As basketball fans say goodbye to March Madness, readers on campus can participate in a Book March Madness. 

Inspired by an activity at her old school, freshman Sydney Kiely created the match-ups with books set up to go against each other, and after weeks of the competition, a winner will be declared. 

“We will have books set up against each other,” Kiely said. “And people can come in and vote for the books which will advance and we will end up with a winning book that everybody likes.” 

Readers can participate via QR codes in the library that will take them to a Google form where they can vote for a book. After being put up from April 13-20, the first round will be taken down and winners from the first round will move on to the second(April 20-27) as the competition narrows. 

“They’re arranged to be most competitive,” Kiely said. “Like we have similar topics, like the False Prince and the Cruel Prince are competing, and we had the dystopian books matched up against each other and a bunch of genres so that it would work best.” 

But the match-ups could make it tough from the start, leaving readers with no idea which to choose between two books they loved equally. 

“Sometimes [it was difficult to choose],” freshman Anagha Konuru said. “Mostly because there were books I hadn’t read, but the majority of the time, I thought there were pretty good matches for each other. Like Harry Potter and Percy Jackson, because I love both series, but I had to go with Percy Jackson because it’s a classic for me.”

With 32 books in the first round, some of the titles may be unfamiliar to all students. However, Konuru found a solution without having to read all 32 books in one week. 

“[When there was a book I didn’t know,] I asked my friends and I checked out the novel book reviews online,” Konuru said. “But the people I asked, I know they were like book connoisseurs. I know these are people that know their books really well.” 

And though both Kiely and Konuru are unsure of who will win, Kiely especially doubtful of the book she’d like to see as it’s less popular when compared to others, when it comes to other students on campus, Konuru encourages participation. 

“One hundred percent[I’d encourage other students to participate],” Konuru said. “It’s so much fun and, like I said, I haven’t read in forever and it really inspires me to read. So I would definitely say people should try this out.”