Feature and Follow

Q: Do you mind books with similar ideas to other books? Similar concepts, backgrounds, retellings or pulled-to-publish fanfic?

Hmmm... Similar concepts are fine as long as authors take that concept and make it their own. I don't appreciate a novel that simply retells a story everyone's read before, changes the characters name, slaps on a different title and calls it original. Not cool. But I do understand that within a specific genre, some ideas are bound to cross paths. Totally cool. Originality is important. Obviously. But it also depends on how that idea is written, transformed, and used that can mutate it into something completely new.

If I totally fall in love with a book, I immediately go in search of other books with similar elements. Sometimes I waste my time on a knockoff (bummer), but most of the time I find that I get to prolong my obsession with a specific idea, learning more about it as I come across a quite few unexpected surprises offered by various authors with different writing styles. It's interesting to see how people view what can be determined as the same idea in so many different ways.

As for pulled-to-publish fanfic, it's alright, I guess. Maybe I'm confused as to what that actually is, because I once got my head bit off for calling a novel I read "fan fiction," even though it was based off of characters, ideas, and concepts that someone else created. It was fun to read, I suppose, but I'll probably try to avoid books like that in the future.

What about you?

Happy Reading Everyone :)

~ Keely ~