January 25, 2011: Book Battle to the Death

PAGES READ: 35
YEAR TO DATE: 1,109
CURRENTLY READING: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
BOOKS COMPLETED: 3
-141 PAGES

Happy Robbie Burns Day everyone. I’m wearing a kilt and drinking scotch even as I type.

Check this out: The nice people at the The Morning News hold an annual Tournament of Books. Billed as literary blood sport, this is NCAA March Madness for book nerds. I love it. They take 16 of the most celebrated books of the previous year and seed them into a competitive bracket, with the ultimate winner being named The Rooster, Champion Book of the Year. The tournament even comes with its own special notebook for tracking your tournament reading and appears to include a live rooster as the winner’s prize. Apparently the founders were dumb drunk in a Brooklyn bar seven years ago when they came up with the idea. Excellent!

This year’s tournament starts on March 7, 2011 and I suggest we all follow along. While the list of books is not intended to be a “best-of” list, I think it makes a pretty good “to-read” list. (Previous years’ lists also provide plenty of inspiration.) Here are the 2011 contenders – I’ve only read two:

• The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, by Aimee Bender
• Nox, by Anne Carson
• Bad Marie, by Marcy Dermansky
• Room, by Emma Donoghue
• A Visit From the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan
• Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen
• Lord of Misrule, by Jaimy Gordon
• Bloodroot, by Amy Greene
• Next, by James Hynes
• The Finkler Question, by Howard Jacobson
• Skippy Dies, by Paul Murray
• Model Home, by Eric Puchner
• So Much for That, by Lionel Shriver
• Super Sad True Love Story, by Gary Shteyngart
• Kapitoil, by Teddy Wayne
• Savages, by Don Winslow