Miss Peach

I've gone and gotten into March Madness again this year. I do it every year. I don't pay a lick of attention and then I'm all, hey, it's March Madness! And then my office pool sheet—which is a big to-do here—rolls around, and I have to enter and don't know who's good or bad, so I email my friend Zach who is a sports freak, and he sends me his bracket, and I copy some of it and alter a lot based on my funky, illogical, borderline ridiculous allegiances. I refused to let Duke go all the way because I hate Christian Laettner, and yes, I’m aware he played for them a long time ago. And I didn’t even let UConn get past the first round because a girl I HATED from high school went there. It’s this type of reasoning (or lack thereof) that drives my father insane. While I was home, my dad and I watched the UCLA-Memphis game—in a bar populated by solely UCLA grads, you would think, from all the screaming—and the conversation went like this:

Dad: So how far did you have BC going?
Me: Out after the first round.
Dad: To the Pacific Tigers? I mean, it went to double-overtime, but still. I wouldn’t have made that call.
Me: Bastards at BC didn’t even waitlist me.

Anyway, back to the bracket: I know its borderline cheating but trust me, I never come anywhere near winning. Until this year. Because it has been a wild ride, because no one could have called this, I am in third place. Don’t worry, I won’t win because I picked Villanova to go all the way, and they aren’t in it anymore. But it’s been such an exciting tournament (Double overtimes! One-point spreads!) that I’m already anticipating the sadness I’ll feel when it’s all over.

So, in its place, I thought I’d draw attention to another bracket. It’s decidedly more refined, but it’s really just as fun. And most of the reviews are hilarious while all are insightful at the very least. And it is just so beautifully arbitrary. And it in the first round knocked out two books that I am so pleased are gone it’s just, well, wrong.

First: On Beauty by Zadie Smith. I am going to just come right out and say it. I. Cannot. Stand. Zadie. Smith. I don’t know why. I have only ever read one of her books, but I hated every second of White Teeth with a burning, fiery passion. I read it while abroad and would sit on the Metro, read a paragraph, roll my eyes, and repeat. Thankfully, I was in France, where this type of behavior is not only tolerated but encouraged. But good god, I finally put the book down after coming to the realization that I had read three-quarters of it and I didn’t give a rat’s ass what happened to any of the characters. It was the, pardon the pun, white hot book of the moment, with its trendy different colored covers, which annoyed me too. (Don’t ask about Everything is Illuminated. It’s a more vitriolic rant than this one.) This could be a post on its own, so I’m just going to stop there.

Second: The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. I didn’t read this. I didn’t even read the flap copy of this book. But I found it so annoying that one publisher would spend practically their entire marketing budget on one book, touting it as the next Da Vinci Code, that I hated it before it even went on sale. I know. It’s short sighted of me. But there are plenty of books I have to read, and I think I’ll be skipping this one.

But anyway, back to the Tournament of Books. Download a bracket and make your picks! My money is on Saturday by Ian McEwan or Never Let Me Go by Ishiguro. And, yes, I did look at who won the first round. But did you really think I was going to enter into a tournament involving brackets and not cheat a little bit?