A Brief History of the Tournament of Books
Rosecrans Baldwin, Andrew Womack, and Kevin Guilfoile of TMN were discussing literary awards when they came up with the idea for The Rooster, a new kind of literary award focused on book promotion and discussion. The winner of The Rooster would receive a live rooster.
The Tournament of Books is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year, and winner Ian McEwan’s The Accidental took the event “to a different place” that year, with commentators Kevin and John taking it “to a different place.” Roberto Bolau00f1o’s 2666 was the subject of intense criticism from fans who read the book before the tournament began.
When Andrew W.K. chose Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall over Marlon James’ The Book of Night Women, readers were outraged, and others speculated that “it just seems downright weird to have a judge that’s meaner than we are.” In 2014, John Green tweeted that he didn’t care if his book didn’t make the final round, and Seth Colter Walls’ Gaza, Wyoming didn’t make the 2016 shortlist.
What is Tournament of Books?
The Tournament of Books is a March madness for book lovers in which 18 of the best fiction titles compete for the title of Rooster.
How does Tournament of Books work?
If you’re unfamiliar with the Tournament of Books, here’s how it works: Two works of fiction compete in 18 matchesu2014one each weekdayu2014with one of our judges deciding which book advances in the brackets based on whatever criteria they consider important.
What is a rooster Tournament?
Each judge considers two books from the brackets and then explains how they chose the winning book. The final pairing includes all of the judges from the tournament, and the winner receives a rooster in the form of a donation to Heifer International.
What is the most sold book in the world?
The Bible is the most widely read book in the world, according to writer James Chapman, who compiled a list of the most widely read books in the world based on the number of copies each book sold over the previous 50 years and discovered that the Bible far outsold all other books, with 3.9 billion copies sold.
What’s a good title for a book?
The Three Most Common Characteristics of Effective Titles
- Evocative. Best-selling titles are frequently evocative and contain compelling wordplay and imagery.
- Memorable and unique. A good book title should be both memorable and unique.
What is considered the greatest book of all time?
The All-Time Greatest Books
- 1. Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. 2. James Joyce’s Ulysses. 3. Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote.
- 4. Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude.
- 5. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.
- 6. Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.
- 7. Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace.