Tuesday, March 10, 2015

March Madness for Books

Morning News Tournament of Books
11th Rooster Award
for best fiction
details
download your bracket (here) and follow along each day (here) and results (here)

The 2015 Rooster crows on March 9, which means it’s time to download this year’s brackets to make your picks for which books will live, which ones will die, and which ones will live, then die, then get zombified in the 2015 Tournament of Books, presented by Field Notes..

This competition started yesterday and it is one that I thought I would follow along with this year. The idea of the bracket format is based on the NCAA tournament-style bracket.

The fun twist to this tournament is the Zombie Round.

The tournament will continue until two works remain, at which time a pair of novels that have been previously eliminated will rise from the dead in our Zombie Round, where they will attempt to defeat our presumptive finalists. (At the end of this post you’ll find your chance to vote for which titles should rise from the grave.) The winners of those contests will advance to the final match, where a verdict will be delivered by a vote from all of the judges listed below. (see complete rules)

The Shortlist for The Morning News 2015 Tournament of Books:

Silence Once Begun by Jesse Ball
A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall by Will Chancellor
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr *
Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante
An Untamed State by Roxane Gay
Wittgenstein Jr by Lars Iyer
A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
Redeployment by Phil Klay +
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel * ---> winner
The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell +
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng +
Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill +
Adam by Ariel Schrag
The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters +
Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer +
All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld

Of the books listed on the shortlist above, I have only read two (ones with asterisks). And a few of these are already in my tbr pile (ones with pluses). Depending on how the discussions go, I plan to add the appealing ones to my current tbr pile.

 
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