Days are cold and nights are long. Party people party. Dieters forgive themselves. Bookstores are filled with holiday shoppers clutching lists that all say “10 best books of 2010” and all seem to contain the same titles.
 
 And somewhere deep in a forest, in a cave shrouded in frost, Skinny Puppy posters, and the entrails of advance reader copies, a slumbering rooster begins to twitch.
 
 Ladies and gentlemen, the 2011 Tournament of Books, sponsored by Field Notes, is coming soon.
 
 In the meantime, after multiple requests from audience members, we’re releasing our long list of titles to help with your gift giving. When was the last time we got a year crowded with such excellent fiction? These were the novels (and a few non-novels) that excited us the most in 2010. In March 2011, 16 titles from this list will compete in our seventh annual Tournament of Books. We will release the list of 16 in early January so you can get a head start on your reading.
 
 (If you've new to the ToB and don’t know what the fuss is about, why Salon.com's Laura Miller called the 2010 ToB “a rare pocket of civility and informed intelligence” or why a homicidal rooster may be the American literary community's sexiest award, check out last year’s tournament. NPR's "All Things Considered" also did a nice job of summarizing the play-by-play.)
 
 But before we get to the list, we’ve got a surprise this year. It’s about our 2011 judges. Namely, you could be one of them.
 
 This year, we’re holding a spot open for the reader who best convinces us in 100 words or less that he or she would make a superlative judge. Show us your Rooster knowledge, your sense of what it takes to do the job right. Email your entry (no attachments) to talk at themorningnews.org by Sunday, Dec. 19, 2010. If you tweet about it afterwards, or Face-share it, or Tumble it on super-hot, we’ll think on you kindly.
 
 One final note: Though we would have included them on the list, we made it house law this year that books by TMN staff can’t be entered into the Tournament of Books. Therefore, you won’t see You Lost Me There by Rosecrans Baldwin, Memory Wall by Anthony Doerr, The Thousand by Kevin Guilfoile, or The Report by Jessica Francis Kane featured on the list below.
 
 However, we highly encourage you to check them out. Also check out the beautiful notebooks from our title sponsor, Field Notes. And you can’t go wrong shopping through our book sponsor, Powell’s Books. Now to the long list. See you in March.

The 2011 Tournament of Books Long List

The Pregnant Widow, by Martin Amis
 The Infinities, by John Banville
 The Map of True Places, by Brunonia Barry
 The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, by Aimee Bender
 If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This, by Robin Black
 Ordinary Thunderstorms, by William Boyd
 Doubles, by Nic Brown
 Parrot and Olivier in America, by Peter Carey
 Nox, by Anne Carson
 Exley, by Brock Clarke
 Witz, by Joshua Cohen
 The Passage, by Justin Cronin
 Stiltsville, by Susanna Daniel
 Bad Marie, by Marcy Dermansky
 The Autobiography of Jenny X, by Lisa Dierbeck
 Room, by Emma Donoghue
 The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, by Heidi W. Durrow
 A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan
 Aliss At The Fire, by Jon Fosse
 Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen
 Safe from the Sea, by Peter Geye
 The Solitude of Prime Numbers, by Paolo Giordano
 The False Friend, by Myla Goldberg
 36 Arguments for the Existence of God, by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein
 Lord of Misrule, by Jaimy Gordon
 Museum of the Weird, by Amelia Gray
 Bloodroot, by Amy Greene
 The Line, by Olga Grushin
 Orion You Came and You Took All My Marbles, by Kira Henehan
 Horns, by Joe Hill
 The Four Stages of Cruelty, by Keith Hollihan
 Sleepless, by Charlie Huston
 Next, by James Hynes
 The Finkler Question, by Howard Jacobson
 Great House, by Nicole Krauss
 The Surrendered, by Chang-rae Lee
 The Man From Saigon, by Marti Leimbach
 The Instructions, by Adam Levin
 The Ask, by Sam Lipsyte
 What We Are, by Peter Nathaniel Malae
 Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War, by Karl Marlantes
 Beatrice and Virgil, by Yann Martel
 An Object of Beauty, by Steve Martin
 The Lost Books of the Odyssey, by Zachary Mason
 C, by Tom McCarthy
 Solar, by Ian McEwan
 Driving on the Rim, by Thomas McGuane
 The Spot, by David Means
 American Music, by Jane Mendelsohn
 How to Read the Air, by Dinaw Mingestu
 The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, by David Mitchell
 The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers, by Thomas Mullen
 Red Rain, by Bruce Murkoff
 Skippy Dies, by Paul Murray
 February, by Lisa Moore
 Bound, by Antonya Nelson
 A Beautiful Place to Die, by Malla Nunn
 The Invisible Bridge, by Julie Orringer
 Voice of America, by E.C. Osondu
 Foreign Bodies, by Cynthia Ozick
 The American Painter Emma Dial, by Samantha Peale
 The Wilding, by Benjamin Percy
 This Is Just Exactly Like You, by Drew Perry
 Rut, by Scott Phillips
 Model Home, by Eric Puchner
 The Imperfectionists, by Tom Rachman
 The Canal, by Lee Rourke
 You Were Wrong, by Matthew Sharpe
 So Much for That, by Lionel Shriver
 Super Sad True Love Story, by Gary Shteyngart
 Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, by Helen Simonson
 My Hollywood, by Mona Simpson
 The Madonnas of Echo Park, by Brando Skyhorse
 Private Life, by Jane Smiley
 The Singer’s Gun, by Emily St. John Mandel
 The Frozen Rabbi, by Steve Stern
 The French Revolution, by Matt Stewart
 Illustrado, by Miguel Syjuco
 The Lonely Polygamist, by Brady Udall
 Aurorarama, by Jean-Christophe Valtat
 Kapitoil, by Teddy Wayne
 The Colony, by Jillian Weise
 All Clear, by Connie Willis
 Savages, by Don Winslow
 How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, by Charles Yu