Saturday, January 17, 2009

2009 Tournament of Books

The Tournament of Books is back for its fifth year. The Morning News, which runs the contest, describes the event:
[T]ake 16 of the most celebrated and highly touted novels of the year, seed them in a March Madness-type bracket, conscript them into a “Battle Royale of Literary Excellence,” and, in honor of David Sedaris’s brother, present the author of the winning book a live rooster.
This year's contenders have been announced, and it's a good list. Once again, Powell's is offering a 30% discount on all the titles. The tournament starts in March, and here are the sixteen contenders:

  • The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga
  • 2666, Roberto Bolano
  • A Partisan's Daughter, Louis de Bernieres
  • The Northern Clemency, Philip Hensher
  • The Lazarus Project, Aleksandar Hemon
  • My Revolutions, Hari Kunzru
  • Unaccustomed Earth, Jhumpa Lahiri
  • The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, E. Lockhart
  • Shadow Country, Peter Matthiessen
  • The Dart League King, Keith Lee Morris
  • A Mercy, Toni Morrison
  • Steer Towards Rock, Fae Myenne Ng
  • Netherland, Joseph O'Neill
  • City of Refuge, Tom Piazza
  • Home, Marilynne Robinson
  • Harry, Revised, Mark Sarvas

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm excited by this news, and wrote a quick post about it on my site. I'm going to try to read as many of the books as I can get my hands on through the various libraries available to me (buying 16 books simply to follow a book competition seems a bit steep to me!), and hope to be able to read them in time for the tournament in March. I don't always agree with the final winner or the outcome of certain matches, but this time I can be as informed as possible!