A Wandering Eyre

Geez, I ignore a feed for a couple days and all hell breaks loose. This is what happens, gentle readers, when you do not pay attention to things.

The Smart Bitches, they are smart you know, have uncovered a huge plagiarism scandal by bestselling romance author Cassie Edwards. If you go to their website, you can view the serious of posts, all collated at the top of th home page, or use the handy PDF Cassie has created.

What amazes me about the entire thing is the backlash they are receiving, as if plagiarism is not a big deal. People are telling the Bitches they are “mean” for exposing Cassie Edwards. Plagiarism is stealing. Taking someone else’s words or ideas and passing them off as your own is stealing. Wikipedia has a very nice article on plagiarism.

As an educator, I spend a lot of time explaining plagiarism to students because they have often never been taught the fine line of stealing when creating academic work. That lack of knowledge has bled into all aspects of our life. As information creators, we are responsible for the words we say are our own. In an age when it is very easy to check your words against the largest database in the world, the Internet, people should never be surprised when they get caught.

I have some advice for Ms. Edwards and Signet: just admit you screwed up and make amends. Legal spin and rhetoric are not going to release you from looking like idiots, but you can avoid looking like douche bags and assholes. If you fess up and are honest, you may at least gain some respect back for being adults about your mistakes. If you choose not to, well, you may find you loose all credibility and many of your customers.

–Jane, plagiarism is no joke

In the spirit of end of the year lists:

I started keeping a list in my Moleskine of all the books I read over the course of last year. I was surprised by the numbers in some months, zero in October and seven in June. My list is dominated by Fantasy, YA, and Romance. You can really tell when I went on a binge, November for example, and read Romance in exclusion to all else. I read 44 books last year with an average of about 3.66 per month.

This year, I want to have a more balanced plate. The only classic literature I read in 2007 was Agnes Grey. Not that classic literature is the only thing worth reading.

Here is my list by month for 2007:

January - 5
Glass Houses - Rachel Caine
Duty and Desire - Pamela Aiden
His Majesty’s Dragon - Naomi Novik
Pretties - Scott Westerfeld
A Few Demons More - Kim Harrison

February - 4
These Three Remain - Pamela Aiden
The Bee Keeper’s Aprentice - Laurie King
The Ruins of Gorlan - John Flanagan
Specials - Scott Westerfeld

March - 2
The Minister’s Daughter - Julie Hearn
I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith

April - 4
Mooncalled - Patricia Briggs
Throne of Jade - Naomi Novik
Black Powder War - Naomi Novik
Buffy: the Long Way Home I - Whedon

May - 2
Love Comes Softly - Jannette Oake
The Secret Pearl - Mary Balogh

June - 7
Blue Moon - Jill Marie Landis
A Monstrous Regiment of Women - Laurie King
Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi
Perepolis 2 - Marjane Satrapi
A letter of Mary - Laurie King
Storm Front - Jim Butcher
y: The Last Man - Vaughan, Guerra, et al.

July - 4
The Brazen Careerist - Penelope Trunk
Fool Moon - Jim Butcher
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J.K. Rowling
Castle of the Wolf - Sandra Schwab

August - 3
Promethea - Alan Moore
Promethea II - Alan Moore
Promethea III - Alan Moore

September - 2
Watchmen - Alan Moore
Datacloud: Toward A New Theory Of Online Work - Johndan Johnson-Eilola

October - 0

November - 6
The Shadow and the Star - Laura Kinsale
Slightly Married - Mary Balogh
Slightly Wicked - Mary Balogh
Slightly Scandalous - Mary Balogh
Slightly Sinful - Mary Balogh
Sligtly Dangerous - Mary Balogh

December - 5
Agnes Grey - Anne Bronte
Buffy: the Long Way Home II - Whedon
Buffy: the Long Way Home III - Whedon
Midsummer Moon - Laura Kinsale
The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding - Le Leche League

Where else but here, lovely readers, would you have a manifesto for ALA followed by this:

I think Baby Rochester needs this book in home their library. A whole book about how poo works. Awesome.

All hail The Queen for sending this my way.

–Jane, reading to children is important, reading to them about poop is essential

It is Friday and thus you all deserve some fun and giggles. Therefore, as the bringer of the fun, I present to you a most unfortunately named book:

Cooking with Pooh: Yummy Tunny Cookie Cutter Treats

Mmmm, I think I’ll pass.

–Jane, thxkbye

The Smart Bitches are celebrating Banned Books Week with reviews from readers. All of the reviews are wonderful, but I laughed the hardest over the Harry Potter review.

Be a smart bitch and go read some reviews. A ton of my personal favorites made the list.

–Jane, the word bitch would get her banned in many schools

For those of you migrating here from Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Novels, welcome.

Please notice, after our discussion on inspirational romance, I am reading Love Comes Softly (in my consuming list waaaay down on the right). So far, it is good and about what I expected, but the dialect may be what drives me insane in the end.

–Jane, loves her some trashy novels and mantitty (I mean, who doesn’t)

You know when you come up with an idea and it seems really great and then you see it in print and think, “Wow, maybe I should have rethought that?”

I give you this book.

–Jane, courtesy of the Joshua M. Neff himself

Early Ink is a website that was created to bring information about new and upcoming books to the reader. One of the founders is one of my favorite Smart Bitches, Sarah.

Early Ink allows publishers and authors to share their wares with readers directly. Reviews, advertising, excerpts, price,author bios, websites, and ISBN number are all available. The RSS feeds are not working yet, but they plan on having feeds for different genres and formats. I can see this being very valuable to librarians and for people like myself who have a book buying addiction. The website is easy to navigate though the search box did not work properly for all of my test searches.

–Jane, always happy to find something that enables her

A non CIL post:

Mr. Rochester sent me an interesting link today for a new Tolkien book called The Children of Hurin. There is a story from CNN on the release of the book, which is edited by J.R.R. Tolkien’s son, Christopher Tolkien.

–Jane, sounds like a book to add to the list

The Smart Bitches, never lacking in the funny, have brought to you “If Romance Conventions Were Venereal Diseases.”

The formulaic plots of romance novels are always half the fun. Which combination of past love gone bad, woman in need of lurve, man in need of some tender lurve, secret pasts, or hidden fortunes can you put into one book?

–Jane, the is no limit to the lurve plot insanity