Ok, so this idea is totally stolen from Jam.

How it works: the first round you read a little bit of each book (I’m thinking 5 pages because of the adage that you should be able to hook a reader within the first five pages). The next round you read a bit more of each of the survivors (say the first chapter of each). The next round a bit more, and so on. The winner gets read to the end.

As we were talking about it, I remembered this list of “best novels” from 1898 that I’d seen a few weeks ago, how I’d been curious about some of the titles I’d never heard of and thought: if only I had more time to read… Or! If only I were more ruthless!

Bring on the Tournament of Old Books!

I headed to Project Gutenberg to see what I could find and drafted up my list. (I skipped titles I’ve previously read, with a few exceptions. For example, I’m sure I read Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver’s Travels when I was a kid, but they were adapted/abridged-for-kids editions, which don’t count. Also watching movies and/or musicals ≠ reading 😉 )

I’m not sure when I’m actually going to have time to do this (probably not this month), but here are my brackets (click to embiggen):

Tournament of Old Books, Round 1