Jo March wins

In a survey updated from 2008, Louisa May Alcott's LITTLE WOMEN has jumped into America's top 10 books list. Other major winners were MOBY DICK, THE GRAPES OF WRATH and THE GREAT GATSBY, bumping out ATLAS SHRUGGED, two Dan Brown books (ha ha) and Stephen King's THE STAND. THE BIBLE is still #1 across all demographics, but millennials' #2 favorite is HARRY POTTER, the East Coast loves THE LORD OF THE RINGS and white people like GONE WITH THE WIND. (Via Jezebel)

This month in Ayn Rand jokes

"I would do anything to spend one night with Howard Roark."
-Monica, Ellen Page's character in "To Rome With Love" (W. Allen, 2012). This is how we know not only that she is culturally as deep as a kiddie pool, but also that the addressee of this remark, Jack (Jesse Eisenberg), will fall in love with her anyway. I was very much alone in laughing at this in the theatre, which is why I'm recruiting the Internet to have my back on this.

Hot Guys As/ In Literature

This list of the Top 10 Literary Hunks (Classical) (in other words, Shut Up, TWILIGHT) is fairly solid, despite the placement of movie screenshots in such a way as to invite a person to judge according to those and not the associated books. Florentino Ariza is a particularly inspired choice. I think most of you will have problems with #6 (valid), but I would initially dispute #10, Queequeg (MOBY DICK) and #9, Yossarian (CATCH-22) as being, well, not that discriminating of their bedfellows. Ironically, this is a great quality to have if you're a sailor or in the military, but not so high in what the article calls "hunk qualities." (When did the word hunk go out of style? Just wondering.)

I humbly suggest replacing them with Nick Carraway, as played by Paul Rudd in the lost TV adaptation no one but me ever watched, but which I swear is real, and Vronsky from ANNA KARENINA (see 1997 adaptation), of course.

As a question of order, I would hold that you either put Heathcliff at #1, or Darcy at #1, and in either case you think the other side is crazy and should probably go back and read the related books again. I would put Darcy at #1 and accept that that is a predictor of my personality in some way. Hey, I see a new line for those Team [Whatever] shirts! (Ugh, just kidding.)

Thanks to Orrin for having my best interests at heart in sending this in.

Big Book Double Edition

Regular Commenter Elizabeth sent me this article on Facebook via Flavorwire: "10 Novels That We Dare You To Finish." It's pegged to PARALLEL STORIES, a novel coming out this fall I have, yes, already requested to review because I like punishment.

I've read four of the books listed -- INFINITE JEST, A SUITABLE BOY, GONE WITH THE WIND and WAR AND PEACE, plus excerpts from REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST (but probably wouldn't add up to one of its nine volumes). ATLAS SHRUGGED and THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES I definitely intend to get along to, along with the rest of Proust. (Seriously, I still own my copies from college, refuse to sell them, but also make them live in exile with my parents. So I'm ambivalent. Maybe next year?)

Henry Darger gives me the creeps, frankly. Maybe if I make it through that documentary about him first...

Oh yeah, and while I was there, Facebook's new time-machine function dug up the following:

Never forget. If you still haven't gotten around to it you can still go back and read my review.