After five rounds, sixteen books and more hard choices than we can count, The Morning News has chosen this year’s champion of the Tournament of Books. Who won, you ask? (Here’s a hint: we’re pretty happy about it.)
2015 Tournament of Books Winner Announced
A Cleaner List
As promised, Amazon has removed the free ebooks from its Kindle bestseller list and now shows two lists: freebies and books you actually have to pay for.
Nothing Has to Be Blown Up
“One of the joys of literature is that we can always push back against established ways of speaking and seeing—and nothing has to be blown up.” Mark Z. Danielewski, whose latest novel, the first installment of a 27-book series called The Familiar, has just been released, writes for The Atlantic‘s “By Heart” series about “signiconic” writing, the orneriness of his work and the graphic novel Here. Pair with our 2012 interview with Danielewski.
Near Deaths in Literature
Last week, JK Rowling announced that, midway through writing the Harry Potter series, she nearly killed off Ron Weasley “out of spite.” Ron isn’t the first supporting character to narrowly avoid death in an author’s rough draft. The Awl illustrates some of literature’s other close calls with death.
On the Brilliance of Chris Ware
The folks at the outstanding Chicago-based journal The Point offer, as a teaser for their fourth issue, a lengthy consideration of the cartoonist Chris Ware.
Best New Poets
Poets, rejoice! Tracy K. Smith’s selections for Best New Poets 2015 have been announced. After you’ve checked them out, go take a look at Sophia Nguyen’s Millions essay on Smith’s newest memoir Ordinary Light.
Okay, but the Sample Size Tho
“It’s possible that when it comes to books, we have overestimated the means of delivery and have underestimated the importance of the content conveyed in the media.” A recent study demonstrated that preschoolers demonstrated the same level of reading comprehension regardless of whether the story they were, ahem, consuming came in digital or analog form, reports MOBY Lives. For more on the print vs. screen debate, see Alix Christie on the persistence of physical books; and of course it would be criminal not to mention our own founder C. Max Magee‘s killer compilation The Late American Novel: Writers on the Future of Books.