Each year, The Morning News banks on the time-sucking qualities of March Madness with the Tournament of Books, a bracketed face-off that pits the year’s most celebrated works of fiction against each other. This year, the contest-crazed kids at Coudal add to the potential illegality of this operation by allowing you to bet on the winner. Proceeds benefit First Book, a non-profit that buys new books for children from low-income families, so when you’re betting on a winner, remember, you’re also betting on our future.
I placed my wager on Joshua Ferris’ Then We Came to the End. Even though it’s already got great odds, I thought it should win for three reasons: 1) It’s written in first person plural—not an easy device to keep up for 400+ pages. 2) It’s pretty much the exact story of my life as I looked for a job in advertising during one very long year at the beginning of this millennium. 3) It’s set in Chicago, which is also where Coudal is headquartered, so I read the entire book envisioning my old UnBeige cohort, Coudal employee Steve Delahoyde, as the narrator.
