On Monday, The Morning News, an online news website, announced the books and judges for the
2014 Tournament of Books. This years tournament will be known as ToBX to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the pinnacle of all book awards.
What
is the Tournament of Books? The ToB is the March Madness of Literary Fiction.
To understand the concept, one must first
understand March Madness.
If one follows sports regularly, they will immediately understand the concept. For those of us who don't follow sports or basketball, March
Madness is a term used to describe the NCAA Basketball tournament.
Annually, the NCAA chooses the “best” collegiate basketball teams to face off in a single elimination basketball tournament (in 2013 there were 68 teams selected). The tournament generally gets started the first weekend in early March and at one time finished in March as well (it now lingers into April). The winners each weekend progress to the next and so on an so forth until there is only one team left unbeaten and declared the winner. The teams either earn a spot in the tournament or they are chosen. Those earning a spot do so with an exceptional record for the year or because they won their season ending conference tournament. Some are "chosen" based on some unknown to me criteria - those are typically the teams with weaker records that the NCAA deems worthy enough to make it, yet are typically trounced by the stronger teams.
Rating: 4 (maybe 4.5, still thinking)