Tournament of Books - Chicago

The Tournament of Books is an annual "March Madness" battle royale among "the year's best novels," pairing two books each round in a month-long elimination tournament. 

Rather than rush to read all the books before March, however, we'll be reading two books per month as a bookclub, meeting the first Sunday of the month in the West Loop, with each month following one of the first round brackets of the official tournament and discussing as a group which book we enjoy better; forming our own brackets as well as a collective group bracket.

Will your bracket match the official one?

Book readings for the year:

January 2026: If You Love It, Let It Kill You by Hannah Pittard and The Mind Reels by Fredrik deBoer 

February 2026: We Love You, Bunny by Mona Awad and TBD

We will update the schedule of readings once the official brackets are announced, but here are the remaining books that are on the 2026 shortlist:

1.) Blob by Maggie Su

2.) The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones

3.) The Burning Heart of the World by Nancy Kricorian

4.) The Catch by Yrsa Daley-Ward

5.) The Director by Daniel Kehlmann, translated by Ross Benjamin

6.) Endling by Maria Reva

7.) Flesh by David Szalay

8.) Katabasis by R. F. Kuang

9.) Metallic Realms by Lincoln Michel

10.) The Passenger Seat by Vijay Khurana

11.) The Ten Year Affair by Erin Somers

12.) Too Soon by Betty Shamieh

13.) The Unveiling by Quan Barry

14.) What We Can Know by Ian McEwan

15.) The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy