Fightin’ Words
Posted by: Kaite Stover
Recently the Literary Death Match folks came to Kansas City for a cage match between local authors, Clancy Martin, Cote Smith, Gina Kaufmann, and David Wayne Reed. The wordtestants faced off in two rounds. In the first round two pairs of writer go up against each other in a judged read-off of short stories evaluated on literary merit, performance, and “intangibles”. In the second round the winners drop the adjectives for a decidedly non-literary round of biblio-shenanigans.
Gina Kaufmann was the last one standing with only a smoking pen in her hand. I’m besotted by this idea and I think I’m going to play around with it for one of my December book groups. Rather than have everyone vote for their favorite title from the past year’s book group selections, we’ll do a match up of the titles and have them “advance” rounds until we have a winner. Books will be judged on literary merit, discussable issues, and covers.
The hope is to get everyone talking about these books again and recalling what was most memorable about their reading. I’ll post the results in December after our meeting, but for those who are interested, here’s the list of contenders in case anyone wants to place a bet.
- Mystic River by Dennis Lehane
- The Farther Shore by Matthew Eck
- Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O’Nan
- Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
- Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction by David Sheff
- Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver
- Loving Frank by Nancy Horan
- Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife by Francine Prose
- Let The Great World Spin by Colum McCann
- The Appointment by Herta Muller
- The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Murial Barbery
November 1st, 2010 at 9:03 am
I vote Housekeeping for best cover!