Monday, June 27, 2011

Reading Elimination Tournament -- 64 Books, So Little Time

DSC_0051I buy a lot of books.  My particular weakness, trade paperbacks in the bargain bins of Half-Price Books, at library book sales or wherever else I pick them up.  As a result, I have a huge backlog of books that I may never get too and my shelves are overflowing, so I need to get rid of some books. So here is what I'm going to do.  I'm going to take 64 books off of my shelves and I'm going to put them in an elimination tournament.  I'd love to do this as a March Madness thing, but let's face it, even following my bizarre rules, no one can possibly read 64 books in a month so here's how the process works:
  • Round #1 -- I read the first 5 pages of these 64 random books from my collection and select the 32 books that I'm most interested in continuing to read. I'm going to focus on the writing craft of these books and note what interested me (or didn't) and give you at least a brief description of why it made it (or didn't) to the next round.
  • Round #2 -- From the reading of the first five pages I will organize the remaining books into "brackets" of those that are sort of alike.  In the books that I've selected is a wide range of literary tastes: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Literary, Popular Fiction, and even some award winners and classics. I will read the first 25 pages of these books and eliminate 16 of them.
  • Round #3 -- The Sweet 16: I will read an additional 25 pages of these books (50 pages) and eliminate 8 of them... At this point I may "set aside" some of the books to finish later even if I eliminate them, but who knows.
  • Round #4 -- The Elite 8: These books I will read to the end, or until I get bored of it, and eliminate the number to the Final 4.
  • Round #5 -- Down to 2.
  • Round #6 -- Determines the Grand Champion of the 2011Reading Elimination Tournament.

How does this benefit you? Free books!  If you want a book that has been eliminated, just let me know and I'll give it to you (either in person, or ship it to you for the media mail shipping cost (probably $2.50).  Unless the books in the final rounds absolutely enthrall me, causing me to add it to my Fiction Hall of Fame, chances are that most of the "winners" will be available for you as well.

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