Cinderella (Zombie) Story

There's always that point in any competition where some broadcaster mentions "a Cinderella story," or as Bill Murray said in Caddyshack, someone "outta nowhere."

In basketball this month, we had Harvard and that fun group from Florida Gulf Coast. (For those of you shaking your head in disbelief that I would know anything about sports, I gently point out that I do read the news. And I've seen Caddyshack like 100 times.)
In the king-daddy of all book tournaments (or at least the one that's the most fun) known as The Morning News Tournament of Books, we had some serious upsets. All of the books that were "shoo-ins" to win have been knocked out, including powerhouses like Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies, Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl, and Chris Ware's Building Stories.
Instead, the readers brought back The Orphan Master's Son in the infamous Zombie Round of the tournament. That's a round that allows a popular vote to bring one book "back from the dead," or to revive a book that was previously knocked out of the tournament. I still contend the NCAA would benefit from a zombie.
And now, in a repeat match-up from March 19, The Orphan Master's Son is pitted against The Fault in Our Stars. There is no surprise for me that Orphan Master's Son is back; it really never should have left the competition in the first place. The Cinderella story here is Fault. 
It's been a crazy ride in this tournament, and turnovers have been key, with even the perennial commentators noting that there have been some odd judgments, but an overall enthusiasm among the judges and readers for this year's slate of contenders.
I agree it was a great list of books, but I still don't think that Fault, as good as it is, should be in the final round. Of course, it's easy for me to be a Monday morning quarterback (or Thursday morning in this case). It's a lot harder to judge between two essentially good reads when each person's taste is so subjective.
We'll learn who the champ is tomorrow, and I'll give you a full review of the winner. Until then, remember that it isn't over till it's over.
These sports cliches were brought to you by the letter Z for zombie.

What a Bracket

For bigger version, go to TOB.

Today is National Bracket Day, so it's a good time to review my bracket. And no, there are no recognizable sports names on there at all. You've come to the wrong blog for that.
I am, of course, referring to the bracket for this year's Tournament of Books, brought to you by The Morning News. And evidently, I am the worst bracket-filler-outer in the history of bracketology.
Let's review.
I said that The Fault in Our Stars would lose to The Round House. Wrong.
I said that Where'd You Go Bernadette would beat out The Orphan Master's Son. Wrong. 
* Justification Time: I did tell you that I had a hard time choosing between the contenders in those two match-ups. See proof here.
Now we get to a bright spot. I totally called the contest between Building Stories and Dear Life. It was impossible for Alice Munro to win that one. Building Stories is so totally different that it will take a better book than hers to beat it. We'll see how it moves up. It will be paired next against Beautiful Ruins, which, against my prediction, beat out The Song of Achilles. It should not have won, but I was wrong again.
Beautiful Ruins frustrated me. It could have been such a good book. Commentator Kevin Guilfoile notes the same problems that I have with Jess Walter's book: One of the narratives works better than the other. And that is exactly why Song of Achilles should have moved on.
I was wrong again in my call about May We Be Forgiven vs. Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk. Neither one of these should make it to the finals in my estimation, but May We Be Forgiven was the worst of the two. It was a bit too much of a pile-on by the end of the book. I stopped believing that any human, particularly the protagonist, would be involved in so many near-farcical experiences.
I also think that the wrong book won in Arcadia vs. How Should a Person Be. The commentators seemed to struggle with this one as much as I did, and I contend that the book you would choose is completely based on what age demographic you fall into.
After all the wrong calls, it's nice to be able to point out that two of my favorites are still in the game: Gone Girl and Bring Up the Bodies. The Girl can definitely bring the pain for the flawed Beautiful Ruins in a match-up later this week.
And Hilary Mantel has proven what a vicious fighter she can be against the Duchess of Cambridge, so imagine how much hurt she can inflict on How Should a Person Be's Sheila Heti on Friday. It's a matter of maturity.
So I only called 3 out of 8 contests. That won't stop me from predicting the Final Four:
The Orphan Master's Son
Building Stories
Gone Girl
Bring Up the Bodies
That's if a zombie doesn't come along to wreck my bracket again. Don't know what I mean? Click here.

The Scarlet L (for Loser)

I'm a loser, right off the bat. But in all fairness, I told you I might be.

Who is not a loser? John Green.

I didn't call the winning book in the first round of the Tournament of Books. Today, judge Edan Lepucki (staff writer for The Millions) selected The Fault in Our Stars over The Round House.
If you've been following along on this blog (and I know you have), then you saw my call for The Round House here.
Lepucki's commentary is spot-on and fair, for the most part. He calls out author John Green for making the teens Hazel and Augustus a little too glib and charming in Stars, even comparing their patter to the movie Juno. I agree. I also liked TOB commentator John Warner's comparison of Green to John Hughes. That's true, too.
But where Lepucki and I will have to disagree is on the point he makes about Louise Erdrich's inability to take the reader from "idea to experience."
One of my most-important gauges of a writer's talent is that very ability, to immerse me so thoroughly that when I look up from the book I'm almost disoriented. It isn't just a matter of being "true to life," it's to convince me that what I'm reading is real and that I'm living it alongside the characters.
Erdrich's writing pulled me right into hot summer days on a reservation in North Dakota, and the fear and pain that surrounds the crime at the center of the novel. As much as I loved Stars, it was just a bit too over-the-top and almost implausible in places (for example, the spontaneous trip to The Netherlands for two teens with cancer). Lepucki himself even admits that he found Green's book to be "too slick" and "contrived" in places.
Yes, this was a hard call.  In fact, if Lepucki had selected The Round House, I'd probably be telling you about how I cried and cried over Stars, and how he really should have selected it as the winner.
But I'm a loser, baby.
On to tomorrow, and the head-to-head battle between The Orphan Master's Son and Where'd You Go Bernadette?. Cross your fingers for me.

The Final Draft

The coveted TOB Rooster.

Today is finally the first official day of the Tournament of Books, hosted by The Morning News and sponsored by Nook by Barnes & Noble, with top books vying for the coveted Rooster crown.
As you know, I've been furiously reading the finalists since they were announce a few months ago. And today the last of the 16 nominees was announced. Luckily for me it was the one I read, Billy Flynn's Long Halftime Walk. Given all of the press surrounding this book, I was fairly sure it would be the one of the three war-themed Pre-Tournament books chosen. To see the judge's official review, and the color commentary from TOB, click here.
On Friday, I gave you my picks for four of the pairings in the tournament. You can see those here.
I have to tell you, these next four pairings are more difficult for me. Some of my favorite books in the tournament are pitted against each other, making a judgment hard to call. But here goes:

The Contest: Youth in Revolt
The Competitors: The Round House vs. The Fault in Our Stars
The Winner: The Round House, by Louise Erdrich
Why It Won: It pains me to have to choose between these two books. The minute I finished The Fault in Our Stars, I tweeted that this book would win the tournament if it was judged solely on the number of tears shed. It is an amazing story of a teenage girl who meets a boy at a cancer support center – and it is much more uplifting than you might imagine that would be. But, by a hair, The Round House is slightly better. Perhaps it was the fact that Louise Erdrich weaves a grittier, more realistic, story. The voice of the 13-year-old Joe in Round House rings truer. It is a tough tale, though, as Joe recounts the year that his mother was brutally attacked on their reservation, and how he and his friends investigate the crime.

The Contest: A Tussle Between Travelers
The Competitors: The Orphan Master's Son vs Where'd You Go, Bernadette?
The Winner: Where'd You Go, Bernadette, by Maria Semple
Why It Won: Again, TOB, you have given me a very hard contest to judge here. These are two very different books about people who find it difficult to live in their environment, and who travel far away to learn more about themselves. But they are not at all close to the same type of book, so it's tough to pit two such disparate tales against each other. The Orphan Master's Son is a fictional look at the brutal life of a North Korean "nobody" named Jun Do (and yes, the reference to John Doe is purposeful) who improbably ends up traveling to Texas and impersonating a high-ranking official. Bernadette is a funnier take about a mom who has trouble fitting into life in Seattle and in figuring out who she is. When she disappears, her daughter Bee learns more than she bargained for about her mom and their life together. For me, it wasn't that one was infinitely better than the other, it came down to how much I believed each character. But it was still close.

The Contest: The Wild Card War
The Competitors: Billy Flynn's Long Halftime Walk vs. May We Be Forgiven
The Winner: Billy Flynn's Long Halftime Walk, by Ben Fountain
Why It Won: Neither one of these are perfect books: Billy Flynn reminded me a lot of a plotline from HBO's series The Pacific, and Forgiven just kept piling more and more improbable situations on the protagonist. But Billy Flynn was a book that I kept putting down – and that's a good gauge of a book's impact for me. I read so quickly and there are very good books that I fly through. So when I stop reading to set a book down, it's a sign that I want to, or need to, think about it; that I'm savoring it. I needed to think a lot about what I read in Billy Flynn, and about the day-in-the-life of U.S. soldiers on a Victory Tour after a tough battle in Iraq. Forgiven is a hard look at a flawed man who inherits his brother's kids, who has to figure out how to deal with them, and who has to come to terms with the fact that his brother is a murderer. Good initial theme, but then the author kept adding to the "hero's" angst with strange bedfellows and segues that take away from what could have been a great core story.

The Contest: The Alternative Altercation
The Competitors: Dear Life vs. Building Stories
The Winner: Building Stories, by Chris Ware
Why It Won: This one was no contest for me, and that isn't fair to Alice Munro. First, I'm not a Munro fan, so it was going to be hard to win me over. Second, I'm not a short-story fan, so that was going to make it even hard for Munro. But then Chris Ware's book arrived on my front porch, and it was basically three strikes against Munro. Ware takes storytelling into another dimension with his box full of tricks, finding inspiration in art forms from comics to manga to architectural drawings to even the Little Golden Books of our youth. Each piece builds upon itself (hence the title) to tell a story in very few words of the ups and downs of a lonely woman. It's groundbreaking, and a very tough competitor for Munro's drier tales.