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)

Meals of famous book characters

This gallery isn't complete enough but it's a good start. (Huffington Post Books)

Donna Tartt's Pulitzer Prize-winning bird

Donna Tartt's third novel THE GOLDFINCH won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction today.

I just finished this book to discuss at book club, in a talk that was pretty critical although ultimately more people liked the book than didn't. We all agreed it had some pacing/ plotting issues; for me, the coincidence-ness of the last third became distracting just as the action was picking up, and fell apart a little when I stopped to think about it. I liked Tartt's style, which several people in the club found distracting or too verbose. I remember being more impressed by THE LITTLE FRIEND, but found I hardly remembered anything about it specifically. Did you read it? What did you think?

Other Pulitzer winners included Alan Taylor for history, Dan Fagan for nonfiction, Megan Marshall for biography, Annie Baker for playwriting (yeah!) and Vijay Seshadri for poetry. But everyone's really talking about the Washington Post and the Guardian's joint Pulitzer for covering Edward Snowden, and the Boston Globe's marathon bombing coverage. Read more over at Longreads.