WeHa Book Club

Big day!! The 2025 Winter Madness Book Tournament bracket has been revealed and it’s finally time to see who is going to be cutting down the nets by the end of March. Am I a little upset that UConn’s Dan Hurley didn’t get his biography included in the bracket, especially considering his success for winning tournaments in March? Yes, but we simply keep our heads up and move forward. I’ll get over it.

Each year, my local library conducts a March Madness style tournament to crown the best book of the previous year, with winners being determined by an online vote. For reference, the 2024 winner was The God of the Woods by Liz Moore. Entries are sorted by genre and eventually an ultimate winner is crowned. It’s all very exciting.

It’s also a great way to get some good recommendations for your 2026 reading list. Last year’s bracket led me to discover a number of new authors and titles. For example:

• Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout
• James by Percival Everett
• We Solve Murders by Richard Osman
• The God of the Woods by Liz Moore
• Orbital by Samantha Harvey
• Somewhere Beyond the Sea by TJ Klune

And those are just the specific titles that were included in the bracket. If I liked an author, I would read their older stuff as well, so this tournament really unlocked a lot of new books for me. I’m hoping this year’s tourney will do the same.

So let’s break it down! On the left side of the bracket, we’ve got “General Fiction”, “Romance”, “Historical Fiction” and “Mystery/Thriller”. And on the right side of the bracket, we’ve got “Fantasy”, “Science Fiction”, “Memoir/Biography” and “Non-Fiction”. Over the next couple months, we’ll be following along with the bracket and breaking down all of the ‘competitors’.

You can vote by scanning the QR code in the picture above or by clicking this link. First-round voting closes on February 1st and over the course of the next week, we’ll go matchup by matchup until there’s only one book left standing. Stay tuned!