Book News: Edgar Awards & Tournament of Books Nominees Announced

It's been a big week in the book world. The Edgar Allan Poe Award (called the Edgars for short) nominees were announced yesterday. I was excited to see that a few of my favorite reads from the past year were listed. In the Best Novel category, half of the titles were books I loved: Tana French's third novel Faithful Place, Tom Franklin's latest book Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, and Laura Lippman's I'd Know You Anywhere.

I'm going to have to add most of the other titles to my to-be-read list, which will push that number up to somewhere near 100. Oh, well. Such is life. That just means I have a plethora of amazing choices, right? One of the YA titles has already been on my radar, and I've read a short excerpt on Amazon, so it will be one of my next reads for certain -- A.S. King's novel Please Ignore Vera Dietz. Book bloggers and reviewers have raved about it, and now with an Edgar nomination, it's a sure thing.

The Edgars began more than half a century ago. They honor mystery writers in various categories -- everything from YA fiction to television episodes. See the rest of the list on the Edgar website for more excellent mystery book options.

 Also this week, I discovered something superbly interesting: the Tournament of Books.

It's been going on for several years now, but sometimes great things fly under the radar for long periods of time (if you're me, anyway). ToB is the reader's answer to March Madness. Sports fans have their Sweet Sixteen; book fans have the ToB. Which incidentally also has sixteen -- but books, rather than basketball teams.

After compiling a long list of most reviewed/ most talked about/ most controversial/ possibly "best" books from 2010, the staff at The Morning News have narrowed it to sixteen contenders. They go head to head in a battle for the tournament winner in March. Visit TMN website for details and, of course, the list. My call for the winner? The only book I've read from the list: Amy Greene's Bloodroot. Loved it, and hopefully, so will the tournament's readers.

Past ToB Winners:

• 2009: Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall  (beating Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna)
• 2008: Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (over Tom McCarthy's Remainder)
• 2007: Cormac McCarthy's The Road (vs. Gary Shteyngart's Absurdistan)
• 2006: Ali Smith's The Accidental (beating out Sam Lipsyte's Home Land)
• 2005: David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas (against Philip Roth's The Plot Against America)

The award given for ToB winners, you might ask? A rooster. Like, a live one. Don't ask; I don't know.

Happy reading this weekend!