Tournament of Books discussion
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2016 Books
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Which 16 books would you choose for TOB 2016?
The moderators have not posted for at least a year. We are functio..."
I'm a big fan of anarchy but the imp in me wonders what it would take to bring them out.
Tina wrote: "But the winner was, IMO, the most enjoyable read of them all. "Me too, most enjoyable, but I think that's why it was a Zombie read, chosen by the hoi polloi, whereas the distinguished judges tried to vote it off at first. I will like a TOB judge one day to write simply: "this one wins because I had more fun reading it than the other one." They probably have done that at least once, come to think of it.
No love for Sara Taylor's The Shore? I would LOVE to see the discussion.
Here's my eight:
The Shore
A Little Life
Fifteen Dogs
Sweetland
Welcome to Braggsville
In the Country: Stories
Hausfrau
The Beautiful Bureaucrat
Here's my eight:
The Shore
A Little Life
Fifteen Dogs
Sweetland
Welcome to Braggsville
In the Country: Stories
Hausfrau
The Beautiful Bureaucrat
I just finished The Shore last night, and loved it. I think it would be a great addition to the list.
Shannon wrote: "No love for Sara Taylor's The Shore? I would LOVE to see the discussion."I have it on my shelf - not yet read, though.
Shannon wrote: "No love for Sara Taylor's The Shore? I would LOVE to see the discussion.Here's my eight:
The Shore
A Little Life
Fifteen Dogs
[book:Sweetland|1934..."
The Shore is the best book I have read this year. I hope it builds some momentum.
Alex wrote: "The Shore is the best book I have read this year. I hope it builds some momentum."
I really hope so, too. It's in a close tie with A Little Life for me, but The Shore is so complex and different...it really deserves more attention than what it's getting. I'm afraid the cover isn't doing it many favors.
I really hope so, too. It's in a close tie with A Little Life for me, but The Shore is so complex and different...it really deserves more attention than what it's getting. I'm afraid the cover isn't doing it many favors.
I just made a Listopia list so if we want we can capture this thread and even start creating something of a longlist:https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/9...
Maybe the Rooster will pay attention to us. Who knows. I'm going to put Preparation for the Next Life on there myself, anyway, and hope to see All My Puny Sorrows there soon too.
Poingu wrote: "I just made a Listopia list so if we want we can capture this thread and even start creating something of a longlist..."great idea. thank you for doing this! :)
Thanks, Poingu, for starting our "Not Quite the Rooster" list. I'm adding a first-half favorite, Mr Mac and Me. May not qualify for TOB 2016...published mid-2014 in UK, but Jan 2015 in US. Such a lovely book, I hope it can gain some traction.Anyone following the Not the Booker List blog at The Guardian? Nominations for the list close tomorrow, long list published on Monday. It's fun to follow, during the TOB off-season, though I only recognize about three of the titles nominated so far, two of them by me. Will be fun to see what shows up published in US later down the road....
My list would include:After Birth
A Little Life
Delicious Foods
The Harder They Come
A God in Ruins
A Spool of Blue Thread
Satin Island
The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty
Of those, A Little Life, After Birth and A God in Ruins were far and away my favorites, but I don't think we'll see the Atkinson in the tourney again so soon after being in the finals.
My 8 so far: A Little Life
Against the Country
Delicious Foods
Hausfrau
Loving Day
The Fishermen
The Mersault Investigation
The Sympathizer
Ok, I'm only listing books that I think could be contenders AND that I really liked. Delicious Foods
Where Did you Sleep Last Night
The Buried Giant
A God in Ruins
Early Warning
The Sellout
I'm fine with Sweetland being included, I'm already over hearing about A Little Life, and I think The First Bad Man was the worst book I've read (listened to) in a long time. :)
From the books I've listed, I feel like Delicious Foods has the best chance to win, A God in Ruins will be a zombie, and The Buried Giant and early Warning probably won't really make it on the list. Where Did you Sleep Last Night is by far the biggest long shot because it's getting zero attention in the US and is hard to get ahold of.
Sherri wrote: "Ok, I'm only listing books that I think could be contenders AND that I really liked. Delicious Foods
Where Did you Sleep Last Night
The Buried Giant
A God in Ruins
Early Warning
The Sellout
Sherri, thanks for the reminder on The Sellout...I want to read that, Buried Giant and The Harder They Come. Spool and Warning are on my near-term pile, along with Preparation for the Next Life (a Nov 2014 book that I guess is out of luck. :-(
Awesome idea for the list, Poingu!I see someone added Kelly Link's 'Get In Trouble'. I like the idea of 'Get in Trouble' in the ToB - it's a solid short story collection. BUT it's a short story collection and including those in the ToB would add so many possible ToB choices! It's tough to even predict novels.
Redeployment was a short story collection. I do think they are taken into consideration. Anyone else have some insight on the TOB selection and short stories?
AmberBug wrote: "Redeployment was a short story collection. I do think they are taken into consideration. Anyone else have some insight on the TOB selection and short stories?"Well, that one did win an award, so I figure they will make exceptions once in a while.
There are short story collections infrequently. There was an Alice Munro collection in the past handful of years (and was Hill William in 2014 a collection of interlinked stories?). I wouldn't think they do well against novels in general, but what is the TOB if not a place to compare incomparable things? :)
I finished the Audible version of A God in Ruins yesterday, and I'm adding it to my top 8 list. I liked it even more than Life After Life.
Tina wrote: "I finished the Audible version of A God in Ruins yesterday, and I'm adding it to my top 8 list. I liked it even more than Life After Life."God, me too. Truthfully, I found Life After Life a bit of a slog, but A God in Ruins really moved, and the ending literally gave me goosebumps
Can you read/listen to A God in Ruins without having read Life After Life?
Jason wrote: "Can you read/listen to A God in Ruins without having read Life After Life?"
Yes, they are companion novels, but not a series.
Yes, they are companion novels, but not a series.
Jason wrote: "Can you read/listen to A God in Ruins without having read Life After Life?"You will get a lot more out of AGoR if you read LAL first. Plus LAL is one of my all-time favorite books--I listened to it when it first came out and loved it, and then read it in paper right before starting AGoR and admired/enjoyed it even more.
I agree with Jan...each of the books stands up as a solo act, but read in tandem, and in sequence, and the power of the two is increased ten-fold. Love them both; AGiR is still my favorite read of the year, maybe of the decade.
Poingu wrote: "I'm also interested in this nascent idea that's poking out here and there on this thread, that people including me are not necessarily enjoying the books that we think are likely TOB...That's a little unsettling to me, this idea that a book has to be a chore on some level to be considered award worth(?)..."I was reminded of Poingu's post when I read this article from NYT, entitled "Do We Mistake Inaccessibility for Brilliance?" Neither Zoë Heller nor (tediously self-aware) Leslie Jamison answers the question for me, but thought it might re-open the discussion here...
(I still haven't found eight books I'd be rooting for, come January.)
Interesting article. In my own experience, I have found no correlation between difficulty of material and brilliance. Sometimes authors write for themselves rather than pandering to the masses. So while "a hard read" is no guarantee that a book will be significant, you'll never find out if you don't have some reading chops to get through difficult work. There have been times (case in point, A Brief History of Seven Killings) where my determination has paid off.
Lljones, I'm in the middle of The Sellout and enjoying it very much. I recommend it! You'll know by the first paragraph if it's for you.I'm about to moderate a discussion in another group of a to-me extremely difficult book (Almanac of the Dead...it reminds me of Seven Killings, Janet) and one thing that has helped me is to allow myself to react to it as I read, without judging either the book, or my own reactions to the book as they come. I got this idea from Witold Gombrowicz, who wrote:
Do not judge. Simply describe your reactions. Never write about the author or the work, only about yourself in confrontation with the work or the author.
His idea is that whatever you take out of a novel is mostly about you, not about the novel. But he thinks that's ok.
Poingu wrote: "Lljones, I'm in the middle of The Sellout and enjoying it very much. I recommend it! You'll know by the first paragraph if it's for you.I'm about to moderate a discussion in another group of a to..."
About the Sellout -- I was reading it on a road trip and was about 70 pages in when I decided to stop. I wasn't planning to finish it. But then I couldn't stop thinking about it. It was only about an hour later that I said ok I have to finish this. It turned out to be one of of my top books for the year. I guess my point is that sometimes a short break to think about what you just experienced can help.
I'm in the middle of The Sellout myself, and...is there a plot I'm supposed to be following? Because I love the writing and think it's laugh-out-loud hilarious at points, but I feel like there is a plot but I'm not getting it? To be fair, I've been reading it concurrently with a few other books, so I think the problem may well be me, but so far it seems like a bunch of entertaining, but random instances in this one man's life and I think there is more of a through-line to the novel that I didn't read closely enough to pick up on.
Heather wrote: "I'm in the middle of The Sellout myself, and...is there a plot I'm supposed to be following? Because I love the writing and think it's laugh-out-loud hilarious at points, but I feel like there is a..."Heather, there is a plot but Beattie wrings out so many fractally spreading jokes from each scene that it's good not to be waiting for the next thing to happen. NPR has a good non-spoilery summary:
http://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/3889550...
I, too, have been reading a lot of backlist this year but of this year's books, the ones I think might be TOB-worthy are Delicious Foods, A God in Ruins, and Sweetland. I'm about halfway through The Fishermen and am loving it so far.
For me at this point it would be Sweetland and Fates And Furies. I am part way through The Sympathiser and think it may be my third choice.
One thing I love about this group is that it has brought my attention to books that otherwise I would never have read, like Sweetland. It's unavoidable that some books are "hot" and some get no press whatsoever and I like to think we mitigate that a little bit by sharing here. One book that no one seems to have read here as yet, and that never got to "hot" or even "tepid" status in the greater world in spite of a great NYT review, is The Boatmaker by John Benditt, review here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/29/boo...
I've loved quite a few books so far published in 2015. But none of these have been the "hot" titles-- for example Fates and Furies and A Little Life were both 1 star reads for me. The books that have really stuck with me are After Birth and Gutshot: Stories and Satin Island. It makes me realize there must be many books that have slipped by without me noticing them at all.
Ace wrote: "Man Booker will be announced today, am excited to know who will take the prize."Now I won't be able to sleep tonight! :)
Sherri wrote: "Ace wrote: "Man Booker will be announced today, am excited to know who will take the prize."Now I won't be able to sleep tonight! :)"
The only thing that would keep me from sleeping is if my book was a potential winner! LOL
Janet wrote: "Sherri wrote: "Ace wrote: "Man Booker will be announced today, am excited to know who will take the prize."Now I won't be able to sleep tonight! :)"
The only thing that would keep me from sleepi..."
Ha! I probably should have mentioned I don't sleep much anyway :).
Ace wrote: "I thought it was being announced yesterday, so now I have to wait an extra day!!"october 13th, in london, england - at an evening/dinner ceremony.
Alex wrote: "are the awards being streamed on BBC?"it does say the ceremony is being broadcast by the BBC, whether that includes online, i'm not sure? (in past years it has been online.)
http://themanbookerprize.com/news/man...
Wow Janet. That is just fantastic. It feels like quite a leap for the Man Booker people to acknowledge and to choose this book.
Now that we are well into the back half of the year I've changed the subject of this discussion to be for all 16 slots!I'm so glad Marlon James won the Booker and I wish he had won the TOB 2015, even though it was not my favorite read on the list in terms of enjoyment (Annilation was).
Sigh. I know all (or a lot) of you loved Brief History, but I found it unreadable. I ... was rooting for A Little Life.
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Tournament of Books
Books mentioned in this topic
Mislaid (other topics)Delicious Foods (other topics)
The Sellout (other topics)
The Room (other topics)
Preparation for the Next Life (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Zoë Heller (other topics)Leslie Jamison (other topics)
China Miéville (other topics)
David Malouf (other topics)
Sandra Newman (other topics)
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It's the admirable/impressive v. enjoyable debate from the 2015 TOB still ringing in our brains! It's true that most of the books last year were heavy reads, and I liked them all the more for it. But the winner was, IMO, the most enjoyable read of them all.