The Book of George (by Kate Greathead)

Like Liars, another Tournament book about an annoying man-child. However, because he's aware of it and often quite self-loathing, it was more entertaining than rage-inducing. Sometimes hilariously funny, in fact.  And people call out George directly all through the novel, which is satisfying. 

The blurb describes it as a "razor-sharp but big-hearted excavation of millennial masculinity" and I agree that it's big-hearted. The reader does feel for George, even as he bumbles through his life making terrible decisions, losing his temper, and being an awful boyfriend to his long-term partner Jenny.   

I also enjoyed the format, which is vignettes from George's life that each generally skip ahead about a year each time.  Overall, as you can probably tell, I liked it a lot!

Beautyland (by Marie-Helene Bertino)

I may be a little tired of coming of age novels (which is unfortunate since I think at least two more Tournament books are coming of age novels) but Beautyland is in the tournament and was highly regarded and my library had it so, here we all are.

The premise is that our main character, Adina, is a Generation X alien sent to learn about earth culture, and she transmits messages back and forth to her superiors via fax machine.  It's not quite other-y enough for me, but the writing is beautiful and the ending is just exquisitely sad.  Whether or not Adina is an actual alien (and I think the ending of the book makes that clear), I enjoyed her meditations on her human life and relationships. 

Will be an interesting tournament discussion. It's up against Great Expectations in the brackets, which I hope to get to soon. Oh, and total sidebar, Adina sings "Simeon the Whale" instead of "Send me on my way" and I thought that was just me! It's been Simeon the Whale for years! I was delighted.