Last night, reader emailed me (and so can you) that this year’s Tournament of Books is under way. The ToB is one of the most entertaining and unique items in the Book event calendar. A literary March madness: in 5 brackets a selection of recent books (mostly novels although I’ve also seen story collections nominated and there’s poetry in the bracket this year, I think?) are pitted against each other and a judge (from book journalists to novelists like Jeff Vandermeer and Celeste Ng) picks the winner in each bracket. The championship round then unites all the judges as the book with the most votes takes home the trophy. The great advantage (and sometimes source of frustration) is that it is absolutely the luck of the draw, not just who you encounter in your bracket, but also what kind of judge is asked to render judgment on any given bracket. Thus, due to idiocy, a few years ago, Kathryn Stockett’s The Help beat out John Wray’s masterful Lowboy. More details on the way the tournament works here. For the first time in several years, I actually reviewed one or two of the books in the tournament. I have linked them in the list of the brackets below. Interestingly, I have mentioned a different Paul Beatty novel in the Oreo review yesterday, and I’ll link my Luiselli review although the book in the tournament is actually the Mexican novelist’s sophomore effort. Ok. Here you go, the brackets of this year’s ToB:
Fates and Furies
v. Bats of the Republic
judge: Maria BustillosThe Sympathizer
v. Oreo
judge: Brad ListiThe Turner House
v. Ban en Banlieue
judge: Miriam TuliaoOur Souls at Night
v. The Whites
Judge: Syreeta McFaddenA Little Life
v. The New World
judge: Choire SichaThe Book of Aron
v. The Tsar of Love and Techno
judge: Doree ShafrirA Spool of Blue Thread
v. The Story of My Teeth
judge: Daniel WallaceThe Sellout
v. The Invaders
judge: Liz Lopatto
