Comparing Books to Books

This thread was actually triggered by the Finding Other Books Like Yours for Giveaways thread, in which @Marissa_Doyle said: "...Aren't there any books that might not be EXACTLY like yours, but similar in setting, mood, or type of plot?"

I found myself wondering. If a book is ONLY similar in terms of setting or mood or type of plot or writing style how similar are they really? If someone told you book x is like book y, and you discovered that it had only setting or only mood or only plot or only writing style in common, would you be disappointed?

If you had to pick just one aspect of a book to get more book recommendations from, which one would you pick?

What if it was two out of four?

Is there another aspect of books we should be taking into consideration besides the four I already came up with?

Theme or message? If someone likes book X, I'll recommend book Y to them not necessarily because it's the same story about the same subject, but because it has a similar sentiment/atmosphere towards the topic; basically, it reinforces what the other one was saying without covering the same ground.

This seems to be a question of whether or not one book is ripping another off. In this instance, let's take the art of "genre," the conventions therein and the act of breaking them. Let's take a novel series that pioneered fantasy: Lord of the Rings, and a novel series that follows in many of the tropes while adding something new: Inheritance. LOTR pretty much cemented worlds of elves, men and dwearves while Eragon seems to rip it off. However, Eragon's dragon-rider relations and the magical powers within the system are more intriguing than other dragon-human stories like How to Train Your Dragon (or even monster battlers, for that matter). Thus, Inheritance saved itself from obscurity with that beautiful subplot and the fact that a 15-year-old wrote it. However, it's plain to see that the characterization, plotting and world-building are all directly taken from this other classic franchise, so can we really say that Inhereitance is just as creative as LOTR?

>2 Cecrow: "Theme or message"

Ah, good addition!

Maybe audience, too? We might not want to recommend books intended for adults based on a book intended for children, even if it has a similar message, mood, etc.

(Although, just for the record, I read books for adults starting fromwhen I was only seven. Not "adult books" those made me go "ew". But stuff like The Lord of the Rings and Tarzan.)

>3 MythButton:
I once admitted that I had created a world with elves and dwarves in a certain online writing forum once, and was told to go away and play somewhere else. But I have read and enjoyed a lot of books with dwarves and elves, and I think it is unfair to say they are all "ripping off" Tolkein.

For example the Glen Cook series that starts with Sweet Silver Blues is set in a world with elves and dwarfs. But it has essentially nothing else in common with the Lord of the Rings.

in Sweet Silver Blues the mood is slightly-tongue-in-cheek-noir, the plots are hard-boiled detective, the setting is urbanized, and along with the elves and dwarves there are a great many other creatures that are not culled from Tolkein... werewolves, pixies, vampires, super-fat psionic zombies... The message isn't "little people can achieve great good" its more "even though life sucks you gotta keep slugging".

The truth is that Cook is much more obviously borrowing from mystery writer Nero Wolfe than he is from Tolkein. (This doesn't bother me, I'm a Nero Wolfe If I had to do a one sentence description I would say "hard boiled-detective fiction set in a D&D-esque world."

Is that creative? In Cook's case I say yes, very creative. (In Eragon's case I'm not qualified to judge--I haven't read it.)

But my question how similar are they? If someone loves The Lord of the Rings, would you recommend Eragon to them? The setting is very similar, the plots a bit different, the writing styles are not equivelent, the audience might be different too?

I wouldn't be recommending Sweet Silver Blues based on the Lord of the Rings, or vice versa. I would probably want to match at least the plot or the attitude/mood.

(For the record, I also have created fantasy worlds without elves or dwarves.)

>5 LShelby: For the record, I only said Eragon seems to be ripping it off. I know there are stories unlike LOTR with those species, but there are some undeniable similarities between LOTR and Inheritance otherwise.

>6 MythButton:
I believe you.

But do you think those similarities are enough that you could reasonably recommend to Inheritance readers that they read LOTR, and to LOTR readers that they try Inheritance?

At least, that's the question I'm trying to get at, except that I'd probably recommend to anyone who reads fantasy that they at least try LOTR because it is one of the classics of the genre.

Maybe the question would be clearer if we used two books with similarities to LOTR, rather than LOTR?

Maybe. Of course, most of what I know of fantasy comes from shorter children's novels and movies. That's why I'm trying to blow through the Inheritance series quickly. Having said that, I started reading LOTR and Eragon at the same age and around the same time, and I only finished the first LOTR. At the time, Tolkien was a bit rambly for me to finish the rest of the series. Now that I'm speed-reading, I have less of a problem with that.

If someone read LOTR, and wanted to go somewhere next, I'd give them some perspective to help them decide. That was the foundation of the genre, and for years afterwards we were inundated with copies of that in paler form. Some authors strove to go outside of the lines, e.g. contrast The Sword of Shannara (LOTR photocopy) with Lord Foul's Bane (striving to be different), both bestseller fantasy novels from 1977. The first strong turn I witnessed was in reading The Dragonbone Chair (1988) which still had all the trappings but began introducing grimdark and shades of gray. Since then I believe we've moved on to a new generation in the genre that has broken free of the old tropes or only revisits them in order to turn them upside down and inside out (as Sanderson so loves to do.) Some fantasy today still reads a bit like throwbacks, but Martin's A Game of Thrones has set a whole new model for realism in fantasy that nods to the past while creating a new template for the future.

In other words ... simply saying "if you liked that, you'll probably like this" doesn't cut it. It requires providing context (and my paragraph above is far from complete; there's many sub-genres) so the reader has a broader view of the genre and then letting them decide where they'd like to swim: more classics of fantasy, stages that moved us forward, or where we are today?

>9 Cecrow: LTOR ... That was the foundation of the genre

I wouldn't say so. "A" foundation, sure. But the sword & sorcery pulp forms from Howard, Moore, Leiber, and others were fully independent of Tolkien, and they've had at least as great an influence on the synthesis that has become 21st-century fantasy.

I also think that Dunsany's influence on Tolkien goes too unremarked by those holding up Tolkien's fantasy as utterly groundbreaking. Many later fantasy writers owe much to Dunsany and MacDonald and hardly anything to Tolkien.

If someone read LOTR, and wanted to go somewhere next, I might suggest Tanith Lee's Wars of Vis. I don't think anyone would suggest that it is Tolkien-derivative, but it offers a similar scope and scale (minus the philology) in its own well-realized fantasy world.

>8 MythButton:
Most of my children also found Tolkien "rambly". But they don't regret to having been introduced to him. They say it makes them feel "cultured'. :)

(... I was a bit taken aback when my daughter wanted to watch an Indiana Jones movie to fell cultured though. I chuckled a bit and then told her to watch Raiders and then Crusade. After she watched Raiders she told me that she now understood why I laughed, "but Mom, this is part of our culture. That character and also the music: movie soundtracks are the main 'classical' music genre of our era. When people in the future are taking history of music classes like the one I took in college, I think the Indiana Jones theme, and the Imperial march from Star Wars will be on the listening list".)

But none of that has anything to do with the supposed topic -- I can get a bit "rambly" myself. ::rueful::

I used to read a lot of epic fantasy as a child. But grimdark does nothing for me, alas.
So nowadays I often have an easier time finding stuff I like on the children's shelves.

So I would like to offer as a thought experiment:
Is Harry Potter actually more like LOTR than Game of Thrones is?

>11 LShelby:

Harry Potter is like {The Hobbit - The Lord of the Rings} in that (if read in that sequence) both move (Rowling more gradually) from a voice addressing children to one addressing adults (or in Rowling's case, near-adults).

The whole "readers grow up with Harry" gimmick was brilliant and commercially productive, but I think it eventually created some trouble for precocious readers (for whom Harry grew up much faster than they did), and may eventually undermine the durability of the series' attraction.

>9 Cecrow: "if you liked that, you'll probably like this" doesn't cut it."

I agree, and yet it is the basis upon which most recommendations to strangers seem to be made.

Also, I want something to cut it, if that makes any sense. It would be nice not to start reading so many books only to put them down 30 pages later saying "there is nothing in here that I am actually enjoying". (I tried my first one of the new recommendations yesterday, and it was a hit. But the second recommendation in that genre was a book my husband sent back to the library after attempting, without even waiting for me to give it a try, because he was that sure I wouldn't like it.)

So I'm wondering how many people actually like or dislike mysteries because somebody is murdered, fantasies because they have magic or science fiction because it's set in space?

Are there many people like me who think that more nebulous things, like "can I sympathize with the protagonist's motivation, does the viewpoint character angst a lot, did it feel like the author was trying to wring every possible shred of emotion as he could out of the situation, and how 'hard' was the worldbuilding" are more important?

If I am not some anomaly and there are many out there who would appreciate knowing more about these sorts of things before picking a book up, is there a way to somehow get it into book blurb?
Book blurbs don't have a lot of space. :(

>12 paradoxosalpha:
I've been thinking about this.

I find it fascinating that you saw a correlation between Harry Potter and the Hobbit, when I saw one between HP and LotR.

I was thinking more on the lines of "little guy takes on big evil dude with the help from some friends".

But you saw that Harry Potter and the Hobbit were both coming-of-age type stories. And I now stop to ponder that I know a term for what you saw, but I don't know a term for what I saw.

Is there a term for stories where a little guy takes on a big evil dude with the help of some friends, that I'm overlooking?

If there isn't, why not?

>14 LShelby:

I wasn't talking so much about the "coming of age" for the protagonists as I was the way in which the prose style and subject matter matures with the reader.

>15 paradoxosalpha:
Like the Laura Ingalls Wilder "Little House" books?

Setting is huge, but also just 'feel' which is more nebulous and harder to describe. Of all the titles mentioned above only Shannon would I describe as similar to LoTR, and even then only very much with a 'Lite' appellation.

>16 LShelby:
Did the "Little House" books do that? I don't recall them so clearly.

>17 reading_fox: "above only Shannon would I describe as similar to LoTR, and even then only very much with a 'Lite' appellation"

I heard it postulated that the main difference between the original Conan books, and the subsequent Conan books by other authors, is that in the originals the setting felt more solid. "Like the setting existed out beyond the edges of the book" (I'm actually paraquoting, because I don't have access to the original to quote directly.)

This could be another case of the imitator feeling like a "Lite" version?

In the case of Conan, maybe the world did exist beyond the pages of the book in the author's head, but then when people are doing the sequels... they don't have access to the inside of the author's head, but only what was on the page.

The difference of what is in an author's head might be one of the nebulous factors contributing to "feel"?

"Setting is huge"
I'm not so sure settings are huge. Okay, no, I know they are huge, but they clearly are not the only way to go when comparing.

Of the genres as they currently exist: SF and Fantasy and Historicals are genres based on setting. Romance and Mystery are genres based on kind of plot. Horror and Comedy are genres based on mood.

What genres have I missed?

>18 paradoxosalpha:
Basically, the series is autobiographical, with each book in the series aimed at an audience of the same age as the author was at during the book. So Little House in the Big Woods is aimed at early readers, and Little House on the Prarie is a chapter book, and so on.

Although, I think I haven't read them all, so maybe the pattern breaks down later on. (It's been a looooong time since I read any of them.)

I think I should detail my criteria since this is the best place.

When I give a numerical rating to anything, I start by comparing it to other stories of its type. For example, comparing Godfather to Donnie Brasco is easy. The same applies to books. In the context of genre, I ask myself how invested I am in the aesthetic and the world involved in the aesthetic, which is one way to compare LOTR to Potter.

But this kind of thing takes practice. For example, my first Grisham in recent times was The Whistler, and I had no other legal dramas or crime novels to compare the story to, so I compared it to legal and crime stories I was familiar with in the shows and movies I've watched since my early teen years. I came to the concludion that some episodes of CSI Miami were more character-driven and unpredictable than The Whistler. But I plan on having more legal dramas to compare these books to. Grisham will be easier now that I have two of his books under my belt.

>21 MythButton:

This system makes a lot of sense.

Personally I was more invested in LotR's aesthetic, because Harry Potter's world never really made sense to me, and that really undermines this daughter of an engineer's ability to appreciate aesthetics.

Does that make LotR better even if I'm just judging on my own behalf? I do like it more, but there are at least two criteria where I think Harry Potter is better. This is probably why I have always choked over handing out ratings. There are too many potential criteria, I not only have to choose how each book rates on every criteria, but I also have to decide which criteria I consider more important. Urk!

I have been wondering if I could convince myself to rate stuff if I make the criteria I am using super basic. I saw someone posting elsewhere on LT a while back that they wished they could use a 4 star system, and someone suggested just leaving out stars they didn't want to use. Maybe I could start by dividing my reading into two piles. Enjoyed Enough to Finish, and Didn't Enjoy Enough to Finish. I have no problem assigning things to those two piles. Then I just have to figure out where to go from there. :)

Fetishizing English public schooling always made Harry Potter a hard pass for me.

>22 LShelby: You can only really decide that for yourself. To create an thoroughly objective way to define greatness is next to impossible.

Here's one criteria I came up with for an old conversation about what would possibly be the "objectively" best album ever, and we all had various criteria. Mine was simply a combination of multiple important factors: extremely high sales, Billboard history, reception among music communities on customized group charts and radio play. By this logic the most obvious choice would be Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd. Most agreed that, as the second highest selling album ever with a long-running Billboard history, lots of radio play and top ten positions on multiple community-driven album rating systems, that DSOTM was a good choice. HOWEVER, there is one very important criterion that I missed: are any of the tracks significantly weaker than the rest? Yes. Most agree that DSOTM has one very weak song: On the Run, which is played with Breathe on the radio but doesn't work on its own at all.

>23 paradoxosalpha: "Fetishizing English public schooling always made Harry Potter a hard pass for me."

It does seem like a not-good thing to be fetishizing, now that you mention it. I was sort of used to it already, because boarding school stories (although utterly foreign to how I was raised) were easy to find when I was growing up, and so they got slurped up with everything else. The thing that got me when I made my first attempt at Harry Potter was the Dursley's. (My sister's comment on that part of the book: "Roald Dahl did it better.") Once I was assured that they only appeared at the beginning, I attempted to continue, and found the books readable.

>24 MythButton: "HOWEVER, there is one very important criterion that I missed: are any of the tracks significantly weaker than the rest?"

That could be considered an important criterion if one were similarly rating series, wouldn't it?