Down to the Quarterfinals

There were some major upsets over the last week in the sports version of March Madness, causing consternation in a lot of brackets. In reviewing The Morning New Tournament of Books, we've already had a couple of upsets, too.
I think the biggest one so far would be the loss of Fates and Furies, a book that many predicted would win the whole tournament. It is not one of my favorites, but I think it's safe to say that book will be back in the tournament's Zombie round, when two selections are chosen to "rise from the dead" to compete again. We'll see those zombies storming in just before the championship match.
But this week, it's all about the quarterfinals. So it's time for Aana and I to give you our predictions for who will advance to the semifinals. I correctly predicted 7 of 9 regular-play matches, but Aana predicted 8 out of 9, so she's feeling smug.
This week, we both selected the same books to win. Let's see what we predict will happen:

Quarterfinal Match #1

The Competitors: Bats of the Republic vs. The Sympathizer

Our Pick: The Sympathizer, by Viet Thanh Nguyen

Why this one? Both of us liked both of these books, they were both creative and well written. But Bats didn't have the depth of feeling or the completeness that The Sympathizer did. The story in Bats was complex, almost too complex to understand at times. And while that makes it unique and interesting, it doesn't necessarily make it the best book in this contest. On the other side of the coin, it's the characters in The Sympathizer that are complex, reeling you in bit by bit until you're completely hooked. Like The Americans - a fabulous show on FX that just started a new season - you find yourself rooting for a protagonist who isn't entirely good, or entirely evil. So we're pulling for the Communist mole living in the US after the Vietnam War, trying to keep his identities straight while secretly sending information back to his Communist best-friend-slash-handler in Vietnam.
TOB match to be decided March 21.

Quarterfinal Match #2

The Competitors: The Turner House vs. Our Souls at Night

Our Pick: The Turner House, by Angela Flournoy

Why this one? This was a close one for us. Our Souls is a sweet book about two elderly neighbors who decide to go against convention to create their own way to find comfort together. Turner House is more like their boisterous neighbors, a big family that scraps and loves at top volume while trying to decide what to do about their mom and their family house. Ghosts, literal and figurative, are stirred up as they work through their past and present squabbles. And maybe that's part of the charm, that they are more alive somehow in their book, or maybe Our Souls is just a bit too quiet (Aana found Our Souls to be bland). We give Turner House the slight edge, but we also realize that Our Souls has steam in this tournament and could be the judges' choice.
TOB match to be decided March 22.

Quarterfinal Match #3

The Competitors: A Little Life vs. The Tsar of Love and Techno

Our Pick: The Tsar of Love and Techno, by Anthony Marra

Why this one? Another very close call, at least for Cheminne. She was in love with A Little Life, which was meant to be an allegory, but was for her just a distracting, disturbing, and terrific read. However, Tsar was even better - and for both of our judges was one of the most beautifully crafted books we've read in a long time. Although it's listed as a book of short stories, they are each intertwined and linked in such a way that it's more like a novel that moves seamlessly between characters and decades without losing its emotional grip on the reader. The setting is Russia, from the Soviet era to modern-day Chechnya, with politics the center of some stories, and character actors in others. But it's the writing that stands out, with sentences woven together like a tapestry of rough and soft threads: lyrical, painful, and tightly bound. This is one of our picks to go all the way.
TOB match to be decided March 23.

Quarterfinal Match #4

The Competitors: A Spool of Blue Thread vs. The Sellout

Our Pick: The Sellout, by Paul Beatty

Why this one? What an interesting matchup, or mis-matchup, to be honest. Spool is a lovely book, written by the amazing Anne Tyler who is at her best here. It's an ordinary story about ordinary people, but brought to life with Tyler's gift for spinning a tale. The Sellout, on the other hand, is a swaggering satire, strutting out all loud and proud to deal knock-out punches left and right. The key here is that The Sellout is clever and wry, with a topic that stabs a fork into one of society's rawest nerves. It's brave, bold, and hilarious, so it's our pick in this match.
TOB match to be decided March 24.

Book Bracket Fever

Can you feel the excitement building? The brackets are out, the teams are gearing up, everyone is ready for some serious March Madness! I love book season!
Wait...what did you think I meant? The only season and the only bracket worth caring about is The Morning News Tournament of Books! Any other "sport" pales in comparison. 

The tournament has been in play for 12 years, and for four of those years I've been providing you with my predictions and commentary, sometimes hitting the basket and sometimes hitting the rim. Last year was my best year for stats - I called it right down to the winner, which was tough because two of my favorite books (Station Eleven and All the Light We Cannot See) were in the finals.

This year, the tournament and I are shaking things up a little bit. ToB is adding a "play-in winner," which is similar to its Zombie rounds of the past. Two books will compete before the actual tournament, vying for a chance to enter the Big Show - kind of like a wild card match.

I'm also adding a spin - this year in the form of my daughter Aana, a book-obsessed geek who is reading almost as many books as I am each year. She'll bring a different perspective because her tastes aren't the same as mine (ahem, short stories), and we might mix it up a little in who we think will win each match. She's definitely a wild card. 

So what teams - or books - are in play? Each year the committee throws a ton of nominations into the mix to create its long list, which this year offered 86 selections, and then through some form of subjective hocus pocus, ToB narrows the list down to 17 books. In a few weeks, Aana and I will debate whether something important was left off that list and if we actually agree that all of the books on the short list deserve to be there (spoiler alert: a big no from us both on John Irving).

Here are the contenders - links will take you to Powell's Books, the sponsor for the tournament:

Ban en Banlieue, Bhanu Kapil

Bats of the Republic, by Zachary Thomas Dodson  

The Book of Aron, Jim Shepard 

Fates and Furies, Lauren Groff 

The Invaders, by Karolina Waclawiak 

A Little Life, by Hanya Yanagihara 

The New World, by Chris Adrian and Eli Horowitz 

Oreo, by Fran Ross 

Our Souls at Night, by Kent Haruf 

The Sellout, by Paul Beatty 

The Story of My Teeth, by Valeria Luiselli 

The Sympathizer, by Viet Thanh Nguyen 

The Tsar of Love and Techno, by Anthony Marra 

The Turner House, by Angela Flournoy 

The Whites, by Richard Price

And then we have our two play-in contenders: Anne Tyler's A Spool of Blue Thread and John Irving's Avenue of Mysteries (which I can tell you right now Aana and I do not predict to win anything).

So there you have it, the 2016 Tournament of Books! Are there any selections you think should have been included? Any books on here that you've already read? Let me know in the comments below! And look for the first installment from Aana and me soon!

Meanwhile, here is a copy of the bracket so you can fill it in and start some friendly wagers with your friends and neighbors - all of whom I'm sure are ready to play/read along. Right?

I See What You Did There

After several days' worth of posts on awards for literature, now we finally get to the good stuff - the ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards, celebrating the best in mystery/thriller writing for books and for television. I note that they are sponsored by Specsavers, a chain of eyeglass shops across the UK, which is appropriate because this is the award program most likely to ruin my eyesight.

I usually find myself in a frenzy of reading/watching to catch up with all of the nominees before the awards are announced, which leaves me a scant 10 days at this point. Good thing I just got my own new pair of specs. So let's get started with the lists of nominees!

Crime Thriller Book Club Nominees

Before We Met, by Lucie Whitehouse

Entry Island, by Peter May (love him!)

Letters to My Daughter's Killer, by Cath Staincliffe

Treachery, by SJ Parris

The Tilted World, by Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly (fabulous book)

Watch Me, by James Carroll

Living Legends Nominees

Best living writer of crime/thrillers.

Michael Connolly

Robert Harris

Dean Koontz

Lynda La Plante

Val McDermid

Denise Mina

Wow - tough category!

CWA Gold Dagger Nominees

Crime Novel of the Year from the Crime Writers Association.

This Dark Road to Mercy, by Wiley Cash

Keep Your Friends Close, by Paula Daly

The First Rule of Survival, by Paul Mendelson

How the Light Gets In, by Louise Penny

CWA Steel Dagger Nominees

For the CWA's Ian Fleming-esque thriller.

Apple Tree Yard, by Louise Doughty

An Officer and a Spy, by Robert Harris

I Am Pilgrim, by Terry Hayes

Natchez Burning, by Greg Iles

CWA New Blood Dagger Nominees

CWA's nominees for the best crime novel by a first-time author. 

The Strangler Vine, by MJ Carter

The Axeman's Jazz, by Ray Celestin

The Devil in the Marshalsea, by Antonia Hodgson

The Silent Wife, by ASA Harrison

Best Film Dagger Nominees

Cold in July

Dom Hemingway

Filth

Prisoners

Starred Up

Best Television Dagger Nominees

Happy Valley (a must-see on Netflix)

Line of Duty, series 2

Sherlock, series 3 (so amazing)

The Bletchley Circle, series 2

The Honourable Woman

Luckily for my eyes, I've seen many of the film and television nominees. But now it's time to buckle down to those books. Let me know which of the nominees you've read or seen! The winners will be announced on Oct. 24.

And the Awards Keep on Coming

Yes, it's book awards season, with which I have a love-hate relationship. In some ways, it's like Christmas, with a huge pile of presents that I feel compelled to read all at once. On the other hand, couldn't we spread it out a little more? 

Yesterday, the Man Booker Prize winner was feted in London, so today the National Book Award committee announces its short list finalists. Sure, why let that prize winner have a moment to enjoy? Let's just cut that off right at the knees.
Sigh.
Okay, I'm done ranting about that. Now let's move on to the finalists for those NBA awards. I find myself in the confounding place of actually approving of this year's list of nominees. Usually I think the nominee lists are too packed full of stuffy tomes that no one actually wants to read - but not this year. I've read a couple of these and I am looking forward to reading the rest, which is not something I've ever said about this award program before. So bully for the NBAs!
The nominees for Fiction are All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine, Lila by Marilynne Robinson, Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, and Redeployment by Phil Klay. Redeployment is a collection of short stories, which I normally don't read, and Station Eleven is yet another apocalyptic future novel, so we'll see if I make it through those two. See my rant on the glut of "the future is scary" books in yesterday's post.
For Nonfiction, the nominees are Age of Ambition by Evan Osnos, Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast, The Meaning of Human Existence by Edward O. Wilson, No Good Men Among the Living by Anand Gopal, and Tennessee Williams by John Lahr. I was disappointed that When Paris Went Dark didn't make it the cut from the long list - it's a great book.
And the nominees for Young People's Literature are Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson, Noggin by John Corley Whaley, The Port Chicago 50 by Steve Sheinkin, Revolution by Deborah Wiles, and Threatened by Eliot Schrefer. This category usually has some gems, so I'm looking forward to reading these.
Yes, I skipped the Poetry category. I won't read them, so if you want to find out who is nominated, you can click here.
Tomorrow, I'll list another of my favorite awards programs, the Crime Thriller Awards for both television and books, which will be held in London on Oct. 24. See what I mean? So many books, so little time.

Winner, Winner

LATE-DAY UPDATE: Well I'm shocked to say that I was right. That never happens. But Richard Flanagan deserved to win the Man Booker Prize for this amazing book! Congrats to him!

The reason that I love the Man Booker Prize over all other book award programs is that I always discover a book among its nominees that profoundly impacts me. A few years ago it was Pigeon English, an incredible story about a young immigrant boy in England that I still think of almost once a month - it was just that good.

This year, the book that knocked me for an emotional loop was definitely The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan. More on that book - which also gets my vote to win the Prize when it's announced tonight - in just a bit. 

First, let's talk about the fact that, for the first time, the Man Booker Prize committee opened up the contest to English-language books from any country, rather than just the U.K. I had high hopes for that, imagining Hilary Mantel-like writers squaring up against Philip Roth-esque American authors. 

But the selection committee shortlisted two U.S. novels that I don't think are up for the challenge: To Rise Again at a Decent Hour by Joshua Ferris, and We Are Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler.

Fowler's previous novel was The Jane Austen Book Club, and her Man Booker contender is just as light and entertaining. I'm not knocking the fact that it's a less substantial book, but it doesn't offer anything new. And Ferris's book examines religion's role in today's tech-savvy world in a way that's supposed to be funny, but fell flat for me. In fact, it was an exasperating read. So these two books, out of all of the fabulous American fiction published this year, are what caught the eye of the Man Booker group? Hmmmm.

I also wasn't thrilled with Neel Mukherjee's The Lives of Others, a story of a '60s family in Calcutta that gets caught up in political uprisings. There were almost too many characters, leaving me little time or inclination to get to know any one of them well enough to engage with them.

Luckily, there are other (better) books on the short list. Ali Smith offers a really new way of telling a tale - or two - in How to Be Both. The novel centers on two characters who tell their own story, one a modern-day teenage girl and the other a female Italian Renaissance artist living as a man. Depending on which copy of the book you pick up, you will begin with one of the two characters first, and then wind your way through two stories that twist around each other. It's fabulous storytelling for a modern world.

Howard Jacobson takes on (yet another) dystopian society with his novel J. In the scary future imagined by Jacobson, no one is allowed to use words that begin with the letter J without making a motion like pulling a zipper across his or her lips. The fear of the unknown is the key to this novel, with some of the frightening shadows never fully explored. It's a good book, but I'm tiring of the "future is scary and vaguely Big Brother-ish" stories that are constantly fed to us through books, movies, and video games. The overabundance of similar story arcs kept me from really embracing this one.

And then we come to The Narrow Road, the lone Australian entry on the list. Flanagan tells the story of Australian POWs forced to build a road in Burma, a harrowing real-life event that involved some of the worst atrocities by the Japanese army. Yes, there are shades of Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken, but The Narrow Road goes deeper and is more visceral, giving us a visual imprint that's hard to shake off. Flanagan juxtaposes the darkness of the jungle with the bright light and sandy beaches of Australia, going back and forth between the POW camp and the love story of the central character Dorrigo Evans. It was a difficult story, but one that I could not put down. Flanagan is a master of pulling the reader in, and then never letting go. But it is a tough read emotionally; let's just say I had to have a palate cleanser of Philippa Gregory immediately after. 

So tonight, I predict that Flanagan will win the award. But if he doesn't (just as Pigeon English didn't), I'm still a winner for having read his novel.

The Fall of Man

Fall is the time of Man - the Man Booker Prize, that is. Today the famed literary award panel announces its short list for the coveted prize, and that in turn means that I have a lot of reading to do.
This is one of my two favorite book award programs - the other is the Dagger Awards, presented by the Crime Writers Association. Oddly, although the Man Booker is a British award, I find it to be less stuffy and highbrow than the U.S. awards, like the National Book Award. Or maybe it's just my Anglophilia showing.
All I know is that I always love the Man Booker selections, whether they win or not, and I quite often completely agree with the award winner. This year will be especially interesting since it's the first time that the Man Booker group has expanded its rules, allowing all books originally printed in English to be nominated, no matter the nationality of the author. Take that, National Book Award.
So here is the short list of nominees this year. I'll let you know soon which one I believe should take the top prize. And if you're going to read along, get cracking! The prize will be awarded on Oct. 14.

To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, by Joshua Ferris (US)
The Narrow Road to the Deep North, by Richard Flanagan (Australia)
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, by Karen Joy Fowler (US)
J, by Howard Jacobson (UK)
The Lives of Others, by Neel Mukherjee (UK)
How to Be Both, by Ali Smith (UK)

My Eyes!

There are two times during the year when I know I'm going to need a trip to the optometrist. Spring and fall are notorious for heaping books on me. I know it's partially my own fault. Why I feel the need to read all the books on an awards nomination list is beyond me. But it's a compulsion.

As you may know, I am already in the throes of reading all the contenders for this year's Tournament of Books, hosted by The Morning News.
There are 15 books on the list at this point, and I have read six. Don't worry...with five weeks to read the rest, I have "plenty" of time. Sigh.
I have also done my civic duty and voted in the Tournament of Books Zombie Round. Just in case you haven't been reading my blog (sigh again), the Zombie round gives eliminated books a chance to rise from the dead. I voted for my favorite book to date, Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel (READ IT).
But back to the issue with my eyes. The Edgar Award nominees were just announced by the Mystery Writers of America, giving me roughly 20 more books to read by May. I have read five of the nominated books already.
That's a lot of pressure. After all, how can I give you my opinion on the sanity of the judges if I have not read the books myself? Exactly.
To add even more tiny print for my optical pleasure, the National Book Awards have changed their rules for the first time in forever, stating that they will now announce a "long list" of 10 nominees per category. I applaud the changes, which were inspired by my favorite book award, the Man Booker Prize. However, that now means I'll have about 80 books to read for those fall programs.
So look for me at the local pharmacy, trying on reading glasses in ever-increasing intensity.
Meanwhile, here is the list of the nominees for the Edgars. Note that I don't include the short story or juvenile prizes. I have to draw the line somewhere.

Best Novel

The Lost Ones by Ace Atkins
The Gods of Gotham by Lyndsay Faye
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (you go, Girl)
Potboiler by Jesse Kellerman
Sunset by Al Lamanda
Live by Night by Dennis Lehane
All I Did Was Shoot My Man by Walter Mosley

Best First Novel

The Map of Lost Memories by Kim Fay
Don't Ever Get Old by Daniel Friedman
Mr. Churchill's Secretary by Susan Elia MacNeal
The Expats by Chris Pavone
The 500 by Matthew Quirk
Black Fridays by Michael Sears

Best Paperback Original

Complication by Isaac Adamson
Whiplash River by Lou Berney
Bloodland by Alan Glynn
Blessed Are the Dead by Malla Nunn
The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters

Best Fact Crime

Midnight in Peking by Paul French
Devil in the Grove by Gilbert King
More Forensics and Fiction by D.P. Lyle, MD
Double Cross by Ben Macintyre
The People Who Eat Darkness by Richard Lloyd Parry

Best Critical/Biographical

Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe by John Paul Athanasourelis
Books to Die For edited by John Connolly and Declan Burke
The Scientific Sherlock Holmes by James O'Brien
In Pursuit of Spenser edited by Otto Penzler