Introducting Literary March Madness 2010!

All last weekend, Robyn and I watched NCAA basketball on TV; or, at least, I watched, while Robyn occupied herself with far more productive manners, such as reading and drinking tea and doing her Library Science homework. By Sunday, however, I think I succeeded in getting her sucked in just a little bit to the Madness of March. Maybe not the basketball part of it, per se, but she at least got into the "bracketology" aspect; she has been participating herself both in Jezebel's "Cake vs. Pie: March Madness" and Austenaicous.com's "Jane Austen March Madness."

But then came Monday, and both my tournament champion (Kansas) and Robyn's tournament champion (Elinor Dashwood) had been bumped. So we decided that we can make our own damn spreadsheets, thank you very much, and went on to create our own 64-member tournament: Literary March Madness.

The process was simple; we went through our house and found 64 different authors that at least one of us has read and enjoyed, although are a few in the list that are technically library books recently returned. We then divided them into four regions and seeded the regions 1-16. Now we're going to post them here, and invite you and your friends to vote and tell us who our Literary Champion will be.

Some notes and suggestions about you might want to vote. There are a lot of classic authors in the bracket, but not everyone is. We tried to pick writers from a relatively large range; we have authors from different countries, languages, ages, genres, etc. So I don't think it's necessary for you to vote for whom you think the "best" writer is - although that should be something taken into account - or even your personal favorite. But also take into account their personal strengths and weaknesses, how historically important they are, how fond your memories of their stories are, how adroit or indelicate their prose styles are, and whether or not it is raining outside. And remember, upsets are welcome! So, please vote, via blog or Facebook or e-mail, and please leave comments and suggestions for improvement for next year!