Tournament of Books

vs. 

The Tournament of Books is a March Madness-like event for last year's fiction - they even have bracket!  This year it came down to a match up between Jonathan Franzen's Freedom and Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad.  Goon Squad won.


Having read and enjoyed both, I was glad they were both finalists.  In the end I would also pick Goon.  Judge Andrew Womack summed up his vote nicely and touched on how music figured prominently into both novels:
"How fortunate to find two books in the championship so comparable—both spanning decades (or beyond) and heavily centered on music. For me, this decision comes down to pacing, and Franzen is the Pink Floyd to Egan’s Sex Pistols; by the end of Freedom I couldn’t take another meandering guitar solo, while I was dazzled by how much Goon Squad packed into such a compact space."  Via TOB.