So I’ve been both busy and sick this year and somehow, it wasn’t until I was looking up reviews after I posted my own review of Elizabeth Strout’s My Name is Lucy Barton that I noticed that that this year’s Tournament of Books is already over and Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad won a very impressive victory. 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 are pitted against each other and a judge 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. This year, in the most spectacular bit of idiocy yet, All the Birds in the Sky beat Han Kang’s The Vegetarian. More details on the way the tournament works here. For the second 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. Ok. Here you go, the brackets of this year’s ToB:
Judge: Kirstin Butler
The Underground Railroad
v. Black Wave
Judge: V.V. Ganeshananthan
The Vegetarian
v. All the Birds in the Sky
Judge: Steph Cha
My Name Is Lucy Barton
v. Version Control
Judge: Susannah Cahalan
The Mothers
v. High Dive
Judge: Will Chancellor
Moonglow
v. Grief Is the Thing With Feathers
Judge: Caille Millner
Homegoing
v. Sweet Lamb of Heaven
Judge: Lili Loofbourow
The Nix
v. We Love You, Charlie Freeman
Judge: Pamela Ribon
Sudden Death
v. Mister Monkey
