If you walk by Type Books on Queen Street West this month, you’ll notice a March Madness-style bracket hanging in their window. However, these booksellers (and basketball fans) aren’t zealously following the annual NCAA basketball tournament. Instead, they’re trying to determine the best novel published in the past decade.
Sixty-four novels are outfitted in four divisions: Canadian literature, American literature, British literature, and World literature, with each title going head-to-head in true March Madness style. Eventually, the 64 titles will be reduced to one, which will be the “Books of the Decade” champion.
The assembled novels are a good mix of bestsellers, influential titles, and Type favorites from the past ten years. Each book is paired with a basketball team and that team’s success will determine how far their literary companion will go. Instead of concocting an elaborate matching and ranking system for their choices, Type opted to randomly match titles to teams, allowing only fate to determine their champion.
March Madness inspires conversations amongst even the most casual of basketball fans and Type hopes that their own tourney will do the same for readers. “How often do you get to celebrate backlist titles like this?” Buckley asked. “This display is an attempt to take those conversations about college basketball and channel them into a conversation about books.” If a conversation starter is what Type was looking for, they certainly found it. This window display has people buzzing. People stop inside the store to talk about why certain books made the cut, why others didn’t, which books on the list they’ve read, and which ones they’ve been meaning to read.
With no logical ranking system or metric to weigh the contenders, the results so far have been surprising and fun to follow. Heavyweights like Roberto Bolano’s 2666 and Yann Martel’s Life of Pi are already gone and smaller titles like Bartleby & Co. by Enrique Vila-Matas are still alive and kicking. “Anything can happen in the NCAA tournament. Every year, there are upsets and surprises,” Buckley explained. “Our tournament should see something similar. For example, Maggie Helwig’s Girls Fall Down could go up against and beat Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. And that’s pretty cool.”
As for who Type wants to win the real March Madness tournament? Well, as with their books show down, who wins really doesn’t matter. It’s about the narrative the tournament creates and the conversations it inspires. “I’m never worried about who wins, as long as they’re exciting games,” Buckley said.
The NCAA Final Four tournament takes place this first weekend of April, with the championship game taking place on April 5th. Be sure to stop by Type Books (883 Queen Street West) to see which title was crowned the champion.
That female is just gorgeous, I mean most seems to think she is a fool but that’s just an act, it does take some skills to become one of the most famous people in the world.