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)

City sidewalks, busy sidewalks dressed in holiday style

It's the official Curmudgeons Admit The Start Of The Christmas Season day. I can't lie, I love the trappings, looking in windows of stores where I never shop and inhaling peppermint bark and watching the Claymation Christmas Special for the 475th time (and doing the latter two things sacked out on the couch with my siblings, reminiscing about the year the twins were young enough to fit into their stockings, or the year my sister got sick and begged for a Chia Pet, or the year my dad kept pulling relatives aside during dinner to watch "A Special Christmas Box").

One of the holiday chores we would typically be doing the day after Thanksgiving is getting out the box of Christmas movies and books. I try to re-read David Sedaris' HOLIDAYS ON ICE and the first two chapters of LITTLE WOMEN every year. For picture books you can't go wrong with HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS (best read aloud in Boris Karloff voice), THE POLAR EXPRESS or the edition of THE NUTCRACKER with the almost-too-scary Sendak illustrations in it. What's your favorite holiday book?

(Sorry this list is so Christmas-centric; despite working in a hillel I don't know of any Hanukkah books. Please pitch in and correct my ignorance.)

Since today is also Buy Nothing Day, here are the free full texts of "The Gift of the Magi" and A CHRISTMAS CAROL; you can also listen to Sedaris' "Santaland Diaries" radio pieces (my first ever exposure to him) here.

Still from "Will Vinton's Claymation Christmas": GeekUSA