Tournament of Books 2012: The Shortlist

It's my favorite time of year - The Morning News 2012 Tournament of Books has begun!  I can't even begin to tell you how excited I am about this.  I wait all year to see the short list and then I read like hell to finish as many of them as possible.  Last year I didn't do so well, but I found some really amazing books like Skippy Dies by Paul Murray.  The official judging doesn't begin until March, but until then you can start reading the books you missed last year:

Here's the shortlist with books I've read in bold:

• Nathacha Appanah, The Last Brother
• Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending
• Teju Cole, Open City
• Helen Dewitt, Lightning Rods
• Patrick DeWitt, The Sisters Brothers (my review)
• Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot (my review)
• Chad Harbach, The Art of Fielding
• Alan Hollinghurst, Stranger’s Child
• Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones
• Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 (my review)
• Téa Obreht, The Tiger’s Wife
• Michael Ondaatje, The Cat’s Table
• Ann Patchett, State of Wonder
• Donald Ray Pollock, Devil All the Time
• Karen Russell, Swamplandia!
• Kate Zambreno, Green Girl

Salvage the Bones, Swamplandia!, The Art of Fielding and The Tiger's Wife are all on my TBR list, so I should probably start plowing through those posthaste.  I've been interested in Open City so this is a good excuse to read it and I've heard great things about State of Wonder.  

Powells.com is a sponsor of the Tournament of Books and a bookseller that I absolutely love.  If you're interested in buying any of the books listed above, please consider using Powells.com.  I've created a 2012 Tournament of Books "bookshelf" that has links to each book here.  Using that link will support a great bookseller and also earn me a few dollars of store credit so I can keep buying fantastic books.  Thanks!

Do you follow the Tournament of Books?  Which ones have you read and which ones are you looking forward to reading?