The Tournament of Novels 2011 – Round 2

And then there were 32.

After a brutal round of upsets, blowouts, and close calls we have narrowed our list of 64 in half.

Here’s some highlights from Round 1 :

The Upsets: It was Bloomsday to Doomsday for  Ulysses . The Irish giant, often called the Greatest Novel of All Time, was felled by the American classic Death Comes for the Archbishop . And though Isaac Asimov’s Foundation was once voted the Greatest Sci-Fi Novel of all Time, it was trounced by Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes .

The Blowouts: Pride and Prejudice killed To Kill a Mockingbird ; A Canticle for Leibowitz didn’t have a prayer against 1984 ; Dune got swept away by The Count of Monte Cristo ; A Tale of Two Cities guillotined Absalom Absalom ; The Once and Future King made Starship Troopers the now and forever loser; and Jayber Crow heard the The Wind in the Willows blow it out of the running.

The Nail-biters: Proving that every vote counts,  Lord of the Flies slipped past The Little House on the Prairie by 2 votes while  Diary of a Country Priest edged out  Watership Down by a only 3 votes. In the top bracket, Brideshead Revisited beat out Brothers Karamozov by a mere 11 votes.

So who will make it into the Sweet 16? Decide now by casting a vote for your favorites. Each round of voting, one round per day for the next six weekdays, ends at midnight.

Voting for Round 2 is now closed. Please vote in Round 3 .