A rock star, a culinary memoirist, and a music and literary blogger will help judge The Morning News’ annual Tournament of Books this year.
Performer Andrew W.K. (here), Julie Powell (“Julie & Julia“) and David Gutowski (Largehearted Boy) will all judge the annual competition. This year’s round-robin bracket will pit literary titles against each other. The list includes: “The Year of the Flood” by Margaret Atwood; Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel; “Lowboy” by John Wray and NBA winner, “Let the Great World Spin” by Colum McCann.
Here’s more from the announcement: “You can follow along as each contender is passed from reader to reader and judgments are handed down, sometimes passionately, sometimes haphazardly (and sometimes, in the case of Dale Peck in 2006, not at all). We have had judges who admitted they didn’t finish their books. We’ve had Rooster winners who came back as judges the next year, on the condition that we commission for them an aggressive T-shirt. And yes, we’ve had judges who flipped coins. So has the National Book Award—but the National Book Award won’t tell you that.”