Tournament of Books discussion

Additional inside information on the tourney's judges. To be revealed as decisions are delivered. I'm crossing my fingers that the links to their goodreads' profiles are operational!

Organizers

Amberbug *shelfnotes.com* : Book blogger for shelfnotes.com by night, boring desk job by day. Amberbug started blogging a few years back when she realized free books sent to your doorstep wasn't a book lovers fairy tale but gifts from the publishing gods. More about her, hmm... she is in her 30's, reads books almost as much as she breathes, has an attraction to the scent of puppy paws (Fritos?), and loves pretty much anything but romance.

Amy : Amy manages hardware engineers at a high tech company in Oregon and spends all day talking about Powerpoint presentations and code instead of books. She is a lifelong insatiable reader who discovered the TOB a few years ago and consequently exploded her to-be-read pile. She reads in her spare time and “fan-girl’s” out for librarians and avid reviewers. Though her favorite reads are typically modern fiction, she also dives into fantasy, YA, sci-fi and genre-benders. The alt.TOB has provided her an excellent excuse for using spreadsheets with her reading and tourney organizing!

Shortlist Selection Committee = Organizers + Jan & Jason

Jan : Jan is a freelance marketing flack who gets paid to learn stuff, interview people way smarter than she is, and write about technology trends in healthcare, education, supercomputing, and other fields. Pretty cool, huh? Especially when you consider she can barely change a lightbulb, and at least 20% of her brain has been colonized by the Hamilton cast album. She lives with her husband in the Portland suburbs, and their favorite date destination is Powell’s City of Books. Also, she thinks it’s about damn time the country elects a woman president.

Jason Perdue : Jason has been following the TOB since the very first year. It's the highlight of his reading year. Jason ran a documentary film festival for 8 years. Despite that (or because of it) he reads almost exclusively fiction. Jason travels for his current job and always finds the best indie bookstores to support. In the past year, Jason been to City Lights and Green Apple Books in SF, The Strand, McNally Jackson, and Greenlight Books in NYC, Book People in Austin, Hatchards and Daunt Books in London.

+ shoutout to poingu who provided input to the longlist as well! Poingu is an avid participant in the sport of racing pigeons. This is true!

Commentators = Organizers/Short-List Selection Committee + nomadreader, Nicola, Kristin-Leigh & Sarah

nomadreader (Carrie D-L) : Carrie is an academic librarian by day and an avid reader of literary fiction and mysteries by night. She spends the rest of her time goofing off with her rambunctious and sweet 2-year-old Hawthorne (and her spouse), traveling, cooking, drinking wine, cooking, or watching documentaries (and most often doing more than one of those.) Since 2007, she has blogged at http://nomadreader.blogspot.com

Nicola :Nicola is a 44 year old British transplant who arrived on the shores of Connecticut 11 years ago and never left. A self confessed Americaephile with the eclectic reading tastes that can be expected from growing up on a diet of Thomas Hardy and Stephen King. She lives with husband, 2 sons and assorted other animals. By day she is the PTA President at her son's school and attributes her success running the organization down to her command of the Queen's English and clipped English vowels. Favorite book of the last 12 months - The Tsar of Love and Techno.

Kristin-Leigh : Kristin-Leigh explains mobile app marketing to tech brands by day, reads compulsively by night. She’s trying to tackle 125 books before the end of the year (currently 2 books ahead of schedule, thanks to preparatory Alt-ToB binge reading!) and is particularly focusing on female authors and first-time novelists. Recommend her your favorite book about haunted houses/weird-sentient-buildings-and-landscapes!

Sarah Tittle : After a career in NYC publishing, Sarah relocated to Minneapolis to start and grow a family, who are the only people she loves more than books.

Opening Rounds 1-8 Judges

Round 1: The Girls vs. The Core of the Sun
Caroline : A self-proclaimed expert on both Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series and Shakepeare's history plays, Caroline describes her personal brand as 'self-conscious eclecticism.' She has a degree in creative writing and attends the WisCon science fiction convention every year. The rest of the time, she lives in Virginia with her cat, Hadassah.

Round 2: The Portable Veblen vs. Sweetgirl
Drew : Drew has been a community college librarian in southeastern Washington state for the past 20 years. She enjoys reading fiction of course, also essays, graphic novels, and anything else that grabs her attention. When Drew is not working or reading, you might find her at the movies or at the local dog training facility where her blue heeler Spike and she take agility classes and occasionally compete. Drew also has a sweet elderly kitty named Betsy and a Chow-Shepherd mix named Gaia. Neither of them have any interest in agility training but they do like to help Drew read.

Round 3: The Vegetarian versus The Book of Harlan
A. : Aletheia is an attorney at an appellate court, reading, researching, and writing law for a living. She is married with one cat and a baby boy on the way and lives in the sunny (sunny!) (SUNNY!) state of New Mexico, where she moved from the midwest over a decade ago. Aletheia is an avid reader and, lately, has found herself particularly enjoying speculative fiction and tech-sci-fi. She receives way too many emails from publishers, booksellers, and related book-companies (Goodreads included), but she cannot help but peruse the emails, inevitably enticing herself to add to her already way-too-long TBR list. She also enjoys snowboarding (though she's a novice), hiking, hanging with friends, visiting bookstores and libraries, and pretty much everything in between.

Round 4: The Guest Room versus Beatlebone
Jeff Morgan : Jeff lives just outside New York City in Astoria, Queens, with three key destinations just a few minutes away: an awesome little bookstore (shout-out to Astoria Bookshop!), a great bar for quiet reading and good beer, and his beloved New York Mets at Citi Field. Aside from those pursuits, Jeff makes his living by day as a technical/blog/content writer, and enjoys traveling with his fiancée (just over a year until the big day!)

Round 5: The Sport of Kings versus Not Dark Yet
Mainon :Mainon's non-work life revolves around three questions: what to eat, what to drink, and what to read. On perfect days, you'll find her in a hammock (with a Kindle, a back-up Kindle, three hardback books, and a craft cocktail in hand), soaking up the Puerto Rico sunshine while her partner makes nachos. On less-than-perfect-but-still-pretty-good days, you'll find her discussing books on Goodreads and on Twitter as @bravenewbks. She really misses the in-person book clubs she's left behind in South Bend, IN, New York, NY, and Anchorage, AK.

Round 6 Daredevils versus The Association of Small Bombs
Ester :Ester is an appellate lawyer based in New York. She uses book shopping and talking about books as stress relief.

Round 7 What is Not Yours, Is Not Yours versus Bright Lines
Jen : Jen works as a counselor. In her free time, she reads, sings, plays video games, performs in musical theater, watches college basketball, and sometimes writes (NaNoWriMo 2015 winner). She reviews for NetGalley and plans to one day consistently post on her blog, Book and Cat (bookandcat.blogspot.com).

Round 8 LaRose versus Laurus
Dianne : Dianne is an investment management attorney by day who values her books over all other material possessions. She works hard to instill her extreme love of reading in her four and seven year old daughters, and is dismayed that they are finding A Wrinkle in Time to be 'creepy'. She is a truly happy soul, and is thrilled that Poingu introduced her to TOB.

Quarterfinal Judges 1-4

QF1 The Core of the Sun versus The Portable Veblen
Darryl Keeping :Darryl is a high school history teacher originally from Grand Bank, Newfoundland, Canada, currently living in Paradise...no, really. It's a town in Newfoundland as well. Stereotypically, he's a huge hockey fan (go Leafs go!) and maybe not so stereotypically, he loves professional wrestling! He discovered the ToB (and subsequently the alt. ToB) through the awesome podcast So Many Damn Books!

QF 2 The Vegetarian versus Beatlebone
Melanie Green : On June 30, 2016, Lin-Manuel Miranda tweeted at Melanie Greene that she was “so awesome.” Other highlights of her life include her Irish husband, who she met at the English university where they earned their creative writing MAs; their Texan sons; her career writing contemporary romance novels; and her blue and yellow bicycle. Melanie reads hundreds of books a year—don’t challenge her definition of audiobook consumption as ‘reading’—and chats a great deal about them online. Her pets always have middle names.

QF 3 Not Dark Yet versus The Association of Small Bombs
Katie O’Keefe : no bio avail-

QF 4 Bright Lines versus Laurus
Sara :Sara is a reader from Austin, Texas who loves translated literature and philosophical sci-fi tales, and loves the Tournament of Books for convincing her to read beyond those tastes. She first became interested in ToB in 2009 when she discovered that even without reading half the books, she suddenly had Very Strong Opinions about them. After reading all of the books the next year, she became hooked and is still btter about Andrew W.K.’s decision against The Book of Night Women.

Semi-finals Judges

SF 1 The Core of the Sun versus The Vegetarian
Heather : Heather Cothran is a mother of one, a newlywed, a former Jeopardy! champion, and a reading teacher in Ferguson, MO. She is a life-long voracious reader who used to take a wagon down to the bookmobile once a week as a child. Some of her all-time favorite reads include The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver, A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, and Little Children by Tom Perotta.

SF 2 The Association of Small Bombs versus Laurus
Sarah : Sarah is a librarian who lives and works in Manhattan. When she first moved to the city she started a book club in an effort to get to know more people and read new and interesting books. Now over a decade later A Novel Idea has read over 100 books together, met in homes and bars across the city, and even celebrated a book club wedding! One of A Novel Idea’s favorite time of year is March’s Tournament of Books, where they play along with the fervor of any rabid NCAA fan. Sarah is so excited to participate in this year’s Alt-ToB. You can find her interneting on @bazilli.

Thanks for taking the time to do this Amy!