2014 Tournament of Books from The Morning News

Already Tired from the List!

Here at Reading Envy, there is little nothing we love more than a good list!

So as I was catching up on the blogs I follow and started reading another blogger's take on this year's list for the Tournament of Books, I realized that I had discussed it in Twitter and in a few Facebook reading groups, but never posted my thoughts out in the open on this blog.

The Tournament of Books, created by The Morning News, takes the idea of March Madness and applies it to a group of books, "representative of the outstanding fiction that was published in 2013."  Judges select a winner when books go head to head, until eventually the world is left with one winner.  It happens in March, so I have two months to get these books read!  Oh, it's not like I have any official involvement in the tournament* but I like to play along.  Last year was my first year participating, and it exposed me to books I hadn't read otherwise.

This year's books (copied directly from their site, links go to Powells since they are a sponsor):

Finalists for the 2014 Tournament of Books

• At Night We Walk in Circles by Daniel Alarcón
• The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
• The Tuner of Silences by Mia Couto
• The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert
• How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid
• The Dinner by Herman Koch
• The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
• Long Division by Kiese Laymon
• The Good Lord Bird by James McBride
• Hill William by Scott McClanahan
• The Son by Philipp Meyer
• A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
• Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
• The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
• The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara
• [Winner of the Pre-Tournament Playoff Round]

Pre-Tournament Playoff Round

• Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
• Woke Up Lonely by Fiona Maazel

I have thoughts already.  I have read five of these books (Koch, Lahiri, Ozeki, Yanagihara, and Atkinson from the pre-tournament round.)  I have abandoned one (the Catton, which I gave 80 pages before quitting on, even though it won the Booker!)  I'm halfway through the Laymon, which is great.  I have already collected copies of the Tartt, Gilbert, Rowell. The library where I work has eBooks of the Laymon, Couto, and print books of the Hamid, McBride, Meyer. I put interlibrary loan requests in for the McClanahan and the Maazel.  In a weird twist of events, I randomly came across another book by McClanahan just last month, Crapalachia, and read it in eBook format from the library.  Strange that by the end of this, I will have read two more books set in West Virginia!

How about you?  How many of these books have you read, and do you try to read along with the Tournament of Books?

*I think most years the Morning News selects a blogger as a judge and I would love to participate!  Pick me!  :)