by Cheynem » Mon Oct 23, 2017 6:23 pm
I know there is a thread on finding book prizes, so maybe this is redundant, but I do have some thoughts on the nature of book prizes that I didn't want to get buried in a thread about finding the right bookstores:
So, here's a disclaimer. I generally do not like book prizes. I've won a few books here and there at tournaments and they mostly just sit on a shelf and do nothing. I read the first chapter of The Mayor of Casterbridge once. This is just me, I know--I typically don't read fiction and I always have a backload of books that I picked out myself, so I don't need a copy of Silence or Another Part of the Forest to read.
Keeping that in mind, here's four thoughts:
1. Book prizes should include more non-fiction selections. Mike Bentley always picks out interesting books for his prizes, for example (I did read through a CULT prize on great film actors, and I might have read a David Halberstam book if the font wasn't Herve Villechaize-size). Since literature only makes up a fraction of the quizbowl distribution, they shouldn't totally dominate book prizes. Books on history, film, the arts, etc. should be included. Biographies.
2. Building off of that though is the awareness that (sometimes) it can be hard to get inexpensive non-fiction books (although this isn't true, particularly at goodwill stores). More specifically, it can be hard to get GOOD inexpensive non-fiction books. It's easy to find classic literature for a quarter or if you want to find 29 copies of Mike Huckabee's 2008 book, but sometimes it can be a crapshoot. I wonder if perhaps slightly more coin should be set aside for a "prestige" book prize for the top scorers or winners or top young scorers or what have you--i.e., books that were recently on the best seller's list or "notable" book lists. That said, I think you could get these books pretty inexpensively too if you checked.
3. I'd also like to see more non-book things as prizes. Trash tournaments give out neat prizes--I won a LEGO prize at CO Trash as well as a Blu-Ray version of The Silence of the Lambs. Amazing! Maybe that's too junky, but what about CD's of classical music/soundtracks/operas ("CD's?" questioned the millennials), books on tape (do these even exist?), and quasi-academic films?
4. Finally, I don't know if the idea that books-as-prizes needs to be reexamined. Chris Ray mentioned in the EFT thread that one of his teammates was upset about not getting any prize for a first tournament win. We obviously can't expect every school to shell out the $$$ for a trophy, but I wonder if the nature of quizbowl professionalism means rethinking the idea that "winning a tournament = getting an used copy of Gideon Planish" is the best way.
Mike Cheyne
Formerly U of Minnesota
"You killed HSAPQ"--Matt Bollinger