Sites We Like: Out of Print Clothing’s Book Madness
Just gonna say this right now: I’m not a sports person. Football? Snore. Baseball? Snooze. And don’t even get me started on curling. I mean, what IS that?
I’m being facetious, of course. Sports are a healthy expression of competition and athleticism and I can appreciate why people enjoy them (except for *curling, I mean COME ON). But the one thing that I cannot ever seem to wrap my head around are the March Madness brackets – the frenetic lines, the tiny boxes, the whirlwind unknown names and unknown teams, the sheer PRESSURE of it all. Some people I know go insane for these things, and I just never got it.
Until now.
For the past four years, the wonderful Out of Print Clothing site has been running a bracket for book lovers called BOOK MADNESS, and I wish I had discovered it sooner. Maybe I could have been converted into a sports person after all. (Probably not.)
This year’s theme is Hero vs. Villain. You get to choose from 64 famous beloved (and not so beloved) literary characters and put them head-to-head in a fight to the death (or, at the very least, a fight to the “most popular”). Here’s some info from Out of Print:
“In our fourth year, we are mixing it up by letting you vote for your favorite heroes and villains from literature. Just like college basketball’s March Madness, we give you the opportunity to fill out your own bracket and compete against fellow bookworms. Submit your bracket for a chance to win a $500 Out of Print gift card and other legendary prizes!”
Check out the site for directions on how to enter, and then go to town choosing your bracket, which is fun and easy to fill out. Here are some examples of possible pairings (I’m sure you can tell which is hero and which is villain): Katniss vs. President Snow, Meg, Murray vs. IT, Holmes vs. Moriarty. Of course, you can choose to switch them up however you’d like, like: Atticus vs. Iago, as someone did on the comments page. Interestingly, no matter how I finagled it, it all came down to Harry vs. Voldemort for me. WHO WILL WIN IN THE END?
The deadline to fill out a bracket out is this Sunday, March 23rd, so hurry! (Trust me, a gift card for Out of Print would be a GREAT prize – I have several of their t-shirts and I love them. Plus, they do good things).
GO BOOKSPORTS!
*(Please don’t be mad, curlers and curling fans, I’m just kidding. I actually have great respect for the skills necessary for this sport. Just look at all the RULES!)
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