Ron Charles

Donna Tartt has won the Pulitzer award for fiction for her third novel The Goldfinch, which judges described as a book which "stimulates the mind and touches the heart".

Relating the life of a 13-year-old boy who survives an accident that kills his mother, The Goldfinch was chosen as the winner of America's most prestigious literary award ahead of Philipp Meyer's The Son, and Bob Shacochis's The Woman Who Lost Her Soul. It is, said judges Art Winslow, Ron Charles and Sabina Murray, "a beautifully written coming-of-age novel with exquisitely drawn characters".

I’m always skeptical of articles and posts I read on April 1, for obvious reasons. Sometimes they look plausible enough to pull you in, and this year I decided to share some of the April Fool’s posts I’ve particularly enjoyed this morning.

Google, of course, had to have some fun with us by introducing Google Nose. Really, “Photo, auditory, olfactory sensory convergence?” Try saying that three times fast!

Ron Charles, from The Washington Post, gives us “Apple Letters,” Apple’s latest patent. After patenting the page turn, there wasn’t much left.

Late last month, St. Mark’s Bookstore in New York City launched its first crowdfunding campaign on a website called Lucky Ant. The blunt truth is that it’s a last ditch effort for survival. It’s that simple. In this climate, they can’t afford to keep paying their rent of over $20,000, which was already reduced by over $2,000 earlier this year until November. The owners, Bob Contant and Terence McCoy, hope that if they raise the cash, they’ll be able fund a relocation into a new space.