Announcing the 2018 Tournament of Books

YOU ARE READING: Announcing the 2018 Tournament of Books – The Morning News AT PhebinhvanhocEN

Is it just us or does it seem like the pre-death fervor has never been higher? that we’ve all gotten pretty tough? From goodreads threads to twitter and here inside rooster headquarters, the excitement this year is palpable.

You are reading: Tournament of books 2018

You’re ready, we’re ready, so let’s go. We’ve whittled our 2018 long list of 72 books down to a more manageable size: 18 books that we believe to be some of the most interesting works of fiction published last year.

two big greetings before continuing. our presenting sponsor, fieldnotes, make exceptional products and are great people. please check out the new signature series. supporting them supports us.

An even bigger expression of thanks goes out to our supporting members, who made this year’s tournament possible. that’s not a joke. the book tournament is happening this year because they made it possible. (here are the details on why). if you are a sustaining member, thank you, we are tremendously grateful. If you haven’t already, become a sustaining member today. (You also get 50 percent off at the tmn store, which we’ll be updating soon with 2018 merchandise.)

A few notes before we get to the main action:

If you’re new, here’s what’s happening: Each weekday in March, starting March 7, 2018, one of our judges will read and consider two of the books below (also listed below) ). a “match” book will be chosen to advance, and the judge must explain in detail how he came to his decision. then the judge’s decision is evaluated first by our official commentators, then by you, the rooster fanatic, where you politely and respectfully describe how your heart broke and your mind swelled at such erroneous arrogance. and the next day we do it all over again.

(If you’re really new to the tob, check out this explanation of how the event works and this brief history of significant moments in the history of the rooster.)

Second, the book tournament is an event, not a prize. we deliberately try to keep it weird, and we don’t aim for anything fancier than a theory that it’s interesting to consider two books at the same time. therefore, the books below are definitely not the best of the year, in our opinion, but rather some of the best works of fiction published (mostly) in English (mostly) in 2017, in a grouping we like. /p>

third, we’re pretty sure your favorite book isn’t on the list and you’ll let us know.

fourth, we need your zombie vote today. or at least before midnight ET, Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2018. here’s what that means. from the play-in match through the eight opening-round matches, the four quarter-final matches and the two semi-final matches, the original field of 16 qualifying books is reduced to two. however, before those books enter the final championship match, they must go through a “zombie round”, which retrieves two books that were previously eliminated during the game. as to which books return, it is determined by popular vote, as in democracy. Vote soon using the form below.

finally, some smaller things:

We’re doing an entry round again. this year: college novels! it’ll be fun.
in addition to our veteran commentators kevin guilfoile and john warner, we’ll be introducing some new voices to the booth this year. watch this space.
stay up to date with tmn for the latest rooster news. the best way is the bulletin of the rooster, or on facebook and twitter.

In short: this is all completely ridiculous, and we’re glad you think so too. thanks for doing your part. see you in march.

the short list for the 2018 book tournament

Here’s a spreadsheet of the shortlisted titles, if you’re into that sort of thing. we get a portion of any purchase made through the links in the listing. book descriptions are extracted from publishers’ summaries and edited for length.

the animators by kayla rae whitaker

You are reading: Tournament of books 2018

Best friends and artistic partners since the first week of college, Mel Vaught and Sharon Kisses spent their twenties ensconced in a gritty Brooklyn studio. Now, after a decade of striving, the two are finally celebrating the release of their first full-length feature and stand at the cusp of making it big. But with their success comes doubt and destruction, cracks in their relationship. When the only other partner Sharon has ever truly known—her troubled, charismatic childhood best friend, Teddy—reappears, long-buried resentments rise to the surface, hastening a reckoning no one sees coming. (Amazon / IndieBound / Powell’s)

the book of joan de lidia yuknavitch

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In the near future, world wars have transformed Earth into a battleground. Fleeing the unending violence and the planet’s now-radioactive surface, humans have regrouped to a mysterious platform known as CIEL, hovering over their erstwhile home. Out of the ranks of the endless wars rises Jean de Men, a charismatic and bloodthirsty cult leader who turns CIEL into a quasi-corporate police state. A group of rebels unite to dismantle his iron rule—galvanized by the heroic song of Joan, a child-warrior who possesses a mysterious force that lives within her. (Amazon / IndieBound / Powell’s)

dear cyborgs by eugene lim

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In a small Midwestern town, two Asian-American boys bond over their outcast status and a mutual love of comic books. Meanwhile, in an alternative or perhaps future universe, a team of superheroes ponders modern society during their time off. Between black-ops missions and rescuing hostages, they swap stories of artistic malaise and muse on the seemingly inescapable grip of market economics. All the while, a mysterious cybernetic book of clairvoyance beckons, and trusted allies start to disappear. (Amazon / IndieBound / Powell’s)

the end of eddy by Édouard louis

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“Every morning in the bathroom I would repeat the same phrase to myself over and over again… Today I’m really gonna be a tough guy.” Growing up in a poor village in northern France, all Eddy Bellegueule wanted was to be a man in the eyes of his family and neighbors. But from childhood, he was different—“girlish,” intellectually precocious, and attracted to other men. (Amazon / IndieBound / Powell’s)

west exit by mohsin hamid

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In a country teetering on the brink of civil war, two young people, Nadia and Saeed, embark on a furtive love affair, and are soon cloistered in a premature intimacy by the unrest roiling their city. When it explodes, turning familiar streets into a patchwork of checkpoints and bomb blasts, they begin to hear whispers about doors—doors that can whisk people far away, if perilously and for a price. As the violence escalates, Nadia and Saeed decide that they no longer have a choice. Leaving their homeland and their old lives behind, they find a door and step through… (Amazon / IndieBound / Powell’s)

fever dream by samanta schweblin

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A young woman named Amanda lies dying in a rural hospital clinic. A boy named David sits beside her. She’s not his mother. He’s not her child. Together, they tell a haunting story of broken souls, toxins, and the power and desperation of family. (Winner of the 2017 Rooster Summer Reading Challenge) (Amazon / IndieBound / Powell’s)

goodbye vitamin by rachel khong

You are reading: Tournament of books 2018

Freshly disengaged from her fiancé and feeling that life has not turned out quite the way she planned, 30-year-old Ruth quits her job, leaves town, and arrives at her parents’ home to find that situation more complicated than she’d realized. Her father, a prominent history professor, is losing his memory and is only erratically lucid. Ruth’s mother, meanwhile, is lucidly erratic. But as Ruth’s father’s condition intensifies, the comedy in her situation takes hold, gently transforming her all her grief. (Amazon / IndieBound / Powell’s)

idaho by emily ruskovich

You are reading: Tournament of books 2018

Ann and Wade have carved out a living for themselves from a rugged landscape, but they are bound together by more than love. In a story told from multiple perspectives—Ann, Wade, Wade’s first wife Jenny, now in prison for murder—and in exquisite, razor-sharp prose, we gradually learn of the shocking act that originally brought Ann and Wade together, and which reverberates through the lives of every character in Idaho. (Amazon / IndieBound / Powell’s)

elif batuman’s idiot

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Play-in competitor: Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, arrives for her freshman year at Harvard. Almost by accident, she begins emailing with Ivan, an older mathematics student from Hungary. At the end of the school year, Ivan goes to Budapest for the summer, and Selin heads to the Hungarian countryside, to teach English in a program run by one of Ivan’s friends. Selin’s summer in Europe is a journey further inside herself: a coming to grips with the ineffable and exhilarating confusion of first love, and with the growing consciousness that she is doomed to become a writer. (Amazon / IndieBound / Powell’s)

a message from our sponsor

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lincoln in the bard by george saunders

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On Feb. 22, 1862, two days after his death, 11-year-old Willie Lincoln was laid to rest in a marble crypt in a Georgetown cemetery. That very night, shattered by grief, Abraham Lincoln arrives at the cemetery under cover of darkness and visits the crypt, alone, to spend time with his son’s body. (Amazon / IndieBound / Powell’s)

lucky boy by shanthi sekaran

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Soli is 18 when she embarks on a perilous journey across the US/Mexican border, arriving weeks later in Berkeley, Calif., dazed by first love found then lost, and pregnant. Kavya, a chef at a UC Berkeley sorority house, is consumed by the unexpected desire to have a child. When she can’t get pregnant, Kavya and her husband are set on a collision course with Soli, when she is detained and her infant son comes under Kavya’s care. As Kavya learns to be a mother, she builds her love on a fault line, her heart wrapped around someone else’s child. (Amazon / IndieBound / Powell’s)

manhattan beach by jennifer egan

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Anna Kerrigan’s father has disappeared, and the country is at war. Anna works at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, where women are allowed to hold jobs that once belonged to men, now soldiers abroad. She becomes the first female diver, the most dangerous and exclusive of occupations, repairing the ships that will help America win the war. One evening at a nightclub, she meets a man who knew her father, and begins to understand the complexity of her father’s life and the reasons he might have vanished. (Amazon / IndieBound / Powell’s)

pachinko by min jin lee

You are reading: Tournament of books 2018

In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger at the seashore near her home in Korea. He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant-and that her lover is married-she refuses to be bought. Instead, she accepts an offer of marriage from a gentle, sickly minister passing through on his way to Japan. But her decision to abandon her home, and to reject her son’s powerful father, sets off a dramatic saga that will echo down through the generations. (Amazon / IndieBound / Powell’s)

pola oloixarac’s wild theories

You are reading: Tournament of books 2018

Play-in competitor: Rosa Ostreech, a pseudonym for the narrator, carries around a trilingual edition of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, struggles with her thesis on violence and culture, sleeps with a bourgeois former guerrilla, and pursues her elderly professor with a highly charged blend of eroticism and desperation. Elsewhere on campus, Pabst and Kamtchowsky tour the underground scene of Buenos Aires, dabbling in ketamine, group sex, video games, and hacking. And in Africa in 1917, a Dutch anthropologist works on a theory explaining human consciousness and civilization by reference to our early primate ancestors—animals, who, in the process of becoming human, spent thousands of years as prey. (Amazon / IndieBound / Powell’s)

sing, unbury, sing for jesmyn ward

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Jojo is 13, and his mother, Leonie, is an inconsistent presence in his and his toddler sister’s lives. She is black and her children’s father, Michael, is white. She wants to be a better mother but can’t put her children above her own needs, especially her drug use. When Michael is released from prison, the family drives north to the heart of Mississippi and the state penitentiary, where another 13-year-old boy—the ghost of a dead inmate—carries the South’s ugly history with him. He too has something to teach Jojo about fathers and sons, legacies, violence, and love. (Amazon / IndieBound / Powell’s)

both percival everett blue

You are reading: Tournament of books 2018

Kevin is working on a painting he won’t let anyone see. It may or may not be his masterpiece; he doesn’t know or care. What Kevin does care about is the past. Ten years ago he had an affair. It’s not clear to him why he had the affair, but he can’t let it go. In the more distant past of the late ’70s, Kevin and his best friend, Richard, traveled to El Salvador on the verge of war to retrieve Richard’s drug-dealing brother. As the past intersects with the present, Kevin struggles to justify his sacrifices and secrets. (Amazon / IndieBound / Powell’s)

stephen florida by gabe habash

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Play-in competitor: In his senior season, when every practice, every match, is a step closer to greatness and a step further from sanity, a troubled college wrestler in North Dakota falls in love and becomes increasingly unhinged. (Amazon / IndieBound / Powell’s)

white tears of hari kunzru

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After Seth accidentally records an unknown singer in a park, his similarly music-obsessed friend Carter sends it out over the internet, claiming it’s a long-lost 1920s blues recording by a musician called Charlie Shaw. When an old collector contacts them to say that their fake record and their fake bluesman are actually real, the two young white men, accompanied by Carter’s troubled sister, spiral down into the heart of the nation’s darkness, encountering a suppressed history of greed, envy, revenge, and exploitation. (Amazon / IndieBound / Powell’s)

judges

rumaan alam‘s writing has appeared in the new york times, new york magazine, the wall street journal, the new republic and elsewhere. he is the author of the rich and beautiful novel. his novel that kind of mother will be published in 2018.

angela chen is a science journalist on the edge and columnist on catapult. Her reports and essays have also been published in The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, The Atlantic, The Paris Review Daily, Hazlitt, and more. beacon press will publish her favorite book.

tob 2018 reading judge lauren cohen lives in her reading chair in a boston apartment. She met most of her friends and her boyfriend at book clubs, and if she asks her how many book clubs she’s in, she’ll say she’s the fifth of hers. When she’s not in the chair reading hers, she works on cancer research at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Jeffrey Cranor created the podcast inside the wires. She also co-writes the Welcome to Night Vale podcast, live shows, and soap operas. she does theater and dance and lives in upstate new york.

ruth curry is a writer whose work has appeared on bookforum, n+1, the paris review daily, esquire, nylon and buzzfeed. she is she, along with emily gould, co-founder of emily books.

joseph fink is the creator of welcome to night okay, alice is not dead, and i just listen to the mountain goats. He co-wrote, with Jeffrey Cranor, the novels Welcome to Night Vale and Devour! He is also the author of the upcoming novel Alice Is Not Dead.

ashley c. Ford lives in Brooklyn across from Indiana. she is (mainly) a writer. she is currently working on a memoir and hosts news & amp; cultural TV show and podcast, 112bk.

patrick hoffman is a private investigator and author of the novels the white van and every man a menace. he lives in brooklyn.

maris kreizman is a writer and critic whose work has appeared in the new york times, los angeles times, vanity fair, buzzfeed books, longreads, vulture, esquire, gq and more. She is the creator of Matadero 90210, a blog and book (Flatiron Books, 2015) that celebrates the intersection of literature and pop culture. Previously, she was Editorial Director of Digital Content at b&n.com and Editorial Outreach Lead at Kickstarter. As a former book editor and editorial director of the book of the month, she very much enjoys critiquing her own writing.

juliet lapidos is the op-ed editor for the los angeles times. She previously worked at the New York Times and Slate. she has written for the atlantic, the new york times book review, and the websites of the new yorker and the new republic, among other publications. Her first novel, Talent, will be published in Little, Brown in January 2019.

bryan mealer is a journalist and the author of four books, including the bestselling boy who harnessed the wind (with william kamkwamba), soon to be made into a big movie, and the kings of The Big Spring: God, Oil, and a Family’s Search for the American Dream. she lives in austin.

ismail muhammad is a writer and critic based in oakland, where he is a staff writer for millions and a contributing editor at zyzzyva. His writings have appeared in Slate, The Los Angeles Review of Books, New Republic, and other publications. he is currently working on a novel about the great migration and the queer archives of black history.

meaghan o’connell‘s writing has appeared in new york magazine, longreads and the billfold, where she was an editor. she lives in portland, oregon, with her husband and her young son. her book of essays, and now we have everything: about motherhood before i was ready, will be out in april 2018 from little, brown.

shelly oria is the author of new york 1, tel aviv 0 (fsg & random house canada, 2014), which earned nominations for a lambda literary award and the edmund white award for first film among other honors. Most recently, she co-authored a digital novel, Clean, commissioned by WeTransfer and McSweeney’s; The novel received two Lovie Awards. Oria’s fiction has appeared in Paris Magazine and elsewhere, has been translated into other languages, and has won several awards, including the Indiana Magazine Prize for Fiction. She is a recipient of grants and fellowships from Macdowell, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and Sozopol Fiction Seminars in Bulgaria. She co-directs the Writers’ Forum at Pratt Institute and has a private practice as Life & creativity coach.

caitlin roper is the special projects editor for the new york times magazine. she creates new sections of the newspaper such as the children’s section, the puzzle mania and the annotated constitution. Before joining The Times, Roper was a Feature Editor at Wired, and before that, Editor-in-Chief of Paris Review.

jaya saxena is a writer and editor whose work has appeared in gq, elle, the toast, the daily dot, the new yorker, catapult and more. She is the co-author of Basic Witches, and lives in Queens with her husband and two ungrateful cats.

merritt tierce is the author of the novel love me back (doubleday, 2014) and a staff member of the netflix show orange is the new black. Love Me Back was shortlisted for the Pen/Bingham Debut Fiction Award and won the Texas Institute of Letters Award for First Fiction. Tierce is a National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” author and recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award. she has been a fellow at yaddo, macdowell, willapa bay, omi, and can cab artist residencies. Her essays, reviews, and her fiction have appeared in the New York Times, Oxford American, Paris Review, Marie Claire, and Cosmopolitan, among other publications.

thanks again and see you in March!

See Also: The 20 Best Entrepreneurship Books to Make Your Business Successful

Other content

Announcing the 2018 Tournament of Books – The Morning News

the short list for the 2018 book tournament

the animators by kayla rae whitaker

the book of joan de lidia yuknavitch

dear cyborgs by eugene lim

the end of eddy by Édouard louis

west exit by mohsin hamid

fever dream by samanta schweblin

goodbye vitamin by rachel khong

idaho by emily ruskovich

elif batuman’s idiot

lincoln in the bard by george saunders

lucky boy by shanthi sekaran

manhattan beach by jennifer egan

pachinko by min jin lee

pola oloixarac’s wild theories

sing, unbury, sing for jesmyn ward

both percival everett blue

stephen florida by gabe habash

white tears of hari kunzru

judges

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