The reason for this question is I just finished reading the second in Jenny Nimmo's "Charlie Bone" series and am looking to go for the third. They are quite well written and in many ways reminisent of Roald Dahl.

The annoying thing about them is that everyone instantly compares them to HP even though the author claims to have never read any of the HP books. The marketing folks have even opted to style the covers much like the HP books. All of which is annoying to me because while, yes we have kids, magic, and bording school, they are really very different.

I think there are probably a few reasons why such stories are so common. The first is tradition. In the not-so-distant past, most British writers of note were educated by a few well known schools. Because this was how they were educated, this is what they put into their own writing. Now, a much larger percentage of writers are state educated, but there is a literary tradition of writing about boarding schools, and there are no state boarding schools.

Also, it is worth noting that a boarding school is a very good setting for a story. It provides a sense of children being isolated from the adults due to having no family around, which can back up a wide variety of themes. And less supervision allows the children more freedom to get involved in whatever adventures are involved in the plot.

I thought of something this morning when I read this thread again. I'll start with a question and then leap to a conculsion about the answer...the books in question are YA right?

Assuming the answer is yes, but frankly, even if the answer is no...Why hasn't the author read the Harry Potter books? Talk about not doing your homework properly. Scifi and fantasy writers have a list of classics that we ought to have read if we're worth our salt, provided by Hugo and Nebula. The fourth Harry Potter book is acutally on the Hugo list.

I would even say that if you have an idea that bears a resemblance to something else out there, you may want to avoid reading that book like the plague. Why? To avoid tainting your idea and your work.

People do latch on to things that are familliar, it often helps use to accept things that are new. Marketing is the art of getting people to accept things. As long as the author is not averse to the comparison, then why not try to piggy-back some success (although Nimmo is an author in her own right and has been publishing novels since the '70s; including four series and even picture books).

Is it important to stay abrest of trends in the industry? Of Course.

Do you have to read every story about Tom, Dick, or Harry? No.

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Heinlein won the Hugo award for Best Science Fiction Novel of the Year on four separate occasions – still an unbeaten record. In 1975 he received the First Grand Master Nebula Award for lifetime achievement from the Science Fiction Writers of America. In recognition of Heinlein’s influence on many young readers who would later become the scientists and engineers of NASA, the NASA Medal for Distinguished Public Service was awarded posthumously in 1988.

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And you also have to be aware of the fact that your audience's sophistication will affect the way they receive such resemblances. If the only science fiction novel you have read is Starship Troopers and then you read Ender's Game, you're going to go ape over the fact that there are insectoid aliens, etc. Card is a thief! But then when you realize (1) Card has never read Starship Troopers and (2) there was a long history of sci-fi stories about combat with insectoid aliens that both Heinlein and Card borrowed from, you relax a little. We weren't being "derivative," we were "working within a tradition."

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Let me add one more thing...I am trying to become well read in science fiction and fantasy. It is a slow process. Why? Because I've gotten enough rejection letters that say "Well written but we've seen this idea before." or "Well written but this reminds me of X." "Well written but...", in fact, begins most of my rejection letters anymore. I'm sick of it, and I know why it is. I haven't read enough science fiction and fantasy. I have excuses. I'm still young and haven't always had much time to read until recently. But now I'm building in at least two hours a day of pure reading time. I'm going to pour through the list of hugo and nebula winners to start and go from there. I'm taking recommendations from friends about the best scifi and fantasy available. I'm throwing in some mysteries because of my current WIP. I'm going to read them all, and I'm going to keep writing, and probably keep getting "Well written but..." responses for some time. But sooner or later, when I've got a basic knowledge of what's been done before to *build* on, I'm going to get past that block. It's already well written. Then it's going to be original, with a new twist. I read with that day in mind.

But so are The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis.

I am still not convinced that in order to be considered well read, one must read a particular work. I would not consider a ten-year-old well read simply because she/he had read Harry Potter. If that ten-year-old had also read a substantial body of other literature I would be convinced.

There are countless books in the world. Only a few are or ever will be classics. An even smaller number are break-throughs, trend-setters, and defining works in the culture or in the genre. Today, Harry Potter is a trend setter, a defining work in the cluture, and a defining work in two genres: fantasy and young adult literature. Now, in 2004, I know no other book that can claim all of those things but please correct me if you think of one. I love Card. I love Asimov. I thought Tolkien was ok but one of those genre defining works one really ought to read if you write fantasy. Herbert and Wells are on my "to read" list.

Make no mistake, I am not well read. I have missed many books that I need to have read to be considered well read, even in a limited field such as scifi and fantasy. I'm working towards that. I actually feel that very few people are well read. Most people pretend. The truth is there are only so many hours in a day and for time constraints, if nothing else, most people will never be well read. Some will be, but I tend not to believe someone is well read under the age of about 50, or at least retain some measure of skepticism. By my own definitions, I will have to be about that old to get there. I still need to read the Bible in its entirety, not because I'm Christian, but because it outranks every other book on this planet as a defining cultural work. This thread didn't start out about what you have to read to be well read, though, or it would have topped my list as the #1 book. I'm not sure where Harry Potter falls, but definitely in the top 10.

There are no books you can read that make you well read in and of themselves. That owuld be ludicrous. In general, you don't have to read all of the thousands of books out there that you need to have sampled the majority of to be in that classification. But there are a few books, a few defining moments in culture and or genre, that you must have read or you have not made it to that point.

Now, like I said, from the way I define the term you have to be at least 50 to have gotten there. Other than that you can be "well read for a twenty-something" or the like. I'm not there. I'm not trying to be better than anyone else on this because I'm the first toa dmit I've got a long way to go.

BUt if I wrote YA novels. Heck, if I wrote fantasy novels, ths FIRST book on my list to pick up would hands down be the Hary Potter series. If I wrote YA fantasy and had missed it I would be ashamed of myself and slink off to a bookstore to buy it hoping no one saw me.

[This message has been edited by Christine (edited December 07, 2004).]

I agree absolutely.

Doesn't the very term "well read" imply that you have not only read a lot, but read well--that is, read books worth reading? And, although this may give the postmoderns out there fits, there has to be some objective standard of which books qualify you to be well read. If someone had read every Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Tom Swift, and Star Wars novel ever written by any author, they wouldn't be well read.

I REALLY wanted to jump in on this conversation about what constitutes well-read, as reading the posts above had me jerking about like a spastic, spluttering "But! But! How can you SAY that? Get your head out of your fundament!".

But.

No one is ever going to define a list of books that I will accept as a 'must read' in order to be 'well-read'. Not even me. Especially not me.

I think that the cornucopia (or however you spell it)of "public" school setting does have a lot to do with it's remoteness. It virtually guaruntees(forgive my horrible spelling) that the characters will have considerable amounts of free time in which they are not under the direct supervision of the staff. The image it gets across in books is basically college a couple of years earlier.

In this case, I don't really think they are.

I agree with Christine that if you want to write YA fantasy set in a boarding school, particularly an English boarding school, you must read at least some of Rowlings work. I don't agree that Harry Potter "is THE defining cultural work of our time." I also don't believe that it is necessary to have read any of Rowlings work to be considered well read (millions of humans were well read before those books were even written, you know, and REALLY BIG NUMBERS of people have been and will be well read without ever having read anything written in the English language at all).

I've actually read enough of Rowlings work to consider myself excused from the necessity of reading her books in their entirety. I've read enough to know that it isn't a breakthrough at all. And I know enough about the mechanics of publishing and marketing to realize that, far from being a pure boon to literature and literacy, Harry Potter is a serious challenge to both.