Oh, to be a Pulitzer Prize-winning author AND a Vanity Fair Best Dresser. It's the dream...

So I pulled an all-weekender and finished Donna Tartt's long-awaited novel, The Goldfinch.
(Long-awaited as she hasn't written a book in 11 years, and long-awaited as I put off reading it until I had time then realized I would never have time so eventually simply picked it up and read it.)
That's 864 pages in 48 hours, people!
I had read so much hype about this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel but I ignored it all and simply read it. And loved it. Could it have been edited back a bit, like some of the critics (and my mother-in-law) have said? Probably. But only in the sense that I think maybe we've dulled ourselves with the reading of shorter books so that we've almost forgotten what it's like to pick up a tome like this. I, for one, haven't read a novel of this length all year.
I did find parts of it a little tedious and repetitive, such as the drug scenes and the episode in Amsterdam, but perhaps I was tiring a little by the time I got to Amsterdam. But still, I thoroughly enjoyed getting lost in this gem, and will be encouraging my senior students to give it a go - it's very accessible to older teens.
Oh, and breaking (sort of) news: The Goldfinch is be made into a movie - read all about it here, along with an extract from the book.
And last thing: Donna Tartt has made it onto Vanity Fair's Best Dressed List for 2014. Nice.