I am as against plagirism as anyone.

But I hope there is someone at Little, Brown to comfort this gal. She has a LOT on her plate and I’m sure she is feeling terrible and vulnerable.

I couldn’t find her e-mail but please convey to her that all the journalism against her could make her decide to never write again. This was only a first book, and even the plagarism is done by such a younster. I think you guys should give her a lot of TLC and re-issue her book once those passages are taken away.

You don’t want someone who ends up either in a mental hospital or committing suicide. What she did should not define who she is and please pass this onto her. I really feel she should get a second break. Surely, she won’t copy other’s work after all this, thanks for listening. I worry about her. don’t you?

This article has some examples of the plagiarism. The structure of the sentences are nearly identical.

While I don’t doubt the young lady’s lucrative contract was certainly penned with the idea of expanding LB’s market in a specific demographic, I don’t get the sense that her ethicity is a factor in either the allegations or in LB’s less than severe handling of them. Rather, I see it as indicative of the glut for this sort of fare and the relative assessment o fits intrinsic literary value that the “plagiarism” wasn’t caught by LB in the editing process and hasn’t resulted in the complete withdrawal of the product. As to the charges themselves, it would b einformative to see some of the 40 specific examples to gage the similarities. While plagiarism is manifested as an overt and intentional action to deceive, there has always been a tendency for young artists in any creative endeavor to at time be a bit too derivative. This may be more the dynamic at play here than intentional theft.

And, yes Godzilla, anyone who eschews the unabridged Hugo to simply get to the plot more quickly looses the greater part of his brilliance.

Yikes, I could run off at the mouth for hours on that subject! You’ve hit the essence of the question, concerning books.

I look for books that have themes that I’m interested in. I guess everyone does that, so there’s no revelation there. Specifically, then, I look for books that have universals for their themes. Conflicts and events which cause the hero/heroines to struggle through obstacle after obstacle, with philosophic and moral overtones.

The kind of books you read say alot about you, as well as the kind of books that you don’t read.

As readers, I think we all go through an individual stage of development. To really know what to read, we really need to know ourselves. It’s very easy to get lulled into a book that looks interesting because it is trussed up with nice looking words, and miss the fact that it is still a turkey, nevertheless.

One thing I can flat out say is that I do not like naturalistic writing. For example, take Anna Karenina. I got through about 20 pages, and said that’s it, no more. Perfect sentences, Tolstoy (through the translator) was saying everything that he wanted to say…which was nothing.

Each book that you put down can be another revelation on what it is that you do and do not like.

John Irving is another naturalist. Good correct sentences, a series of plot events, an ending and a resolution – and you learn nothing. I didn’t make this realization until I had finished the only book of his that I’ll ever read – A Widow For One Year.

I also read for a purpose. I intend to write a book myself one day, and so I’m getting very very critical.

Gone With The Wind is a wonderful historical romance – with a theme, and a promising ending.

Victor Hugo is good too.

Roger, have Moses Wine move to a station orbiting Tau Ceti and you could have your books published by Baen. Or collaborate with Eric Flint on a 21st century private detective in the 1632 universe Magdeburg of 1635. (Info at Baen.)

Depends on who you work with.

The problem is, what exactly should we read, what should we expect out of it, are we getting anything out of it?

The answers here again will be individualzied.

These Chick Lit books are selling zillions of copies. I read The Clique, which is one of them, just to see what the genre was all about. Well, either I picked the screwiest book of the bunch, or I just expect too much out of a book, at least much much more than what that one gave…which was some kind of homage to materialism, deceit, boy-worship, ehh, just garbage, and the moral, or theme, if you could call it a theme was that it was good to get into the clique.

When I was in my Edgar Rice Burroughs/Stephen King days, I was after good vesus evil, I suppose, because that’s really what the themes of those books are, and the good wins.

The problem is, that as you get older, good versus evil themes began to be insufficient. However, what is there left to turn to? I’m not into Naturalism and most writers are naturalistic writers today…literary photographers, no real theme, just a set of plot events, with an ending, and it could have happened to anyone, ala fate, and what’s the point of reading that, either? That’s where I’m at. I’ve had to go back in time, back to the Romantics.

I agree with you, however, that there is a problem. It’s a multi-headed hydra, though, not just one beast that is responsible for the hoary blast of books hitting the shelves. There is a maliaise that is hanging over this country like a cloud, and it throwing shadows on not just books.

The pressure is too much for these meritless chosen writers so it’s not surprising that they go haywire and end up as phony and exposed as Jayson Blair at times. It happened to Jayson, now it happened to this person. It will happen again and the same outline of conditions will be right there.

I see it as the logical result of a hoity toity intolerant white liberal publishing establishment that is so desperate to be politically correct, yet looks into the bridge and tunnel ‘Ethnicworld’ so infrequently that it can’t tell talent from nontalent. It’s as if they are only looking for someone to use as a front person for their demographic marketing focus groups to sell books to.

End result: This person they scooped up had no character, could not write, and bit them.

“Viswanathan’s novel has received a lot of attention since arriving in stores this month, partly because of the size of the contract for a writer so young — she was 17 when she got it — but also for the role a book packager played in developing the plot. Alloy Entertainment, which shares the copyright for ‘Opal Mehta,’ says it helped the author conceptualize the book but did not help with the actual writing.”