Announcing Camp ToB 2023
MAY 10 , 2023
Announcing Camp ToB 2023
Update (May 24, 2023): The summer’s books and discussion schedule are now set! You can find them below.
Welcome back to Camp! Summer is right around the corner, and guess what: For 2023, we’re changing things up.
For anyone new here, Camp ToB is the summer pop-up of the Tournament of Books, our annual March event. Think of Camp as a more leisurely, hot-weather hang with your Rooster pals, talking books but also avoiding sunburn.
Here’s what’s different this year: This summer’s all about the vibes. (We’re in our low-key era.) But we need you to vote on which vibes you prefer. Basically, getting ready for Camp, after we identified 10 of our favorite works of fiction published so far in 2023, we noticed pairs of them having themes in common. So, why not have a different pairing each month based on theme? Using the form below, you vote on which three of the themes below you prefer, and the popular vote will determine the summer’s reading. (We’ll reveal the titles after the votes are counted.)
Some other new things:
We’re excited to discuss how each month’s books work as a pair. However, unlike past Camps, we will not be voting on any of them to "win" the month or the summer in total—i.e., as of 2023, no Camp books will be automatically advancing to the Tournament of Books the following March. However! All six of the books we read this summer will be eligible for the 2024 Tournament of Books long- and shortlists.
Camp discussions will happen here on our website, rather than Discord.
Also, we’re again looking for Activity Leaders to help lead discussions in exchange for free books or Camp merch! This time around, though, instead of welcoming a different Activity Leader each week, we’ll have six Activity Leaders, each of whom will take us all the way through their assigned book. Please volunteer in the form below!
Finally, we want to extend major thanks to our Sustaining Members for making this event possible. Please take a moment to find out why TMN and the ToB depend on our readers, and consider throwing your support our way. Remember: Sustaining Members get 50 percent off all ToB merch, including our soon-to-come Camp ’23 designs!
This summer’s vibes (and books)
Book descriptions are excerpted from publishers’ summaries and edited for length. We get a cut from purchases made through the book links.
EARLY SUMMER VIBE
“Every love story is an unconventional love story”
JUNE 7–20
Big Swiss by Jen Beagin
Greta lives with her friend Sabine in an ancient Dutch farmhouse in Hudson, NY. The house is unrenovated, uninsulated, and full of bees. Greta spends her days transcribing therapy sessions for a sex coach who calls himself Om. She becomes infatuated with his newest client, a repressed married woman she affectionately refers to as Big Swiss. One day, Greta recognizes Big Swiss’s voice in town and they quickly become enmeshed. While Big Swiss is unaware Greta has eavesdropped on her most intimate exchanges, Greta has never been more herself with anyone. Her attraction to Big Swiss overrides her guilt, and she’ll do anything to sustain the relationship.
JUNE 21–JULY 4
Couplets by Maggie Millner
A woman lives an ordinary life in Brooklyn. She has a boyfriend. They share a cat. She also has dreams: of being seduced by a throng of older women, of kissing a friend in a dorm-room closet. But the dreams are private, not real. One night, she meets another woman at a bar, and an escape hatch swings open in the floor of her life. She falls into a consuming affair—into queerness, polyamory, kink, power and loss, humiliation and freedom.
MIDSUMMER VIBE
“Let’s go abroad (with three lone girls)”
JULY 12–25
The Birthday Party by Laurent Mauvignier, translated by Daniel Levin Becker
Buried deep in rural France, little remains of the isolated hamlet of the Three Lone Girls, save a few houses and a curiously assembled quartet: Patrice Bergogne, inheritor of his family’s farm; his wife, Marion; their daughter, Ida; and their neighbor, Christine, an artist. While Patrice plans a surprise for his wife’s fortieth birthday, inexplicable events start to disrupt the hamlet’s quiet existence: anonymous, menacing letters, an unfamiliar car rolling up the driveway. And as night falls, strangers stalk the houses, unleashing a nightmarish chain of events.
JULY 26–AUG. 8
Western Lane by Chetna Maroo
Eleven-year-old Gopi has been playing squash since she was old enough to hold a racket. When her mother dies, her father enlists her in a quietly brutal training regimen, and the game becomes her world. Slowly, she grows apart from her sisters. Her life is reduced to the sport, guided by its rhythms: the serve, the volley, the drive, the shot and its echo. But on the court, she is not alone. She is with her pa. She is with Ged, a 13-year-old boy with his own formidable talent. She is with the players who have come before her. She is in awe.
LATE-SUMMER VIBE
“Historical women in harsh lands”
AUG. 9–22
Lone Women by Victor LaValle
Adelaide Henry carries an enormous steamer trunk with her wherever she goes. It’s locked at all times. Because when the trunk is opened, people around her start to disappear. The year is 1915, and Adelaide is in trouble. Her secret sin killed her parents, and forced her to flee her hometown of Redondo, Calif., in a hellfire rush, ready to make her way to Montana as a homesteader. Dragging the trunk with her at every stop, she will be one of the "lone women" taking advantage of the government's offer of free land for those who can cultivate it—except that Adelaide isn't alone. And the secret she's tried so desperately to lock away might be the only thing keeping her alive.
AUG. 23–SEPT. 5
Good Night, Irene by Luis Alberto Urrea
In 1943, Irene Woodward abandons an abusive fiancé in New York to enlist with the Red Cross and head to Europe. She makes fast friends in training with Dorothy Dunford, a towering Midwesterner with a ferocious wit. Together they are part of an elite group of women, nicknamed Donut Dollies, who command military vehicles called Clubmobiles at the front line, providing camaraderie and a taste of home that may be the only solace before troops head into battle. After D-Day, these two intrepid friends join the Allied soldiers streaming into France. Their time in Europe will see them embroiled in danger, from the Battle of the Bulge to the liberation of Buchenwald. Through her friendship with Dorothy, and a love affair with a courageous American fighter pilot named Hans, Irene learns to trust again. Her most fervent hope, which becomes more precarious by the day, is for all three of them to survive the war intact.
Discussion schedule
June 7: Big Swiss through chapter 10
June 14: Big Swiss to the end
June 21: Couplets through book two
June 28: Couplets to the end
July 5: Holiday
July 12: The Birthday Party through chapter 23
July 19: The Birthday Party to the end
July 26: Western Lane through chapter four
Aug. 2: Western Lane to the end
Aug. 9: Lone Women through part one
Aug. 16: Lone Women to the end
Aug. 23: Good Night, Irene through part one
Aug. 30: Good Night, Irene to the end