2008 Tournament of Books

Posted 6 March, 2008 in Book News |

For those of you who haven’t had your fill of bookish smack-downs in the wake of Canada Reads, an American counterpart, The Morning News’s Tournament of Books kicks off next Friday. The competition is a round-robin format, with literary judges including novelists Nick Hornby, Elizabeth McCracken, and Gary Shteyngart (whose novel Absurdistan was beaten in the final round last year by Cormac McCarthy’s The Road), and bloggers Mark Sarvas and Maud Newton.

There are sixteen books in the first round, with four judges (Sarvas, Newton, Ted Genoways, and Mark Liberman) choosing victors from eight brackets of two competing books apiece. The winners from those brackets will compete against each other (with Hornby and Shteyngart adjudicating), and so on until one book is left standing.

The sixteen books in contention include some of the most critically lauded titles from last year, a couple of which I’ve actually read. The competing titles are:

Run, by Ann Patchett
On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan
Tree of Smoke, by Denis Johnson
Then We Came to the End, by Joshua Ferris
Petropolis, by Anya Ulinich
Ovenman, by Jeff Parker
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Díaz
You Don’t Love Me Yet, by Jonathan Lethem
New England White, by Stephen L. Carter
Remainder, by Tom McCarthy
The Shadow Catcher, by Marianne Wiggins
The Savage Detectives, by Roberto Bolaño
Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, by Vendela Vida
Shining at the Bottom of the Sea, by Stephen Marche
What the Dead Know, by Laura Lippman
An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England, by Brock Clarke

My review of Run is online, here. I did review Petropolis for the same publication, but apparently neglected to link to it, and now I can’t seem to track down the review online. As I recall, the review was mixed.

In any event, it’s nice to see fellow Canadian Stephen Marche on this list, and I’m looking forward to finding out which book will take the title this year. In the meantime, both Tree of Smoke and The Savage Detectives are on the TBR pile, and I’m hoping to get to them eventually.

If anyone wants to place bets on which title will ultimately prevail in this contest, your humble correspondent is more than happy to act as bookie, for a nominal fee.

2 comments to “2008 Tournament of Books”

Panic, March 7th, 2008 at 11:02 am:

• From what I understand, the author of Ovenman teaches at the U of T, so he’s local, if not Canadian.

  While I’m not crazy about him generally, I really liked You Don’t Love me Yet, so from this list, and what I’ve read, that’s my pick!

Rebecca, March 12th, 2008 at 4:56 pm:

• I’ve read exactly one of those, but it blew me away: *Then We Came to End* was a joy to read, and a technical marvel (first person plural, my fave stunt-POV, not coming across at all stunty). I wonder if the other 15 are that smokin’…?

  RR

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