to suggest here - rather, it is a work of art that I will be thinking about and re-reading for years to come. For now, at any rate, this one goes smack on to my list of greatest hits. Wow.

See what you think, and let me know, please -