It is the lifelong question that has plagued book lovers since the start of time: what is your favorite novel? Since the first week of the semester, the Southwest library has been trying to answer that question by hosting the 2014 Tournament of Books.

“We got the idea from the Kansas City Public Library,” librarian Elizabeth Chopp said. “And we thought it was really awesome because they do it every year and give out cool prizes, and we wanted to do something to help get the whole school involved in either reading or at least some incentive to get involved in the library.”

Similar to sports tournaments such as March Madness, the tournament started off with 16 novels in eight categories to be pitted against each other one by one until only one final book was deemed to be the student body’s favorite novel, meaning that some participants had to make difficult choices when voting.

“My hardest choices were between “The Hunger Games”, “Divergent”, “Harry Potter”, and “Mortal Instruments” because I loved all of these books so it made it really hard for me to choose my favorites,” junior Emily Dixon said. “It’s like asking a parent to choose their favorite child: it’s nearly impossible.”

But, as the competition winds down to the final four novels, the choices between books becomes even more diffifult.

“Now that we’re down to the final four, I’m having a really hard time,” Chopp said. “I do have some opinions, but it’s pretty stressful because all four of the final books are amazing, and we need more people to vote right now because it is really neck and neck.”

Although the tournament will be ending on March 7, some students are already looking forward to another year of competition.

“Yes [they should have the tournament next year] because maybe next year more people will know about it and it’d be more accurate,” junior Kylie Jennings said. “Plus, it’d be interesting to see what all changed in the year of separation.”

But with another year of possible competition on the horizon comes the hope that more students will become involved in the tournament by voting.

“I hope that next year we can get more [voters],” Chopp said. “We get a couple hundred people that vote in each round, but our student population is much bigger than that, so my hope is that, if we do this again next year, we’ll get even more.”

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To vote in the current round of competition, please view bvswlmc.com