The Morning News 2015 Tournament of Books

It’s entirely possible that I’m one of the few people who didn’t know about this. Evidently, The Morning News has an annual book competition modeled after the NCAA basketball tournament, and this has been going on for 11 years.

The 16 competitors for 2015 were announced a few weeks ago; the brackets not yet. The tournament itself will be in March, of course. I like that they say that the selection and judging are arbitrary and capricious, that they have color commentators, and that a public discussion follows each of the judges’ decisions.

Amazingly, given my sparse reading of contemporary fiction, a book I posted about in December - Dear Committee Members: A Novel - made the long list. Of the 16 chosen for the tournament, a few interest me, and there’s one I might read soon, but only if I can (and want to) steel myself for it: Roxane Gay’s An Untamed State.