Igenlode Wordsmith

A possibly useful list for 'comps' in a book pitch?
https://www.goodreads.com/blog/show/2959-twice-told-tales-192-top-retellings-that-readers-love

( Forty-three derivative novels )
Well, that was a depressing list to slog through. Apparently you need to take a source novel and rewrite it from a feminist/immigrant/queer/YA perspective (bonus points for hitting as many of the above of possible simultaneously). I could tell just from reading the blurbs, never mind the reviews, that I had absolutely no desire to read almost any of the titles mentioned, and presumably none of those authors/publishers/readers have any desire to read the sort of thing I write...

Most popular source novels: Frankenstein, Mrs Dalloway, The Count of Monte Cristo (surprisingly), and The Great Gatsby. Dracula, Little Women and The Brothers Karamazov also got two entries each.

The trouble with books is that there is no such thing as 'just one chapter before I do my singing practice' or 'until I get down to writing this review'...

https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2020/104116146

I discovered that someone had posted a 'rating' of Afterwards on
Goodreads -- which automatically creates an author entry for me there.( Read more... )

One offshoot of this was that I ended up importing my own pen-and-ink list of Books I have Read Since March into Goodreads, and as a result of having read/entered/rated over fifty books, I have apparently automatically become a 'librarian' with the ability to edit the data for existing books (or maybe just the ones I enter? I've already turned up one book from that list that didn't exist in the database, and was too old to have an ISBN!)

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I've been working my way through "Slapstick Divas" by Steve Massa, which comes across as a weird fan-project: it's almost but not quite an encyclopædia. The author has basically set out to document every actress who ever appeared in silent comedy ( Read more... )