Tournament of Books discussion
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2015 Books
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2015 ToB Competition Discussion
tier one: those who leave and this who stay; all the light we cannot see; station eleven; all the birds singingtier two: untamed state; everything i never told you; brief history of seven killings; annihilation
tier three: dept. of speculation; the bone clocks; redeployment; paying guests
tier four: adam; wittgenstein jr.; silence once begun; brave man seven stories tall
Tier one: All The Light We Cannot See, An Untamed StateTier two: Station Eleven, Redeployment, Dept. of Speculation, Everything I Never Told You, Adam
Tier three: A Silence Once Begun, The Bone Clocks
Still going to try to read: All the Birds, Singing, and Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay.
I didn't get to as many as I had hoped to, so, this may be the first year that I won't have read the winner before the tournament.
Ohenrypacey wrote: "there are t-shirts! did we know there are t-shirts? http://teespring.com/rooster2015"Is that so you can recognize fellow TOB junkies "in the wild"? lol
Tier 1: Brief History, An Untamed State, Station ElevenTier 2: All the Birds Singing, Those Who Leave (did not read the previous two novels), Silence Once Begun, The Paying Guests
Tier 3: Adam, Everything I Never Told You, Brave Man, Redeployment
Tier 4: Wittgenstein Jr, Annihilation, Dept of Speculation
Currently reading The Bone Clocks. All The Light is pending.
Tier 1: Brief History, Silence Once Begun, Those who leaveTier 2: All the Birds, All the Light, Annihilation
Tier 3: Bone Clocks, Brave Man, Station 11, Redeployment
Tier 4: Untamed State, Everything I never told you, Adam
Didn't read: Wittgenstein Jr., Paying Guests, Dept of Speculation
Well, it doesn't answer the correlation issue (liked this book, so won't like that book), but did a *very* unofficial tally/compilation of our tiered votes for Top, Mid, Bottom (if did 4 tiers, mid = 2nd & 3rd).Not too surprising, majority of the books had at least one vote for each of the three tiers!
Book (Top Tier Votes - Mid Tier Votes - Bottom Tier Votes)
Station Eleven (10 - 4 - 2)
All the Light (8 - 5 - 1)
Untamed State (8 - 2 - 4)
Brief History (7 - 2 - 0)
Those Who Leave (5 - 2 - 1)
All The Birds (4 - 5 - 2)
Bone Clocks (4 - 5 - 1)
Dept of Spec (3 - 9 - 2)
Redeployment (2 - 11 - 1)
A Brave Man (2 - 5 - 5)
Annihilation (1 - 11 - 2)
Everything I Never (1 - 9 - 5)
Silence Once (1 - 7 - 7)
Adam (1 - 7 - 4)
Wittengstein (1 - 0 - 6)
Paying Guests (0 - 7 - 2)
Edited to include planetkimi below. Keep 'em coming!
Oh no! I'm posting too late for the total above! ;) Here's my three tier system with the # of Goodreads stars I gave each:Top Tier
-Everything I Never Told You (5)
-Station Eleven (4)
-A Brave Man Seven Stories Tall (4)
-Adam (4)
-The Bone Clocks* (4)
Mid-tier
-Annihilation (3)
-All the Birds, Singing (3)
-All the Light We Cannot See (3)
Bottom Tier
-Silence Once Begun (2)
Still Waiting for the Library Book to Arrive
-Wittgenstein Jr
-The Paying Guests
Chose Not to Read
-Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay
-An Untamed State
-A Brief History of Seven Killings
-Redeployment
-Department of Speculation
* I LOVED The Bone Clocks until about the last quarter of the book. The abrubt change of setting and ending ruined it for me.
I am late to the party too, but here are my tiers:Top Tier
- Those Who Leave (based on the first two, just getting ready to start this one)
- Redeployment
High-Mid Tier
- Annihilation
- All the Light We Cannot See
Low-Mid Tier
- The Bone Clocks
- An Untamed State
- Dept. of Speculation
Bottom Tier
- A Brave Man
- Station Eleven
Unread as Yet (in order of most likely to read)
- A Brief History of Seven Killings
- A Silence Once Begun
- Wittgenstein, Jr.
- All the Birds, Singing
- Everything I Never Told You
- The Paying Guests
- Adam
I plan to read a Brief History given the amount of love it has received. Again, The Book of Night Women was good not great, would have been enough Marlon James for me, but everyone seems to think A Brief History is a major step forward. I have also previously read Jesse Ball and his was also on the middling side of good. But....
Top:- All the Light
Middle:
- Untamed
- Everything I Never Told You
Bottom:
- Brave Man
- All the Birds
Haven't read anything else and probably won't until the winner is announced.
Back again! On 2nd thought, probably better to look at %s falling into each tier since not everyone read every book (duh!):Book - Top / Mid / Bot Tier % of votes
A Brief History 78% 22% 0%
Those Who Leave 67% 22% 11%
Station Eleven 59% 24% 18%
All the Light 56% 38% 6%
An Untamed State 50% 25% 25%
The Bone Clocks 36% 55% 9%
All the Birds 33% 42% 25%
Redeployment 20% 73% 7%
Dept. of Spec 20% 67% 13%
A Brave Man 14% 36% 50%
Wittgenstein Jr. 14% 0% 86%
Adam 8% 58% 33%
Annihilation 7% 80% 13%
Silence Once Begun 7% 47% 47%
Everything I Never 6% 63% 31%
The Paying Guests 0% 78% 22%
Karen wrote: "Just devoured the amuse-bouche served up by The Morning News this morning. Somehow I picked up some TOB vibes last night when I plucked Elliot Holt's "You Are One of Them" off of our library's she..."Karen, can you provide a link to the Morning News post you're referring to? I tried searching the site but can't find anything about Elliott Holt or Laura van den Berg.
they had a blue 'the rooster is getting ready to crow' banner/button at the very top of the tournament site, which takes you here: http://www.themorningnews.org/tob/
For those interested in correlation, I ran the numbers for nine books: An Untamed State, A Brief History, All the Light, Redeployment, Those Who Leave, Annihilation, Station Eleven, Dept. of Speculation, and The Bone ClocksThe most highly correlated pairs are:
All the Light / Those Who Leave with a 0.58 correlation (1.0 highest)
Bone Clocks / A Brief History with a 0.44 correlation
All the Light / A Brief History with a 0.43 correlation
Untamed / Redeployment with a 0.43 correlation
The most negatively correlated pairs are:
Bone Clocks / Those Who Leave with a -0.81 correlation
Redeployment / Station Eleven with a -0.61 correlation
Untamed / Those Who Leave with a -0.50 correlation
In other words, the two book pair that provide the best predictive possibilities are The Bone Clocks / Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay. If you like one, you'll probably not like the other at all. That's a little surprising to me.
I definitely see why All the Light / Those Who Leave are highly correlated, perhaps because I like them both. They have pretty large casts, focus closely on a bookish main character and that character's relationships, and address in significant part themes of good/evil in the context of messy reality, in other words, how so many people are defined as much by their circumstances as vice versa.
Anyway, this is my math/book/stats nerd contribution. It is dedicated to Poingu who also knows the pleasures and frustrations of playing chess against yourself.
Kerry wrote: "For those interested in correlation, I ran the numbers for nine books: An Untamed State, A Brief History, All the Light, Redeployment, Those Who Leave, Annihilation, Station Eleven, Dept. of Specu..."I love it!
Kerry wrote: "For those interested in correlation, I ran the numbers for nine books: An Untamed State, A Brief History, All the Light, Redeployment, Those Who Leave, Annihilation, Station Eleven, Dept. of Specu..."Thanks, Kerry, that's really cool!
So, 3 days til the first bracket! Adam VS The Bone Clocks. I've only read The Bone Clocks, and enjoyed it (though I do think its a "lesser" Mitchell book). Both books seem fairly polarizing--a lot of people were put off by the fantasy elements of TBC (and i found that the action sequences were a little ham-fisted), and I know that some people have found Adam to be a bit problematic in its depiction of trans issues.
Having not read one of the books, and not knowing the judge, it is my ill-informed decision that the winner will be:
Adam.
Very late to the party, but here goes:Top tier
Brave Man*
All the Light
Redeployment
Dept of Speculation
Middle tier
Everything I never told you
A Silence Once Begun*
All the Birds, Singing*
An Untamed State
Bottom tier
Adam
Wittgenstein, Jr.*
Still reading
The Bone Clocks
A Brief History
The rest I haven't even started.
The books with a star* are those I would not have found w/o TOB. Thank goodness for the Rooster and all of you.
By the way, on correlations, the pairs of no predictive power are:Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay / Redeployment: 0.01
An Untamed State / Station Eleven: 0.02.
Liking or disliking one of the pair tells you nothing about the likelihood of liking the other one. Both of these seem to make sense to me. The things I like about Redeploymnent overlap very little with those I like about Those Who Leave. Likewise, I think Untamed's primary attribute is the intense emotion, whereas Station Eleven is, to me, much more sedate, driven by what-ifs, etc.
Or maybe I am reading way too much into a tiny sample and a questionable statistician.
Kerry wrote: "For those interested in correlation, I ran the numbers for nine books: An Untamed State, A Brief History, All the Light, Redeployment, Those Who Leave, Annihilation, Station Eleven, Dept. of Specu..."Kerry, you put the "nerd" in Tournament of Books!
jess wrote: "wow, this just got really mathy."heh. something, something, something... 'those who leave and those who stay is going to win!' did i do that right? i hope so!! haha.
(KIDDING!! humour is so hard online sometimes. i am totally nerding out over the compilations, and seeing everyone's tiers.)
Jennifer,Did you do that right? Absolutely! Yours is the most rational* of arguments.
Everyone,
My apologies for completely nerding out on the math, but how else to fill the hours before the first match? Oh, reading. Yeah, there's that.
* Rational: Involving logical analysis or objective reasoning to reach a conclusion with which I agree.
hi kerry! haha. excellent! i felt sure i had interpreted the data correctly. :)
Some digital book deals (sorry if they aren't ToB related enough... just have to share):1. History of the Rain by Niall Williams is $1.99 for the Kindle TODAY only. (I thought this SHOULD have been at least on the ToB longlist... sounds promising.)
2. Florence Gordon - ToB longlister available at $2.99 for the month
3. A few Italo Calvino books available at $2.99 for the month: Invisible Cities, Collection of Sand, Into the War, Numbers in the Dark, Why Read the Classics?
4. Bedrock Faith - Eric May (ToB longlister) is $2.50 for I'm not sure how long
Top tier: Station Eleven, All the Birds Singing, Dept of Speculation, Bone Clocks, Silence Once Begun.Mid Tier: All the Light, Untamed State, Redeployment, Annihilation, Everything I Never Told You, Adam
Low Tier: Ferrante, Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall, Brief History, Wittgenstein, The Paying Guests
Is anyone else listening to this?http://wnpr.org/post/nose-has-been-re...
I missed Kevin's final 4 predictions.
I've read 9.5 of the books--I am giving myself half a credit for being halfway through the 2nd book in the Ferrante series. I have a copy of all of the books, but I doubt I will read much more than the first 50 pages or so of all the books that I have left.I have 4 tiers, which work out in my mind to Best, Better, Good, and Okay. I have not read anything that I disliked, although Annihilation came close, but I think that's largely due to my personal genre bias.
Tier 2: Dept of Speculation and An Untamed State
Tier 3: Everything I Never Told You, Redeployment, & All the Birds, Singing
Tier 4: The Paying Guests, Adam, and Annhilation
Please note that this list is completely arbitrary and might have been different if all the numbers in today's date were not divisible by 3 and the sun were not shining. I reserve the right to change my mind frequently.
(Does anyone else go back and edit their Goodreads star ratings after a few months?)
Edited because I reposted list.
Also, WHOA am I amazed at how many of you have read so many of the ToB books. You must have great libraries or something! I bet the ToB organizers never thought so many people would tackle so many of the books included in the ToB each year. This is my paltry contribution, but I'm not even sure about tiers:
The Bone Clocks 4.5 (but that sounds like a stretch now.. maybe should be 4)
All the Birds, Singing 3.5
A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall 3
All the Light We Cannot See 2.5
The ToB books this year have just been OKAY for me... and many of them just don't sound like things I'll be tackling. (Annihilation & Station Eleven next though.)
RachelI don't always change them, but sometimes I wonder what I as thinking at the time.
I just realized that having 4 tiers pretty much makes me a pain in the a$$. In my original sorting, I put all of tiers 1 & 2 in tier 1, then I decided Tier 1 was too large, and I demoted 2 books to a Tier 1.5, which I renamed Tier 2 and bumped the other tiers down. Sooo, let's try again.Tier 1: All the Light, Station Eleven, Those Who Leave, An Untamed State
Tier 2: Dept of Speculation; Everything I Never Told You; All the Birds, Singing; Redeployment
Tier 3: Adam, The Paying Guests, Annihilation
Did not read: The Bone Clocks, A Brief History, A Brave Man, Silence Once Begun, or Wittgenstein Jr.
jess wrote: "Is anyone else listening to this?http://wnpr.org/post/nose-has-been-re...
I missed Kevin's final 4 predictions."
Hey Jess let us know when they put the audio up....I'd like to listen to it.
Rachel wrote: "Does anyone else go back and edit their Goodreads star ratings after a few months?"
I do. If I am still thinking about a book months after reading it, I may give it another star. If I have largely forgotten a book I rated highly, I might take away a star.
I do. If I am still thinking about a book months after reading it, I may give it another star. If I have largely forgotten a book I rated highly, I might take away a star.
Rachel wrote: "(Does anyone else go back and edit their Goodreads star ratings after a few months?)"hi rachel. i do sometimes change my ratings. if i find a book has stuck with me for a while after i have finished, i will revisit my review and tweak my rating. (or if, through discussion, my feelings become more clear. sometimes it's external factors that reinforce thoughts, feelings or questions i had, but had been unable to process well upon immediate completion of a book.) i usually add a note in the review that i have bumped the rating up or down and give a reason. it doesn't happen too often - maybe 2 or 3 times/year?
Loving the ratings! Here are mine:Top tier:
- The Bone Clocks
- All the Light We Cannot See
- A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall
- Station Eleven
Middle tier:
- Annihilation
- Everything I Never Told You
- Silence Once Begun
Bottom tier:
- An Untamed State
- All the Birds, Singing
- Dept ot Speculation
DNF:
- A Brief History of Seven Killings
- The Paying Guests
- Ferrante (started My Brilliant Friend but couldn't get through it)
And the rest I probably won't read. I've really enjoyed my Tournament journey, though, and can't wait for the judging!
P.S. I also change my ratings sometimes. Not very often--but if, like some of you have said, the book really sticks with me for longer than I thought it would, then I up the rating. It seems that sometimes a bit of distance is what I need to fully appreciate a book.
C wrote: "Also, WHOA am I amazed at how many of you have read so many of the ToB books. You must have great libraries or something! I bet the ToB organizers never thought so many people would tackle so man..."I guess I should consider myself lucky that all TOB books were available at my local library (with a little juggling of holds)!
Finally posting my tiers:
Top tier: Those who leave (haven't yet read, but read first 2 in series), Untamed State, A Brief History, Redeployment, Everything I Never Told You, All the Birds Singing
Mid Tier: Silence Once Begun, All the Light, Station Eleven, Bone Clocks, Dept of Speculation, Paying Guests, Annihilation
Low Tier: Wittgenstein Jr, Adam
Unread: A Brave Man (hoping to read it this weekend), Those Who Leave (hoping to read next week)
Thanks to Ed and Kerry - our unofficial TOB statisticians!
I am a big fan of the statistical analysis as well. Great job compiling data of interest to the TOB group!Might as well jump in on the fun by posting my TOB contender hierarchy too, as I have read 15 of the 16 at this point.
Tier 1: An Untamed State; The Bone Clocks; All the Light We Cannot See; Station Eleven; A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall; A Brief History of Seven Killings.
Tier 2: Silence Once Begun; All the Birds, Singing; Everything I Never Told You; Annihilation.
Tier 3: Redeployment; Adam (great name for an only okay book, hehe); The Paying Guests; Wittgenstein Jr.
Tier 4: Dept. of Speculation, because about the only thing I retained from it is that I did not enjoy it while reading it. I'll be interested to see if TOB analysis refreshes my memory, but it just did not stick with me at all (which is very rare for me).
Unread: Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay. I'd estimate this will wind up in Tier 1, at least based on having read My Brilliant Friend and the first 1/3 of The Story of a New Name and my resulting opinion of Ferrante's Neopolitan novels so far. Hoping my workload does not prevent me from getting through TWLaTWS by the time it's up for judgment.
Thanks for the link!
What an interesting conversation, both for the diverse opinions of the three guests, and for the books they left out of the discussion. There was lots of enthusiasm for Dept. of Speculation which was one of my least favorites, but they had nothing to say about Untamed State or Brave Man..., both of which I liked very much.
What an interesting conversation, both for the diverse opinions of the three guests, and for the books they left out of the discussion. There was lots of enthusiasm for Dept. of Speculation which was one of my least favorites, but they had nothing to say about Untamed State or Brave Man..., both of which I liked very much.
Over on the So Many Damn Books podcast, we hosted Will Chancellor to chat about his book and the tournament (he's a big fan!)itun.es/i6Bn7DX, subscribe!
or just listen to this one episode:
http://traffic.libsyn.com/somanydamnb...
I still have two books to read, but I want to get my rankings on record before the judging begins.
Top tier: All the Light, Brief History, Station Eleven
Middle tier: Untamed State, All the Birds, Brave Man
Bottom tier: Dept. of Speculation, Everything I Never Told You, Wittgenstein, Jr.
This week, I will read Silence Once Begun and Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, which I predict will be among my favorites. I am going to read all three Neapolitan books.
I chose not to read Redeployment, Annihilation, Bone Clocks, Adam, and Paying Guests.
Top tier: All the Light, Brief History, Station Eleven
Middle tier: Untamed State, All the Birds, Brave Man
Bottom tier: Dept. of Speculation, Everything I Never Told You, Wittgenstein, Jr.
This week, I will read Silence Once Begun and Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, which I predict will be among my favorites. I am going to read all three Neapolitan books.
I chose not to read Redeployment, Annihilation, Bone Clocks, Adam, and Paying Guests.
Can anyone refresh my memory on something from Adam? In the novel, the characters find out that a trans person has been killed. What is the position the characters state on whether a trans person should reveal their bio gender to a sex partner?
Do we do spoilers in this group? I think we do.
I didn't think my question was very germane to the plot, but I probably should have inserted a spoiler to be safe. Sorry!!
rachel, i think you mean whether a trans person should disclose their trans status before a sexual encounter? i wish i could remember that part of the book more precisely. my memory is that, no, trans people do not have to disclose their status.
Does knowing that change your attitude toward what Adam did?
I'm sorry, is your question, Does knowing what Ariel Schrag wrote about trans people disclosing their status change my attitude toward.... which part of what Adam did are you referring to? Lying about his age? Lying about his trans status? Or something else? There are a lot of interesting conversations about disclosure and consent that could have happened in Adam. It's too bad Ariel Schrag didn't explore them in her novel.
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Tournament of Books
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Tier 2: Annihilation, Redeployment, All the Light We Cannot See, Everything I Never Told You
Tier 3: The Paying Guests, Silence Once ..."
Susan,
Re: The Good Lord Bird, I'm listening to the audio and it's quite engaging. You may want to go that route.