The 2025 Stacks Battle of the Books
It’s year eight of The Stacks Battle of the Books!
That’s our annual March Madness style book bracket, in December, to crown the best Stacks book club pick from the year.
I feel like I say this every year, but this might be the best year of book club picks we’ve ever had. Which means it is going to be a particularly challenging year to predict a winner and I love that for all of us!
And just like March Madness. This isn’t only about crowning a winner. This is also about YOU tapping into your competitive impulses and filling out a TSBC bracket to predict the winner and win a book!
To enter fill out a bracket at Challonge. You create your account put your predictions in for who you think will win. Then on The Stacks Instagram Stories, you’ll vote (starting 12/26) for your favorite books in head to head battles, until we crown one winner, The Stacks Book Club Book of the Year. The results of each round will be updated over on Challonge (our bracket site) and on our Instagram @thestackspod.
You have until Friday, December 26rd at 12:00am PST to put in your predictions. Be sure your bracket name is easily identifiable so you can be contacted if you win! We will announce the winner of the tournament and the winner of the giveaway on Tuesday, December 30th once all the results are in.
Here is the important stuff.
Make sure you’re following The Stacks on Instagram @thestackspod.
Register for the bracket if you want to be part of the giveaway CLICK HERE. Be sure to pick a winner at the bottom of the page.
Vote in each round on our Insta Stories daily, starting Friday December 26th.
That feels like a lot, trust me, it’ll be fun and worth it. For now, just fill out your bracket.
Now for all the nerds…
Below are the gory details of how the seeding was figured out. I came up with my own calculations to rank the books based on many arbitrary (and a few quantifiable) factors. The rankings are full of biases and assumptions, and honestly, that is what makes this fun.
Podcast Downloads– Raw number of downloads that an episode received. I excluded Friday Night Lights from this calculation since that episode has not aired.
iTunes Episode Popularity– iTunes lets me see how popular each episode is in the first 60 days. Again, Friday Night Lights was excluded from this category.
Goodreads Scores– I looked up each book on Goodreads and took that score.
Goodreads Reviews– I took the total number of Goodreads reviews for each book.
Test of Time– The older a book is, the more credit it got, because it has withstood the “test of time”.
Social Media Input– I’ve asked The Stacks Instagram followers to tell me their favorite book we read this year, and those responses are incorporated.
Traci’s Personal Ranking– Thats right, I’m influencing this competition a little. It’s my podcast, ain’t it?
There are 12 books in the competition, so in each of those categories the books are rated on a scale of 1-12. Each book receives a score from each category, 1 being the best, 12 the worst. I then added all the scores and divided by 7 (except in the case of Friday Night Lights which was divided by 5).
That sounds like a lot, I’m bad at math, but trust me, it checks out. Here are the rankings based on these calculations, and their total overall raw scores, remember lower is better. Where there was a tie, I broke the tie based on my preference.
Here is our 2025 Bracket
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley - 2.28
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov - 4.71
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer - 4.85
Friday Night Lights by H. G. Bissinger - 5.2
The Art Thief by Michael Finkel - 5.85
They Were Her Property by Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers - 7
We the Animals by Justin Torres - 7.14
Blessing the Boats by Lucille Clifton - 7.28
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley - 7.28
God Help the Child by Toni Morrison - 7.42
The Lilac People by Milo Todd - 7.71
Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley - 7.85
For those of you curious who won in previous years,
2018 - The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
2019 - Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson
2020 - The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
2021 - Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
2022 - Passing by Nella Larsen
2023 - Tar Baby by Toni Morrison
2024 - The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
Now go fill out your bracket and let’s get this party started!!!
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