Just another writer
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2025 Tournament of Books: The History of Sound vs. The Extinction of Irena Rey
Another quarterfinals match-up where it’s books I’ve picked to advance, sparing me the trip to the alternate universe. This time it’s The History of Sound vs The Extinction of Irena Rey. This is perhaps the toughest match-up for me to pick a winner on. Both books are excellent and flawed in their own ways. It’s almost a…
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2025 Tournament of Books: Martyr! vs. Beautyland
Today’s matchup gives us a pair of weird literary novels, each weird in their own way and they were both books that I loved, so it made for a difficult choice. I think, though, that Akbar’s prose was just a touch more to my delight even if the coincidence central to the plot was maybe…
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2025 Tournamet of Books: James vs. Headshot/The Book of Love
We come into the quarterfinals and this particular match-up is one for which my choice is foreordained. James is the best book of 2024, end of discussion. And yet I suppose I should discuss. Headshot certainly has its fans, but while it has aspects I can admire, it didn’t manage to continually suprise and amaze in…
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2025 Tournament of Books: Margo’s Got Money Troubles vs. Someone Like Us
The last of the first-round matchups (which means that after this, my write-ups get a lot shorter since I’ll have already said my piece on each of the books). On the one hand, we have Margo’s Got Money Troubles, one of those easy to describe books: A college student who has become pregnant after having an…
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2025 Tournament of Books: Liars/The Wedding People vs. The Book of George
Today brings the first of the counterfactual matchups in my commentary since Hannah Pearl Utt inexplicably chose Liars to advance from the play-in round. So let me talk about The Book of George. This book hits a lot of the same sort of notes that Liars does from a hapless man failing at relationships. But unlike Liars, the focus…
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2025 Tournament of Books: Colored Television vs. The Extinction of Irena Rey
Today’s pair of novels is another wildly disparate pairing. Danzy Senna’s Colored Television is a realist portrayal of a novelist and low-ranking academic tempted into television writing, albeit on spec with a producer of dubious motivation. The sole bit of surrealism is when Senna and her family move into a retirement home towards the end of…
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2025 Tournament of Books: Orbital vs. The History of Sound
Before it won the Booker, I was largely unaware of Samantha Harvey’s Orbital but I picked it up not too long after it won curious to see what this book was that the Booker judges felt was better than James. I had kind of expected the title to refer to freeways as I’ve generally heard the word…
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2025 Tournament of Books: Great Expectations vs Beautyland
Today’s matchup includes a pair of very disparate books. Vinson Cunningham, a former Obama campaign worker turned New Yorker staff writer, wrote a novel that’s about his time on the Obama campaign without ever explicitly naming Obama or any of the other major figures in the campaign. Giving it the title Great Expectations certainly did nothing to…
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2025 Tournament of Books: Martyr! vs. Rejection
Today’s matchup is a pair of debuts. Kaveh Akbar is a well-known poet making his debut as a novelist while Tony Tulathimutte whose story, “The feminist,” brought him some notoriety makes his book-length debut with a collection of linked stories. Both books caught my attention before this year’s Tournament of Books (I’m apparently becoming increasingly…