Just another writer
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2024 Tournament of Books: Blackouts/Dayswork vs Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
Semifinal time! I start with my Alternate Reality Where the matchup is between Dayswork and Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. We have an experimental novel against an exemplar of a straightforward narrative, and to be honest, putting these two up against each other, I found I was just in the mood for a straight narrative. Actual reality…
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2024 Tournament of Books: Monstrilio vs The Librarianist/The Bee Sting
In this last round of quarterfinals, I was only half-wrong in predicting the match-up, but half-wrong still is enough to generate An alternate universe In my alternate universe, the match-up would be between Monstrilio and The Bee Sting. Both look at complicated family dynamics with plenty of dysfunction to go around, and while I admired the magical…
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2024 Tournament of Books: The Guest vs Brainwyrms/The Shamshine Blind vs Chain-Gang All-Stars
In the upper right corner of the grid, I completely disagreed with the judges of the first round, so we get a pair of completely non-overlapping competitions here. The alternate history In the universe where the judges made the correct decision, the match-up would be between Chain-Gang All-Stars and The Shamshine Blind. I’m faced with a choice…
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2024 Tournament of Books: The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store vs The Lost Journals of Sacajawea
This is the only non first-round match-up where my predictions matched the official judgment so things stay a bit simpler here. Again, we’re faced with two very different books. The Lost Journals of Sacajawea is a deeply challenging book, one that pushes the boundaries of structure and language offering a great deal of unexplained native culture…
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2024 Tournament of Books: Blackouts/Boys Weekend vs Dayswork
Today, we start the quarterfinals. I’ve talked about all of the books now, so here, I’m going to start focusing on the head-to-head matchups. Of course, the fact that there was a difference of opinion on what books should have moved on the first matchup. So I will start with Alternative history In my opinion,…
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2024 Tournament of Books: Monstrilio vs American Mermaid
The premise of American Mermaid as laid out on the back cover sounds promising. The author of a popular young adult novel goes to Hollywood to work on the adaptation of the novel to a movie, but as Hollywood does what it does to novels it adapts, some mysterious force starts fighting back. This sounded like…
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2024 Tournament of Books: The Librarianist vs What You Are Looking For Is in the Library vs The Bee Sting
Ah, the first round where I have to deal with my picks to advance not matching up with the official selections. So my format has to change a bit. First, a bit of alternate reality I’ll start with what I would have had the match-up be. The Bee Sting vs What You Are Looking For Is in…
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2024 Tournament of Books: Chain-Gang All-Stars vs Brainwyrms
I first encountered Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s writing in his short story collection Friday Black. The first story in the collection, “The Finkelstein 5” blew me away so much that when I finished reading it in the back seat of a Lyft in January 2019, I wanted to tell the driver that he needed to pull over…
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2024 Tournament of Books: The Guest vs The Shamshine Blind
The Guest promises chaos in the person of Alex, a call girl who’s on the run from a previous client from whom she stole a large sum of money and who had been hiding out in the Hamptons with a newer client until he grows bored of her presence and the fact that she damaged…