The Mookse and the Gripes discussion

Okay everyone, I've set up the brackets! It's not yet time to start arguing about your choices, but feel free to react to the match-ups in this general discussion thread. I'm also very happy to hear predictions here, if you're so inclined. This is also the place to discuss how terrible the seeding was!


General Process

Round 1 includes 32 head-to-head match-ups. We will begin voting on Round 1 this weekend (Saturday afternoon for folks west of London, midnight for those in London, and Sunday morning for those east of London). Every day I will open four discussion threads with polls prepared for each match-up. There you will be able to vote and conduct "spirited and convivial discussions." The poll will be open for four days. Once Round 1 is done, the 32 winners will move on to Round 2 after a day or two of rest, and so on until we have our winner.


General Rules

-Every member of the forum is invited to participate as much as possible. If you have friends who love this kind of thing, invite them to join in.

-While the voting is open you can change your vote as often as you'd like should anything persuade you to do so.

-You can vote based on whatever criteria you desire. Meaning, you do not have to have read the books in competition to vote in that competition.

-Feel free to vote against a book rather than for a book, and tell us why (see next point).

-Please contribute to the discussion as much as possible, even if it means admitting that you haven't read the books yet and why you find yourself drawn to or repulsed by either. As stated at the outset, the best part of this will be the discussion that occurs when we pit an apple and an orange together and try to figure out which is the winner.

-The discussion should be respectful, but bring a sense of humor and don't be afraid to use it.

Naturally, your uninformed opinion swaying the vote will frustrate someone who has read both books and, therefore, knows your vote is incorrect and should be invalid. It'll drive that person mad knowing he or she cannot do anything about this injustice, this concession to idiocy. But hopefully that person can try to persuade you kindly and, if it comes to it, concede magnanimously, keeping in mind this soothing mantra: "I still love the books I love and will for all time. Mookse Madness 2017 will soon be a thing of the past, drifting into obscurity."

The Full Bracket

As a reminder, I set up these match-ups, but I didn't select my personal favorites as top seeds nor did I do anything to gerrymander which books were against each other. Unless the result was simply wrong, I used Goodreads rating and Goodreads readers statistics for guidance and to achieve the illusion of objectivity.

Feel free to print these out, distribute them to friends and family and office mates, and see who predicts most winners. I'm sure your friends will find this just as invigorating as any sports competition!

You can view and copy the Google doc where I'll be keeping track of this here.

You can download a PDF version by clicking here.

You can download an Excel file here.


Round 1

For those who want to see the Round 1 match-ups here (though the brackets make future match-ups more clear), here you go:

1800s
1 Brothers Karamazov
16 Tristana

8 Madame Bovary
9 Villette

5 Bleak House
12 The Red and the Black

4 Anna Karenina
13 Cranford

6 Middlemarch
11 Heart of Darkness

3 Moby-Dick
14 Daisy Miller

7 Huckleberry Finn
10 La Regenta

2 Pride and Prejudice
15 Bras Cubas


1990-now
1 2666
16 Out Stealing Horses

8 Gilead
9 Wolf Hall

5 A Heart So White
12 The Blue Flower

4 The Rings of Saturn
13 The Line of Beauty

6 Wizard of the Crow
11 My Brilliant Friend

3 American Pastoral
14 The Luminaries

7 Possession
10 Disgrace

2 Mason & Dixon
15 The End of Days


1900-1949
1 The Master and Margarita
16 Loving

8 A Handful of Dust
9 Nausea

5 Nineteen Eighty-Four
12 Good Morning, Midnight

4 The Age of Innocence
13 The Home and the World

6 The Trial
11 Death in Venice

3 To the Lighthouse
14 Kokoro

7 A Portrait of the Artist
10 My Antonia

2 The Great Gatsby
15 A Wreath of Roses


1950-1989
1 One Hundred Years of Solitude
16 Correction

8 The Tin Drum
9 Things Fall Apart

5 Beloved
12 Satantango

4 To Kill a Mockingbird
13 Remains of the Day

6 The Handmaid's Tale
11 The Golden Notebook

3 Lolita
14 So Long, See You Tomorrow

7 If on a winters night a traveler
10 Palace Walk

2 Midnight's Children
15 The Hour of the Star

Glad to see these up!

I'd thought this was going to be like the Tournament of Books whereby various people volunteered to write posts comparing the two books, and below each of these (where there was a taker for the main post; I didn't think there would be for every one) there would be additional debate from others. I was quite looking forward to getting my two or four books, hopefully reading something interesting I'd been meaning to get round to in the process, and then posting something in early March before the MBI longlist announcement.

Can we get more exact time[s] so people know what's meant? e.g. does the above mean midnight London time for everyone everywhere, or a geographically staggered start?

I refer to this https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/ a lot when I am in online conversations with people in different time zones.

I will post a full schedule, but the voting opens for everyone everywhere at the same time. So the first four will open Saturday afternoon in the US, Saturday night/Sunday morning midnight for those on London time. They will all close exactly four days later.

Anto and others interested, I've posted the full calendar over in the Links to Polls thread here.

Hopefully this lets people know what matches are coming up, starting with the 1s v. 16s in less than 48 hours!

There'll be plenty going on for rounds 1 and 2, but then it slows down a bit and we can focus in on the books racing to the final.

In the real March Madness, no 16 seed has ever beaten a 1 seed. In fact, few of those matches have even been decided by single digits. The closest of those games were nearly 30 years ago.

These first round upset stats mean nothing to our tournament here, but just for fun:

-Eight 15 seeds have beaten 2 seeds
-Twenty-one 14 seeds have beaten 3 seeds
-Twenty-six 13 seeds have beaten 4 seeds
-Forty-six 12 seeds have beaten 5 seeds
-Forty-six 11 seeds have beaten 6 seeds

I'm excited to see how close our first round match-ups are, and what the inevitable upsets will be!

I hope nobody is taking bets. Insider dealing might cause a few problems...

Bit apropos of nothing, but had not heard a draw called brackets before, and discovered in part its because (something else I only learned today) in punctuation use of the term "bracket" unqualified tends to mean [ one side of the Atlantic and (.

As to the draw, think we have achieved a good translatlantic compromise between a seeded and unseeded one. Correlation between the merits of the books and the seeding looks pretty loose to me: there are some Champions League contenders meeting in round 1 (Bernhard vs Garcia Marquez would be a worthy final) and some strictly non-league match ups as well.

Paul wrote: "Correlation between the merits of the books and the seeding looks pretty loose to me."

Yep. I did my best to use collective "merit" (where it shows up on other lists, GR readers, GR ratings) rather than my own evaluations. It'll be fun to see how many of our friends here agree with which are out of place and which are just right or too high! Correction has a high GR rating but a low GR readership, which is why it's up against the behemoth in round one. There's always that team that has done incredibly well and has its loyal fans but that doesn't get the respect it deserves because few people have paid attention.

Painful round 1 match-ups for me:

-Madame Bovary v. Villette (and how are these only 8 and 9?!)
-Moby-Dick v. Daisy Miller
-A Heart So White v. The Blue Flower
-Possession v. Disgrace (not a lot of love for Disgrace in the general public)
-A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man v. My Antonia
-Lolita v. So Long, See You Tomorrow

Some of the books I'd love to see go a ways will necessarily leave in Round 1 and I'll be part of the reason since I'll have to vote against a few of them.

There are surprisingly few match ups I have doubts about and most of those are the ones I have read neither of...

American Pastoral vs The Luminaries is pretty tricky - although for the opposite reason to the examples above!

American Pastoral vs. The Luminaries is a slam dunk for me. But Gilead vs. Wolf Hall will be tough to call.

I would have found that one harder if the Robinson book had been Home. I found Gilead hard work but i understand why people like it...

Hugh wrote: "I would have found that one harder if the Robinson book had been Home. I found Gilead hard work but i understand why people like it..."

Yes, Hugh, I far prefer Home to Gilead.

Just a bit over four hours until the first match-ups go live!

And Lincoln have just made it to the quarter finals of the FA Cup - first non league team for 100 years - suggesting upsets are afoot.

Don't think I will stay up till midnight though to see in the first match ups!

They'll be there when you're ready in the morning!

Here are the links to the first four matches, which open in a little less than an hour.

That thread, which I'll keep locked, will always have the links to the new polls when they open. I will not post a link to that thread here anymore unless someone is lost.

The next four polls will open tomorrow at the same time. All polls stay open for four days, so there will be several up at once. Hopefully we can keep track! If you have any troubles, let me know. Also, you can just go to the group's polls page and you'll see all of them, including all that have closed, all that are open, and all that I've made that will open in the next few days.

Paul wrote: "Don't think I will stay up till midnight though to see in the..."

Um - that resolution didn't last. March Madness indeed.

I've written my script for American Pastoral already so counting the moments till midnight tomorrow.

Yeah, you have been up way past my own bedtime! I'm anxious for your attack on Roth—I hope I can parry!

Trevor, interested to notice that you used the abbreviation "v." for versus in the list linked above; I'd always been under the impression that "vs." (like the Pearl Jam album) was the US usage, and "v." British, Aussie etc. Perhaps it is not so clear-cut?

In legal case citation I think it is v. in the US and v (no period) in the UK and vs. in neither place.

Yeah, the vs. is something we do here, often in sporting events. As Paul says, though, the way we do it in the legal field is with a simple v.

A quick reminder to folks who have just found the contest, the votes stay open for four days, but I open new ones every day. So in about eight hours the next four matches will be up!

Thanks to everyone for making this fun so far!

Trevor, this is great fun, much more than I had anticipated! Thanks for organizing it. This might even revive my interest in the NCAA tournament.

Dan wrote: "Trevor, this is great fun, much more than I had anticipated!"
Seconded - the discussions so far have been surprisingly interesting.

I'm glad others are enjoying it as much as I am!

Anto said earlier she wished we had more time so we could read some of these. That won't happen this year, but if we like this we should do another next year. Not the same contest between books, but we can figure out something else. If we did, for example, short stories, we could list them quite early and everyone would have a chance to read what they wanted, though, like here, that wouldn't be a requirement for participation.

I am certainly planning to read more of these books, but that is a long term project that may take several years. The short story version sounds like an interesting idea, but I suspect the number of participants would be smaller...

It probably would be smaller. It's probably premature, with this tournament just starting, but if any of you have ideas for future rounds of Mookse Madness, fee free to share.

Short stories are a bit of a niche interest I think.
When this competition reaches the last eight I think this will be a fascinating selection for a subsequent revisit. Some outsiders may reach that stage, some books won't have been widely read, and there will certainly be books that we read so many years before that we have either forgotten, or where we were different people when we first read them.
This might then be a thread specifically designed for books that we have previously read.

I've got no less than seven of these around at the moment which I haven't read (had coincidentally borrowed two a week or so before you announced the first draft of the list) and would love to have read them first - several others I wouldn't mind getting round to but less of a priority.

Jonathan wrote: "Short stories are a bit of a niche interest I think."

I'm part of that niche, and I would welcome opportunities for discussion of short stories here. Many excellent volumes published in the past few years, both by well established authors (Ali Smith, Tessa Hadley, A. L. Kennedy) and by relative newcomers. I would also welcome any opportunity to revisit collections published in the later decades of the 1900s. Several years ago, I heard some talk about the "death of the short story," but I I certainly never noticed this: fake news!

I do see that many here are readers of the Novel, but I would also love the chance to discuss short stories this way. It is a niche, but one easy to fall into! I will put up a thread for discussing future possibilities in a while, and I'm excited to hear things I would never think of!

I'm right on board re: short stories. I think it'd be as good as this, potentially.

As a short story afficionado, I'd enjoy that competition. And if I'm allowed one nomination, it is Donald Barthleme's, "Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby".

I will put it on my list!

Ctb wrote: "As a short story afficionado, I'd enjoy that competition. And if I'm allowed one nomination, it is Donald Barthleme's, "Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby.""

Such power! Thanks for the recommendation, Ctb. I just tracked it down and placed my order.

Barthelme is great and that story is one of his best. Trevor: I think you're onto something with this...in fact I think I'd now be disappointed if it didn't happen! It'll be grand!

In the face of such swift and vehement advocacy of the short story I feel obliged to back off and await enlightenment from the short story devotees on this board.
On further research I note that the 2013 Nobel Prize for Literature when awarded to Alice Munro, was done so with the explicit citation and explanation that she is the
master of the contemporary short story

I've read my Orwell, and DH Lawrence short story selections, and of more contemporary fare, William Boyd, and even David Foster Wallace (the latter being magazine and newspaper articles and opinion pieces)
Perhaps my focus is wrong in that I find comparisons of the long and short output from the same author have always seemed to favour the longer works.

I look forward to being properly introduced to the genre in due course!

Jonathan wrote: "In the face of such swift and vehement advocacy of the short story I feel obliged to back off and await enlightenment from the short story devotees on this board.
On further research I note that th..."

I think it would be great to do a short story round, especially considering how much would be available and readable online. My mind is racing with stories I would love to see compared with one another like this.

I quite like the idea of doing short stories, but I would struggle to find a single story to represent some of my favourite short-form writers and I do struggle to remember many of them, so I do have some sympathy for Jonathan's perspective...

It would need to be limited to stories available to read on websites, wouldn't it?
Couldn't really nominate favourites that are only in books. e.g. one of mine, 'The Squirrel' by Tove Jansson. Have always sayid "I don't like short stories but..." there are really quite a few exceptions.

Antonomasia wrote: "It would need to be limited to stories available to read on websites, wouldn't it?
Couldn't really nominate favourites that are only in books. e.g. one of mine, 'The Squirrel' by Tove Jansson. Hav..."

I didn't mean to imply web only, just that there are a lot of magazines that do post archives of stories that they've published--The Atlantic does, and I usually seem to find The New Yorker stories without too much trouble. Also older stories that are out of copyright are often published in full online so it would be easy to include some links.

Hugh wrote: "I quite like the idea of doing short stories, but I would struggle to find a single story to represent some of my favourite short-form writers and I do struggle to remember many of them, so I do ha..."

Hugh, it's funny, it seems like I can also think of just one story that rises to the top for me for each short story writer I can think of. But probably everyone would have a different favorite.

I've set up a new thread for folks to make suggestions and talk about our next Mookse Madness. Go there and go nuts!

If the intention of the tournament was to encourage people to read more of these books, it has officially worked. I have read & finished finished The Hour of the Star.
(I wanted to read A Handful of Dust soon anyway; this only brought it forward, so it doesn't quite count, and am nowhere near finished.)

Although against that, I've been too busy bribing people to vote and arguing with my clone to read any books at all!

Good to hear, Anto! And thanks for putting up the good fight, Paul!

Though the only one I've pulled out and started is Correction, if that's all I ever do I think it will all have been worth it! I've had Correction for years (even had the receipt in the book, purchased at Borders in 2010), so I definitely needed this boost!

I have really enjoyed the way people have gone about this. Interesting conversations, even from people who haven't read the books at issue.

Trevor wrote: " (even had the receipt in the book, purchased at Borders in 2010)"

:D I miss Borders and browsing their unrivalled selection (and maybe even the remarkably clueless staff).

Are people finding the polls okay? The Goodreads setup for polls is frustrating, I think. They don't really show up anywhere clearly, and new comments don't show up as new. I'm making my way through it, though, and wanted to ensure the rest of you were finding your way around okay.