Best of the Best: May Madness

Posted May 1, 2015 by Brin in Discussion Posts / 0 Comments

may madness

Andi @ Andi’s ABCS posted the Best of the Best challenge back in March where she did her own version of the March Madness bracket using her top 5 star reads.

Best of the Best: May Madness

This looks like so much fun so when Andi recently re-posted her bracket and set an open challenge for bloggers to take part, I jumped right in! I first saw this on another blog I follow Bookmark Lit and traced it back to Andi’s blog. I would suggest checking out both of their posts – some interesting results to be found!

Getting Started

The goal is to pick 32 books that you have deemed to be 5 star reads and then pair them up. Each will go up against the other in an elimination round until there is only one winner.

I selected 32 of my 5 star reads (young adult books only) and then used a random number generator to decide how to pair each match up. I ended up with some authors competing against themselves but that couldn’t be helped due to the random selections and I didn’t want to mess around with it and maybe inadvertently skew it towards books I knew I would want to go through.

As for books that were part of a series, I didn’t want any one series to dominate the list so I picked my favourite book from each (which was really tough when it came to The Raven Cycle series by Maggie Stiefvater – ideally I would have had them all).

The Matches

bracket 9

The Results

It really hurt to put some books up against each other. Suicide Watch and Blue Lily, Lily Blue was a really tough choice. I love both of them so much. In the end, those Raven Boys charmed me into winning the round – curse that Richard Campbell Gansey III). 😉 I was also really hard-pressed to pick between This is Not a Test and Jellicoe Road. They are both so different yet equally awesome.

The random generator was good in one way because it forced me to think really hard between sometimes completely different genres of books but it was also annoying because I lost a lot of my favourites in the first round purely because of how they were matched up.

I wasn’t surprised at all that it came down to Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe and Wanderlove in the end – they are two of my favourite young adult reads.

Winning-GIF
Source

I have included the results of each round below just in case the image above is not clear (I tried to get it as big as I could but it ended up a little fuzzy).

Round 1 (left)

Blue Lily, Lily Blue vs Suicide Watch | Winner = Blue Lily, Lily Blue

Speechless vs The Scorpio Races | Winner = The Scorpio Races

Unbreakable vs If I Die | Winner = If I Die

Saving Francesca vs Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda | Winner = Saving Francesca

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe vs The Sea of Tranquility | Winner = Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

Anna and the French Kiss vs Scarlet | Winner = Scarlet

Teeth vs Secret | Winner = Teeth

How to Repair a Mechanical Heart vs Fire with Fire | Winner = How to Repair a Mechanical Heart

Round 1 (right)

Gathering Darkness vs Hallowed | Winner = Gathering Darkness

Angelfall vs Faking Normal | Winner = Faking Normal

Wanderlove vs The Lost Girl | Winner = Wanderlove

The Hunger Games vs Paper Valentine | Winner = The Hunger Games

Second Chance Summer vs The Space Between | Winner = Second Chance Summer

Froi of the Exiles vs Graffiti Moon | Winner = Froi of the Exiles

Shadow Kiss vs Sweethearts | Winner = Shadow Kiss

This is Not a Test vs Jellicoe Road | Winner = Jellicoe Road

Round 2 (left)

 Blue Lily, Lily Blue vs The Scorpio Races | Winner = Blue Lily, Lily Blue

If I Die vs Saving Francesca | Winner = Saving Francesca

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe vs Scarlet | Winner = Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

Teeth vs How to Repair a Mechanical Heart | Winner = Teeth

Round 2 (right)

Gathering Darkness vs Faking Normal | Winner = Gathering Darkness

Wanderlove vs The Hunger Games | Winner = Wanderlove

Second Chance Summer vs Froi of the Exiles | Winner = Froi of the Exiles

Shadow Kiss vs Jellicoe Road | Winner = Jellicoe Road

Round 3 (left)

Blue Lily, Lily Blue vs Saving Francesca | Winner = Blue Lily, Lily Blue

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe vs Teeth | Winner = Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

Round 3 (right)

Gathering Darkness vs Wanderlove | Winner = Wanderlove

Froi of the Exiles vs Jellicoe Road | Winner = Jellicoe Road

Round 4 (left)

Blue Lily, Lily Blue vs Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe | Winner = Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

Round 4 (right)

Wanderlove vs Jellicoe Road | Winner = Wanderlove

Round 5 – Final Match

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe vs Wanderlove | Winner = Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

ARI

Brin

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