Pre-Bowl rankings

It's time for my yearly top-5 designation for the year. And, just like college football's idiotic BCS system, I have no problem jumping to conclusions and ranking my books early. Unlike the BCS, I reserve the right to update the list. That, and my number 1 book for the year WILL be a conference champion.

The breakdown of divisions ($ denotes a division eligible for the title, # denotes a conference winner, WTF? denotes the worst book of the year, and * denotes a top-5 preliminary finisher).

BEHAVIOR SCIENCE CONFERENCE $
- Moonwalking with Einstein, by Josh Foer (Kindle) #*
- Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, by Roy Baumeister and John Tierney (Kindle).
- The Optimism Bias: A Tour of the Irrationally Positive Brain, by Tali Sharot (Kindle)
- Out of Character by David DeSteno and Piercarlo Valdesolo (Kindle)

Season wrap: Usually a bigger group, but the quality is always there (unlike the Big East). Never ceases to provide some of the best reads of any year for me. Moonwalking is the clear winner (and it WORKS!!!), but Willpower made a late push. I should have read more of these this year. Next year, Daniel Kahneman will likely rule this one.

SCIENCE FICTION / FANTASY CONFERENCE
- The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien (Kindle) #
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, by J.K. Rowling (out loud to Jacob)
- The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin
- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, by J.K. Rowling (out loud to Jacob)
- Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone, by J.K. Rowling (out loud to Jacob)

Season Wrap: I read more science fiction / fantasy this year than usual. Too bad the winner of this division will probably never be eligible for any championship I may award. Although, Stranger in a Strange Land looms before the end of the year... we'll see. Like Boise State and Utah (pre-Pac 12 Utah), there may be some sort of lawsuit to be treated equally with the other divisions (just not eligible, sorry). I almost included Klosterman's book as a sci-fi, but it was just too "possible." I liked the Hobbit, and I look forward to reading it to Jacob out loud, but The Visible Man is more up my alley.

QUIRKY CONTEMPORARY SNARK CONFERENCE $
- Them, by Jon Ronson (Kindle) #
- The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson (Kindle)
- Men Who Stare at Goats, by Jon Ronson (Kindle)
- The Advance Genius Theory, by Jason Hartley (Kindle)
- The Unlikely Disciple, by Kevin Roose (Kindle)

Season Wrap: I like snarky contemporary essayists/satirists/witty writers. Klosterman is usually in this conference, but he went all sci-fi on me. Still, Jon Ronson is quickly making this his own Conference. Ronson is great at letting people talk. He has a way of making conspiracy nut-jobs feel at ease and "among friends." Then, he asks logical questions and you literally watch through the book as the subjects hang themselves with all the rope. Throw his very British wit in with Deep-South crazy and you have a brilliant dish that keeps on giving. Advance Genius Theory was applicable and Disciple was good, too, but Ronson wins.

EPICS CONFERENCE $$
- War & Peace, by Leo Tolstoy (Kindle) #*
- Suite Francaise, by Irene Nemirovsky *

Season Wrap: No more needs to be said about W&P. Suite Francaise, however, requires more. That book was awesome. I really, really liked it. Had it been finished, I am sure it would have become an all-time epic. As it stands, it is the start of an epic never finished and still a great book as it stands. Nemirovsky's story is a tragedy, but this book was amazing.

NOVELS CONFERENCE $
- Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole (Kindle) #*
- Downtown Owl, by Chuck Klosterman (Kindle) *
- The Visible Man, by Chuck Klosterman (Kindle)
- A Visit From the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan (Kindle)
- Motherless Brooklyn, by Jonathan Lethem
- Tinkers, by Paul Harding
- I Served the King of England, by Bohumil Hrabel

Season Wrap: A virtual tie for the Conference title, but Ignatius J. Reilly's fake injury down the stretch (followed by his on-field threat of a lawsuit) stopped Klosterman enough that the FG was just barely too long and fell short. If only team Owl could have hit its earlier FGs... Wait, maybe they can still play for the national title! One-plus-one anyone? (No one is beating Tolstoy this year, though). I enjoyed all of these books, but the top three were clear.

The Visible Man was based on a character with a suit that rendered him transparent (do NOT call it invisibility). As usual, Klosterman's book focused more on human nature. This one was like Arkansas - third in the Conference, but top notch overall.

COMEDY CONFERENCE
- In Fifty Years We'll All be Chicks, by Adam Carrolla (Kindle) #
- Bossypants, by Tina Fey (Kindle)
- When you are Engulfed in Flames, by David Sedaris

Season Wrap: All fun, but Carrolla made me laugh to tears with his Village People take while I was on an airplane. You just can't explain to someone why you are laughing so hard when the joke was this: "And even though they all had bushy mustaches and were singing about cruising YMCAs and shipping out with the navy, none of us had a clue they were gay. One of the guys was just dressed as a leather homo. He didn't even have an occupation other than (censored)... and we were still like, 'Those guys must pull down a ton of chicks.'"

Seriously, you had to be there. Time and place. I am NOT a pig! How dare you?!

GOSSIP CONFERENCE
- Endgame: Bobby Fischer's Remarkable Rise and Fall, by Frank Brady (Kindle) #
- The War for Late Night, by Bill Carter (Kindle)
- ESPN: These guys have all the fun, by Tom Shales and James Miller (Kindle)

Season Wrap: Endgame wins in a walk. The others were fun, but nothing beats the epic nuttiness of Bobby Fischer. Much like the MAC or Conf-USA, no one cares.

SAY WHAT? CONFERENCE
- A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never do Again, by David Foster Wallace (Kindle) #
- Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, by David Foster Wallace (Kindle)
- Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess, by Bobby Fischer
- Scorecasting, by L. Jon Wertheim and Tobias Moskowitz (Kindle)
- The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, by Elizabeth Tova Bailey (Kindle)
- The Age of American Unreason, by Susan Jacoby (Kindle) WTF? SERIOUSLY, WTF?

Season Wrap: Go away Susan Jacoby. Just go away. I hated that book with a passion. Susan, you are making my team (political team) look bad! You are the stereotype that other team uses to make fun of us. You suck and your book was terrible. I agree with her and she pissed me off. How is that possible? I'll tell you. Pretension. Lots of it. David Foster Wallace is great but depressing. It's probably best to just move on.

NONFICTION CONFERENCE $
- Homicide, a Year on the Killing Streets, David Simon (Kindle) #
- The Corner, by David Simon
- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot (Kindle)
- In the Garden of the Beasts, by Erik Larson (Kindle)
- Love is a Mix Tape, by Rob Sheffield (Kindle)

Season Wrap: Loved Homicide. Love The Wire. The Corner was equally as good, so this was a hard call. Ultimately, The Corner was more slightly more meaningful, but Homicide was a lot more enjoyable. It's a virtual coin toss.

TOP FIVE (pending bowl season)
5. Suite Francaise, by Irene Nemirovsky %
4. Moonwalking with Einstein, by Josh Foer (Kindle)
3. Downtown Owl, by Chuck Klosterman (Kindle) %
2. Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole (Kindle)
1. War & Peace, by Leo Tolstoy (Kindle)

% That's right, two books that did not win a conference were in the mix.

Honorable mention: The Visible Man, by Chuck Klosterman; Them, by Jon Ronson; Homicide, by David Simon. These books were really, really hard to leave out.

TOLSTOY ON FILM