#UWBookMadness!

For the 4th year in a row, the UW-Madison Libraries are hosting a 64 book bracket to mimic the NCAA basketball tournament. Voting for favorites titles begins on March 17 and twice a week – coinciding with the rounds of the basketball tournament – winning titles will advance to the next round, until the final title is crowned the 2016 Champion! Find all of the information, including this year’s bracket and descriptions of all of the participating books, at https://www.library.wisc.edu/uwbookmadness/

To make it more interesting, consider submitting a bracket of your selections and see how your choices fare as the tournament progresses. The contestant(s) whose bracket most closely mirrors the voting results will receive an iTunes gift card. Brackets are available online or at participating libraries. At College Library, the display and extra brackets can be found in the “living room” area of 1st Floor Center. Completed brackets must be submitted by midnight on Tuesday, March 15.

Library staff selected books in the following eight categories to compete in this year’s #UWBookMadness:

• Mean Streets vs Park Avenue – books that look at the grittier side of life compete against titles concerned with upper-crust lives.
• Short Stories vs Doorstops – eight titles of renown short story collections go up against weightier tomes, books with over 1,000 pages that, while tough to put down, are also tough to carry around.
• Modern Times vs Timeless Issues – topical issues in an election year face off against book that are still relevant, even though they were written from 50 – 400 years ago.
• Apple for Teacher vs School Daze – titles about teachers and the teaching profession go head to head with titles from the student perspective.