CAUTION: AUTHORS PLAGIARIZING THEMSELVES

Addenda from Yiayia...Apparently readers failed to see my 'tongue in cheek' use of the world plagiarize.  Obviously one cannot plagiarize one's own work and I publicly apologize to authors who may have misunderstood and taken offense, especially to the wonderful author.made visible by the book covers since she is one of my favorites and I heartily recommend her books to anyone who loves this genre as much as I.. 

Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice was such a favorite of mine that I have been buying most all new versions of it (and sequels) I can find..  One I refused to read was: Mr. Darcy, Vampyre.  I really thought that was just too insulting to Austen's original..

It is easy to understand why a new version requires much of the original dialogue at times. I recently ordered a book whose title I did not own though I had read that author before and liked her.  When the book arrived, I eagerly started to read it and wondered at its familiarity.  Since I often read the few pages Amazon provides, to review, I hoped that was what I was remembering.  However, it became just too many pages. Having liked the original, Impulse and Initiative, I read, on as I frequently like to relax re-reading when I know I don't have to worry through the suspense.  I thought I had missed something when it didn't seem to be as I remembered it.  My count of such books is currently 82 so I read on, thinking that I must have skipped what I was now missing.

Nevertheless, being obstinate, I compared the books paragraph for paragraph for several chapters.  The author had changed 'knocked' to 'rap' in a later version and a few words here or there were slightly different though the meaning and general story stayed the same.  However, the new version, To Conquer Mr. Darcy was not easily associated by me with Impulse and Initiative.  In the newer version, the paperback, the author had left out a whole sub-plot which made Caroline Bingley a worse conniving villain than her usual cattiness and attempt to disparage Elizabeth.  It didn't essentially change the story, it simply removed a piece of it.

However, it made me wonder.  What are the rules of selling a book without telling the reader beforehand that it is simply a rewrite of a previously published book with little change?  I don't know what publisher's rules are but I can certainly comment on the view as a reader. The seller should make it possible for me know if I might already have bought a copy of this book.  Before I buy, I check my database to see if I already own it.  When I don't see it there, I read the blurbs the seller has on the book.  Having done this, there was nothing to connect the two since most of the sequels have the same characters and many don't deviate that far from the basic premise of the original Pride and Prejudice.  Only when I received the book, read it, and checked the very fine print on the bottom of the Copyright page did I learn it had previously been published  in 2008 by Sourcebooks Landmark as Impulse and Initiative.  Amazon showed it as a 2010 book.

Addenda from Yiayia...Apparently readers failed to see my 'tongue in cheek' use of the world plagiarize.  Obviously one cannot plagiarize one's own work and I publicly apologize to authors who may have taken misunderstood and taken offense. 

SAME BOOK: DIFFERENT TITLE

For the past couple of years I have been buying a lot of used paperbacks and have also continued my search for Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice sequels.  I've noticed some interesting new (at least to me) publishing ploys.

The same book is being reprinted under a new title.  Pemberley's Promise and Darcy's Voyage is identical and by the same author though as few more pages have been added to introduce the story.  It is very easy to be misled if one doesn't read the inside pages and other details of a book before purchasing it.  As I tend to buy all P&P sequels, I've been stung but don't like repeating the experience.  I follow the rule,' those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it'.

Another set of the same book under a new title and cover but with the same story and cast of characters seems to be Pemberley by the Seas and The Man Who Loved Pride and Prejudice.

Another trick being used by publishers who reprint paperbacks is to rename a book and in small print put two titles of old books in it.  It seems that many of the writers of romance novels, writing for years, seem to be being sold in this fashion.  In fact, at times it is difficult to buy one title so one is forced to buy the double books to get a single title for which one has searched.

Ah well, I guess everyone is out to fleece the innocent.  Just remember, "Buyer Beware"

DO WE HAVE A PARALLEL WORLD?

From Wikipedia: The multiverse (or meta-universe) is the hypothetical set of multiple possible universes (including our universe) that together comprise all of reality. The different universes within the multiverse are sometimes called parallel universes.

Twenty nine (29) versions of stories based on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice have appeared before my eyes. Each has taken some dialogue and characters from the original but that is as far as the similarity seems to go. One seemed to be the same book in someone else's words. Some describe the sex life of Elizabeth and Darcy, which modest, unmarried Jane Austen (writing in the early 1800s) would never have written. Others are a sequel about the next generation. Whatever they may be, most of them are interesting and vary in how compelling is the reading expedience they induce. Some are, as my musician friends would have called, B-flat, or in another metaphor, 'vanilla'.

The above paragraph, somewhat descriptive of content, does nothing to describe what happens to this reader after reading 29 of them, (after the original), and several versions of movies that have been made over the years. (There are many more books to read.) It seems that movies took great liberties with the original, many of them made in the 80, 90s and this decade. License was not only taken with costuming, script, events in the book, but have taken on the movie interest's license. what will sell at the box office (in the mind of someone who has little knowledge, usually, of what that means. The story, while entertaining, barely resembles the original. Those of us who have read the book before the movie, first find that all too often to be the case; Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings being exceptions.

Finally, in order to keep straight in my mind what this particular version is about, I have taken to reading each one straight through in a day. This has not been at all easy to arrange. I start late in the evening and read during the night when I am undisturbed and suffer only the lack of sleep the next day. However, I can keep the details straight for that book until I am through.

Multiples have been written by a single author and each takes a different route.
Some books make their focus interesting on a 'what if....'. For example, if Elizabeth and Darcy had not left Hunsfield but had stayed there longer, what might it have been like? Impulse and Initiative is about Darcy not allowing himself to be stopped by her refusal, but seeking her out at Longbourn and trying to win her love and respect. These are the books that challenge my 'parallel world' thinking. There should be more than one way to deal with anything, should there not? Maybe in each parallel world all these things have a different outcome. What joy it would be to know some of the possibilities. This is what some of these authors whom I have disparaged as plagiarists, (with my apologies for not seeing the further merit of their attempt in writing),offer.

With the indulgence of my readers, I may comment again after reading the three that are yet unread in my possession.