Don’t Miss Out on The Rooster’s Tournament of Books!

Whoops – we have been moving this past week, so there are a few things that have fallen by the wayside, including writing a blog!

This week is my annual plug for my favorite bookish award/competition of all time (although I still miss Food 52’s Tournament of Cookbooks, which was also sublime), the Rooster’s Tournament of Books, which is almost 20 years old, and is the perfect mix of bookish fun, light competition, and thoughtful writing about what makes a good book.

The Tournament takes a series of about 16 books and pits them against each other in a March Madness style competition. Judges are asked to take on a pairing and are given full permission to judge which book is “better” in whatever way they choose. They then deliver their decision in the form of an essay, and one decision is posted every day.

The judges are usually writers themselves, so these essays and criteria they use to make their decision are entertaining and delightful to read in their own right. Even when I haven’t read the books, I always love reading about them, and more than once, the way a judge has framed their decision has made me immediately add a book to my TBR.

Finding bookish writing that is enjoyable without having read the book is rare, and this competition is just so incredibly great at this. In fact, the only other book media I have found that has a similar quality is the BBC podcast called A Good Read (side recommendation here – you should also check this out!)

This year’s Tournament of Books list can be found HERE, and if you want to follow along, you can follow The Rooster on Instagram or on The Tournament of Books website.

This year, there are a few books I loved or am very excited about, including the delightful What You Are Looking For Is In The Library, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, and Chain Gang All Stars, which I have not read, but did talk about a couple weeks ago. So far, I’ve also become intrigued by Dayswork, which is a pandemic-based book that is hard to describe, but that was described in such a compelling way by judge Anna Clark that I really want to read it.