Our remaining Elite Eight competitors for the title Best Christian Book of All Time have been chosen! Our first number one seed has been knocked out of the tournament in a controversial result, pending an appeal to our judges. (OK —it actually wasn’t controversial at all. Just…disappointing…to the members of our selection committee.)
And now, the results.
Fiction & Poetry
The analysts’ choice for the number one overall seed, Dante’s Divine Comedy (1) was defeated 38-25 by C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia (4). This result bothers me a great deal, and my attempts to rally voters to Dante seem to have only sealed his defeat. On Facebook, I was asked to explain why I consider The Divine Comedy to be so much better than The Chronicles of Narnia. Unfortunately, I don’t have time this morning, but I’ll try to write a post later this week about that.
On the other side of this bracket, The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (2) overcame Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables (43-24). Rumor has it that Russell Crowe’s singing voice was the deciding factor for most of our voters, even after it was pointed out that the original novel is not a musical.
The regional final for Fiction & Poetry will feature two old friends with very different philosophies of fiction:
- The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (2) vs. The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis (4)
Memoirs, Devotionals, & Spirituality
Here’s one where I’d like to cast a vote for both . . . (Tom Grosh)
Tom couldn’t cast a vote for both, though, so Confessions by Augustine (1) defeated The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence (4) 44-14. (Tom’s extra vote wouldn’t have made a difference anyway.)
Meanwhile, the Cinderella run of Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love (11) came to an end, as The Imitation of Christ by Thomas á Kempis (2) won 36-18.
The regional final in Memoirs, Devotionals, & Spiritualty:
- Confessions by Augustine (1) vs. The Imitation of Christ by Thomas á Kempis (2)
Vote for your choices on Facebook. We’ll leave the voting open all weekend and announce the Final Four on Monday.
The former Associate Director for the Emerging Scholars Network, Micheal lives in Cincinnati with his wife and three children and works as a web manager for a national storage and organization company. He writes about work, vocation, and finding meaning in what you do at No Small Actors.