Announcing the 2016 Tournament of Books

YOU ARE READING: Announcing the 2016 Tournament of Books – The Morning News AT PhebinhvanhocEN

Please note: The 2016 Book Tournament Short List below is based on our previously published “Long List”. Plus, you can check out all of our rooster coverage here, search for past tournaments on the official TOB website, or support some of our awesome sponsors like Field Notes and Powell’s who make it all possible. thanks!

Twelve years we have done this nonsense. twelve years, they read, compare, discuss a lot of works of fiction. twelve years, the judges judge, the commentators comment, the readers cry, scream, get angry, celebrate, fulminate, insult each other and worse, and send us hate mail. Twelve years, people come up to us in April too and tell us it was the most fun they’ve had all year, at least as far as contemporary fiction goes.

You are reading: Tournament of books 2016

twelve years, we say up front: our event is stupid. fool. books are not basketball players. stories don’t care about other stories. art awards are inherently political, prickly, and inevitably rude. That’s why ours is a rooster, named after David Sedaris’s brother: because it’s hardly a prize. maybe it’s an anti-award? what we found out in 12 years is that the tournament of books (tob), for all the silly times we’ll mention “blood sport” between now and april, is actually less of an award or event, more of a long heated talk about books and reading and writing, and what makes literature good or bad or somewhere in between.

Before we go further, let’s point out that none of this would be possible without the generous support of Field Notes, our longtime presenting sponsor. They make great pocket notebooks and other things that we use and love, and they’ve been a steadfast friend of the ToB for many years.

A big thank you also goes out to our book sponsor powell’s, the legendary independent bookseller from portland, oregon, also a long-time fan of roosters.

Below, you’ll find a list of 17 books and a group of judges who will read them and, as they go, discuss them in detail. also a couple of new features. The books represent, we believe, some of the best fiction published in the past year (in English, primarily in the United States). These books are derived from our long list, previously published, as well as some recommendations and ideas that tmn readers submitted.

But to come up with this short list, we had to exclude dozens if not hundreds of titles that could easily have made the cut. so our list is not a “best of the year” list. it’s just a small number of very good and interesting books, selected from a sea of many very good and interesting books that were also published in 2015.

If you haven’t followed the tob before, here’s the rundown: Starting in early March and proceeding every day of the week, one of our judges (full list below) will read two books, pick one to advance and explain how they came to their decision. the criterion is totally personal; we simply ask that there be no basketball metaphors, and that the judge provide his decision-making process with full transparency, and also tell you of any connections he may have to the authors and/or books involved. Then our commentators, Kevin Guilfoile and John Warner, chime in, followed by the wonderful community of readers who make the comments section one of the most intelligent and engaging discussions of contemporary fiction we know of.

Now, before the lists, three things. first: we are going to do a play-in game again this year. which means that two books will face each other to see which one makes it to the tob. because we noticed last year that two big names were published whose books had never been in the tournament before. fantastic. however, since today is supposedly “the golden age of television,” not hardcover fiction, we asked three writers from one of our favorite shows, bob’s burgers, to act as gatekeepers.

second: each round, commentary for a match will be handled by an external party instead of kevin and john. namely, the hosts of some of our favorite literary podcasts, who have generously agreed to share it here for all of us.

third: we need your zombie vote. now, or at least before midnight on Wednesday, January 1. 20, 2016. (update: voting is now closed). If this sounds confusing, here’s a summary. from the play-in match through the eight opening-round matches, the four quarterfinal matches, and the two semifinal matches, the original field of 16 books is reduced to two. however, before those books enter the final championship match, they must go through the “zombie round”, which retrieves two books that were previously eliminated during the game. as to which books return, it’s determined by a popularity vote. so vote soon.

For 12 years, we’ve been doing this silly, idiotic, informative, absorbing, fascinating, and weirdly funny thing. also many of you. let’s do it again.

the list of finalists for the morning book tournament 2016

We get a portion of any purchase made through the links below. book descriptions are extracted from publishers’ summaries and edited for length.

the new world of chris adrian and eli horowitz

Jorie has just received some terrible news. A phone full of missed calls and sympathetic text messages seem to indicate that her husband, Jim is dead. Only, not quite—rather, his head has been removed from his body and cryogenically frozen. Jim awakes to find himself in an altogether unique situation, to say the least.

the total sale of paul beatty

Born in the “agrarian ghetto” of Dickens—on the southern outskirts of Los Angeles—the narrator resigns himself to the fate of lower-middle-class Californians: “I’d die in the same bedroom I’d grown up in, looking up at the cracks in the stucco ceiling that’ve been there since ’68 quake.”

republic bats by zachary thomas dodson

In 1843, fragile naturalist Zadock Thomas must leave his beloved in Chicago to deliver a secret letter to an infamous general on the front lines of the war over Texas. The fate of the volatile republic, along with Zadock’s future, depends on his mission. When a cloud of bats leads him off the trail, he happens upon something impossible…

angela flournoy’s turner house

The Turners have lived on Yarrow Street for over 50 years. Their house has seen 13 children grown and gone—and some returned; it has seen the arrival of grandchildren, the fall of Detroit’s East Side, and the loss of a father. But now, as ailing matriarch Viola finds herself forced to leave her home and move in with her eldest son, the family discovers that the house is worth just a tenth of its mortgage. The Turner children are called home to decide its fate and to reckon with how each of their pasts haunts—and shapes—their family’s future.

Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies

Every story has two sides. Every relationship has two perspectives. And sometimes, it turns out, the key to a great marriage is not its truths but its secrets. At age 22, Lotto and Mathilde are tall, glamorous, madly in love, and destined for greatness. A decade later, their marriage is still the envy of their friends, but with an electric thrill we understand that things are even more complicated and remarkable than they have seemed.

our souls in the night by kent haruf

Addie Moore pays an unexpected visit to a neighbor, Louis Waters. Her husband died years ago, as did his wife, and in such a small town they naturally have long been aware of each other. What Addie has come to ask—since she and Louis have been living alone for so long in houses now empty of family, and the nights are so terribly lonely—is whether he might be willing to spend them with her, in her bed, so they can have someone to talk with.

ban en banlieue by bhanu kapil

Ban en Banlieue follows a brown (black) girl as she walks home from school in the first moments of a riot. By the end of the night, Ban moves into an incarnate and untethered presence, becoming all matter— soot, meat, diesel oil and force—as she loops the city with the energy of global weather.

the story of my teeth by valeria luiselli

Highway is a late-in-life world traveller, yarn spinner, collector, and legendary auctioneer. His most precious possessions are the teeth of the ‘notorious infamous’ like Plato, Petrarch, and Virginia Woolf.

the czar of love and techno by anthony marra

A 1930s Soviet censor painstakingly corrects offending photographs, deep underneath Leningrad, bewitched by the image of a disgraced prima ballerina. A chorus of women recount their stories and those of their grandmothers, former gulag prisoners who settled their Siberian mining town. Two pairs of brothers share a fierce, protective love. Young men across the former USSR face violence at home and in the military. And great sacrifices are made in the name of an oil landscape unremarkable except for the almost incomprehensibly peaceful past it depicts.

the supporter of viet thanh nguyen

It is April 1975, and Saigon is in chaos. At his villa, a general of the South Vietnamese army is drinking whiskey and, with the help of his trusted captain, drawing up a list of those who will be given passage aboard the last flights out of the country. The general and his compatriots start a new life in Los Angeles, unaware that one among their number, the captain, is secretly observing and reporting on the group to a higher-up in the Viet Cong.

richard price whites

Back in the mid-’90s, when Billy Graves worked in the South Bronx as part of an anti-crime unit known as the Wild Geese, he made headlines by accidentally shooting a 10-year-old boy while stopping an angel-dusted berserker. For the next 18 years Billy endured one dead-end posting after another. Now in his early forties, Billy is called to a 4:00 a.m. fatal slashing of a man in Penn Station. When he discovers the victim was once a suspect in an unsolved murder with connections to the former members of the Wild Geese, the bad old days are back in Billy’s life, tearing apart enduring friendships and even threatening the safety of his family.

fran ross oreo

Oreo is raised by her maternal grandparents in Philadelphia. Her black mother tours with a theatrical troupe, and her Jewish deadbeat dad disappeared when she was an infant, leaving behind a mysterious note that triggers her quest to find him. Our young hero navigates the labyrinth of sound studios and brothels and subway tunnels in Manhattan, seeking to claim her birthright while unwittingly experiencing and triggering a mythic journey of self-discovery.

the book of aron by jim shepard

Aron is a young boy whose family is driven from the countryside into the Warsaw Ghetto. As his family is slowly stripped away from him, Aron and a handful of boys and girls risk their lives to keep their people alive, hunted all the while by blackmailers and by Jewish, Polish, and German police. Eventually Aron is “rescued” by Janusz Korczak, a Jewish-Polish doctor and advocate of children’s rights. In the end, he and his staff and all the children are put on a train to Treblinka, but has Aron managed to escape, to spread word about the atrocities, as Korczak hoped he would?

the invaders by karolina waclawiak

Cheryl has never really fit in with the other women in the seaside country club community of Little Neck Cove, Connecticut. Now, as she hits her mid-forties, she realizes that her husband is starting to lose interest in her, too. Her only solace is her morning walks along the beach’s nature trail, until a sudden act of violence accelerates her emotional tailspin.

a little life of hanya yanagihara

When four classmates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way, they’re broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition. There is Willem, an aspiring actor; JB, a quick-witted painter; Malcolm, an architect at a prominent firm; and withdrawn, brilliant, enigmatic Jude. Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, yet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is Jude himself, by midlife an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that will define his life.

tob play-in match

john irving avenue of mysteries

As an older man, Juan Diego will take a trip to the Philippines, but what travels with him are his dreams and memories; he is most alive in his childhood and early adolescence in Mexico. The chain of events, the links in our lives—what leads us where we’re going, the courses we follow to our ends, what we don’t see coming and what we do—all this can be mysterious, or simply unseen, or even obvious.

a spool of blue thread by anne tyler

“It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon.” This is the way Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she fell in love with Red that day in July 1959. The whole family—their two daughters and two sons, their grandchildren, even their faithful old dog—is on the porch, listening contentedly as Abby tells the tale they have heard so many times before. And yet this gathering is different too: Abby and Red are growing older, and decisions must be made about how best to look after them, and the fate of the house so lovingly built by Red’s father.

judges

blake bailey is the author of the biographies of john cheever, richard yates, and charles jackson, and is working on the authorized biography of philip roth. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Francis Parkman Prize, and a Pulitzer Prize finalist. His most recent book, The Lavish Things We Plan: A Family Portrait, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Maria Bustillos is a journalist and critic based in Los Angeles. She has written about culture, politics, technology and business for the new yorker, harper’s, the new york times, the awl, the guardian, bloomberg, etc. Her first published fiction of hers appeared in Paris Review earlier this year.

Essays by

Jaime Green have appeared in The AWL, The Millions, American Theater Online, and elsewhere. She also hosts and produces Catapult, a new writing podcast that is read aloud.

Danielle Henderson is a new TV writer and former freelancer. she lives in the “non-brooklyn” part of new york city.

brad listi is the author of the novel attention. deficit. disorder. and the founding editor of Nervous Breakdown, an online culture magazine and literary community. He is also the host of OtherPPL with Brad Listi, a weekly podcast that features interviews with today’s top writers. he lives in the angels.

liz lopatto is the science editor on the edge. Before that, she worked at Bloomberg News and before that, she founded the Kenyon Review blog. Her interests include cats and space explosions.

syreeta mcfadden is a brooklyn-based writer, photographer, and adjunct professor of english. Her work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, Buzzfeed, NPR, The Nation, and Storyscape Journal. She is the editorial director of the online literary magazine Union Station and co-curator of the Poets in Unexpected Places group. she is currently working on collections of short stories and essays.

lizzie molyneux is a writer on the emmy award-winning animated fox show bob’s burgers with fellow writer/sister wendy. her dog thinks he’s cool.

wendy molyneux, along with her sister lizzie molyneux, writes for the television show bob’s burgers, for which she also lends her voice to the unpopular character jen, the nanny. She is also a frequent contributor to the mcsweeney internet trend and other humor sites, and has included several pieces in the best american non-required reading anthology series over the years.

celeste ng is the author of the new york times bestseller everything i never told you. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, One Story, Gulf Coast, The Millions and elsewhere, and she has been awarded the Pushcart Award. She earned an MFA from the University of Michigan and lives in Cambridge, Mass.

kit rachlis is a senior editor at california sunday magazine. He was editor-in-chief of American Prospect, Los Angeles Magazine and Weekly, and Executive Editor of Village Voice.

doree shafrir is a culture writer on buzzfeed and the author of the upcoming startup novel (little, brown). she lives in angels.

choire sicha is co-founder of the awl, columnist for bookforum, former editor of gawker, long-time writer for tmn, and author of a non-fiction book.

tmn 2016 reader judge john taylor is a psychiatrist at massachusetts general hospital, where he works in inpatient consultation service in the emergency department, serves as assistant director of training for the mgh/mclean residency and is a project manager in behavioral health integration. He is also an instructor at Harvard Medical School. He lives in Cambridge, Mass.

miriam tuliao works for bookops, the shared technical services organization of the brooklyn public library and the new york public library. She is a member of the Asian Pacific American Librarians Association and the American Library Association.

Jeff Vandermeer’s latest fiction is the New York Times best-selling Southern Reach trilogy (Annihilation, Authority and Acceptance), which won the Nebula Award and the Shirley Jackson Award, and entered on the weekly entertainment chart. of the 10 best books of the year. Paramount Pictures/Scott Rudin Productions has acquired the rights to the film with Alex Garland attached to direct. Vandermeer’s nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, The Atlantic Website, and The Times.

daniel wallace is the author of five novels. He directs the creative writing program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

kelvin yu is a writer currently working on the fox animated series bob’s burgers. Born in Los Angeles, Yu studied Theater and Communications at UCLA. He is also an actor whose credits include Milk, Star Trek, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and most recently Master of None.

jess zimmerman is a writer and editor who has appeared in hazlitt, the new republic, the guardian, the hairpin and others. Toast once said that he was “on fire”, but it turned out he was fine. he lives in brooklyn with all the other writers, and when he’s not working he spends most of his time getting older, feeling terrible about getting older, or often both.

literary podcast commentators

slate’s audiobook club is a monthly podcast about the books everyone’s talking about. Hosted by Slate Words Correspondent Katy Waldman, it features a rotating cast of critics, including Dan Kois and Laura Miller, who join Katy as guest commentators on TOB, as well as Parul Sehgal, Jamelle Bouie, Meghan O’Rourke, Hanna Rosin. and emily bazelon.

books on the nightstand is a weekly podcast about books and reading, hosted by michael kindness and ann kingman. Ann and Michael work for Penguin Random House, although the podcast is a labor of love and not part of their day jobs. Michael has turned Ann into a graphic novel reader, but so far Ann has failed in her efforts to get Michael to read Great Expectations. they tweet at @annkingman, @mkindness, and @bksonnightstand.

The Book Report is a bi-weekly literary web series featured by millions and hosted by book critics and friends Michael Schaub and Janet Potter. Schaub has written for NPR, the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Times Book Review; Potter has written for Chicago Reader, Chicago Magazine, and A.V. club, and they both really hated dune by frank herbert. they tweet at @michaelschaub, @sojanetpotter, @bookreportshow, and @the_millions.

Christopher Hermelin and Drew Broussard co-host the book podcast celebrating reading So Many Damn Books. christopher is a literary agent and drew is the special arts projects associate at public theater. they are both writers and readers, forever indebted to the tob for sparking their real-life friendship.

thanks again and see you in March!

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Announcing the 2016 Tournament of Books – The Morning News