Tournament of Books discussion

Hi everyone! Emily and I are on board to organize this year's Tournament of Favorites, and are hoping to use the same general schedule as last year. This means we'd like to use the latter part of March and first week of April to co-create the bracket, and have judges lined up by the end of April.

I'm going to post a poll about the content of the bracket so that we can collectively decide whether to copy last year's format (half long list, half not) or to go entirely with books off the long list. I think I'll keep the format poll open from now till 3/21, giving us a weekend to get the book selection polls ready to open on 3/24.

There was also the suggestion after last year to avoid books that were part of last summer's ToB Summer Camp, but I'm not sure if that is a widely held feeling or not. If there is debate about that, I'll create a separate yes/no poll.

If you have other suggestions you'd like us to consider as we set things up for this year, this is the place to offer them! A form to fill out if you are interested in judging will go live soon, and you'll have time to decide if you are interested in helping out.

Link to current poll: https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/3...

I definitely think we should poll folks about whether to include camp books or not. I vote against including them.

Awesome - thanks so much for keeping this tradition alive!

I dunno, do we want to talk about All Fours and James again, folks?

I'm against including camp books.

Kyle, um, no.

Yes, no Camp books again please!

But nothing in the shortlist would be in, so we are really only talking about The Husbands and Wandering Stars. (Were those both on the long list? I'm assuming so but didn't go back to check.)

Last year, I had thought of saying no Camp books but there were only a couple that would have qualified, and others argued that if people didn't want to talk about them, they wouldn't get voted for. But Lone Women did get voted for. I guess the question is, what % of people who follow the ToF also read the Camp books and follow along with the discussion there. (I don't, unless I wanted to read them anyway, and I assume there are others like me.)

But there are so many books published, why repeat?

Ok, I’ve added a second poll about camp books.

https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/3...

There haven’t been many votes yet on the first one, compared to voting last year - is there another way we should let folks know? Or is everyone too busy with the actual Tournament to spend time on our side project?

I'd say that we're all pretty fixated on the Tournament at the moment - maybe after the final we could advertise this TOF in the commentariat?

Sure, but that compresses our timeline a bit. It was nice having the time to get all/most of the selected books read before zombie voting had to close, you know? But if the audience isn’t here, not much we can do about that!

Well, we didn't get a ton of votes but both polls were not super close - we will be doing a half-and-half bracket, and disqualifying The Husbands and Wandering Stars from nomination.

Our next step will be nominations, which I think we can do a little differently. I was thinking of doing nominations for books you loved here (with one nomination per bracket side per person), and then we can vote using dot polls like last year from among the nominated books based on what we want to read and discuss, rather than what we already know and love. If we get this going soonish, we can still have nearly 2 months to read books before having to vote for zombies too.

If anyone has issues with this nomination and then vote plan, please comment here in the next couple days. I'll chat with Emily and we will open a nominations thread hopefully over the weekend.

So Chrissy, how many books total will be in the ToF? Am I understanding correctly that you are asking each of us to submit our two nominations here: one from this year’s ToB longlist (that was not on the shortlist or summer camp); and one non-longlist book?

Eight books, but don’t start nominating yet! I’ll start new threads for that process. You have the idea on what’s eligible though.

Here's the propsed timeline for the ToF this year:

Nominations round 3/28 till EOD 3/31
Voting 4/1 till EOD 4/6
Run-off (possible) ?
Bracket released aim for 4/7?
Judges chosen now till end of April
Zombie votes due May 31, 2025
Round 1 decisions due May 31, 2025
Round 2 decisions due June 30, 2025
Zombie decisions due July 31, 2025
Final votes, decisions due Aug 31, 2025
Tournament live! Early to mid September, TBA

I’ve been unable to get logged in to Disqus, but if other people want to publicize the start of nominations, I intend to open those threads on Friday morning.

Hey Chrissy. This schedule looks really good. Folks started talking up the Tournament of Favorites yesterday in the ToB commentariat!

Today we begin! I will be opening at least one of the nomination threads shortly. They will stay open till Monday night, at the conclusion of the ToB.

I'm excited!

Me too! I’m in the middle of two books that might be worth nominating, so I need to finish quickly and decide!

Nominations close tonight at 8 pm PST!

We will use dot polls for the two sides of the bracket (long list and non-ToB). Each member will have four votes to use in each poll, split up however they want.

Voting polls will open Tuesday morning and close Sunday night. Any ties will require a quick run-off round of voting on Goodreads on Monday, April 7.

A poll for zombie voting will come once the brackets are finalized, to give voters time to read the selected books before voting. Zombie voting will close on May 31.

Sounds great - thank you!

I love that zombie voting window

Here is the link to vote for non-TOB books:

https://pollunit.com/polls/u8jd0eksqp...

I'll be back shortly to post the other voting link, but need a few minutes to type in all the titles!

OK, here's the other one:

https://pollunit.com/polls/l-5wjhavw8...

I hope that these work, please let me know if you have any problems voting! I think they give the options horizontally so you need to scroll right!

One other note: I believe you can go back using the same link and update your votes as long as the poll is open. So if you haven't decided about all four hearts, you can add some but not all and finish later. Or if you read a book this week from the list and love it, you can update your preference!

As you're casting your votes for the ToF books, you can also sign up to be a ToF judge! Here's the link to a short registration form:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FA...

Chrissy wrote: "Here is the link to vote for non-TOB books:

https://pollunit.com/polls/u8jd0eksqp...

I'll be back shortly to post the other voting link, but need a few minutes to type in all the titles!"

So many great ones here - thanks for everyone's nominations! I want to read most of these, whether they make it into the ToF or not. :)

Agreed - I added a bunch to my Want to Read list!

Chrissy: my votes are x'd out on books I didn't even vote for, and it won't let me change anything. is it too late now?

No, you should still be able to change your vote… are you on the same device and browser? I assume it uses cookies to tell who you are. I’ll check in the morning when I’m in front of my laptop.

Dianah wrote: "Chrissy: my votes are x'd out on books I didn't even vote for, and it won't let me change anything. is it too late now?"

I see 2 votes for Cahokia Jazz and 2 for The Safekeep. If that’s not what you want, you should be able to click on the x next to the hearts and then add more hearts elsewhere. The poll will only allow 4 hearts, so you have to remove some before adding more.

Thanks, Chrissy. I somehow missed the lesson on the x. I've never read The Cahokia Jazz, so not sure how any votes ended up there. Thanks for your help!

i have cahokia jazz checked out from the library, so I wouldn't mind if we picked it

Voting closes tomorrow night, so check out the front runners and decide if you want to move any votes around!

Really loved Cahokia Jazz, a fantastic alt-history worth reading even if it doesn’t get the votes. Made me want to read more Spufford.

Polls are closed, and the bracket is in preparation. We will have a 3-way runoff vote that I'll open shortly and will stay open till tomorrow evening... The voting was VERY close on both sides!

Tie-breaker poll is up on the group main page, or find it here:
https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/3...

I'm confused about the tie-breaker. Blue Ruin had the most votes. Shouldn't it be just between Two-Step Devil and It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over?

Sad that the tie-breaker is between both books I'd like to see in the ToF, but I also happy one will make it.

Edit: or did someone vote in the few minutes between polls closing and this post? Talk about tight!

From what I saw (and just double checked now and confirmed too), Blue Ruin actually had the most votes with 15, followed by 14 votes each for I Make Envy on Your Disco and There Are Rivers in the Sky, so all 3 of those appear locked in. With 13 votes each, it seems Two-Step Devil and It Lasts Forever & Then It’s Over should be in the runoff.

Aaron wrote: "I'm confused about the tie-breaker. Blue Ruin had the most votes. Shouldn't it be just between Two-Step Devil and It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over?

Sad that the tie-breaker is between both book..."

When I closed it, I thought there were 2 books at 14 votes, and 3 with 13. But you are right! Someone must have voted right as I was closing! I edited the poll, so if you voted for Blue Ruin, you can vote again because it shouldn’t have been included (it is in the bracket automatically).

can you tell us which books are in?

I’ve already added them to our “currently reading” shelf, so they show up on the group homepage! Once I know all 8, I’ll post the bracket here as well.

If you'd like to be a judge, don't forget to sign up: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FA...

Thanks to those who have already signed up. If you're on the fence about judging, feel free to send me any questions.

Two-Step Devil won the run-off, so that is our eighth book! I’ll get the tentative bracket out tomorrow, and everyone will have till the end of May to vote for zombies.

I’ll also echo Emily’s plug for judges - we can’t do this tournament without at least 8 volunteers, and it’s always good to have a couple alternates as well.

Here's the bracket, to be updated once we have all our judges on board and assigned!

I'm sure nobody needs this yet, but it is ready when we do!
Zombie poll:
https://forms.gle/GA3jxzXxmY8PWx8R8

Chrissy and Emily, if it is not too much trouble, could you possibly list in a comment here, the 4 ToB books and the 4 non-ToB books, with their author names, that will be in our ToF this year? I can only see five of them on my mobile device, which is all I have access to right now. It would be really great to be able to see all 8 of them in one place.

Oh I'm so glad There Are Rivers in the Sky made it in! It did not get the love it deserved last year.