Preparing the summaries on New Projects - Discussion?

Post by **TriciaG** » October 16th, 2012, 4:03 pm

You could plop one in from Wikipedia for group projects so that people know what the book is about, then take your time writing one for the catalog. (Has this been suggested already? I know there's been talk about letting the MC know if you've changed the summary...)

Sincerely,
One of the MC's who is very bad because she often uses Wikipedia verbatim in her summaries

Post by **icequeen** » October 16th, 2012, 5:51 pm

Because I am reading a series (Lives of the Queens of England), I wrote one summary, then change who the subjects are in that particular book. I am kind of doing that with The Pony Rider Boys series as well. I start it off the same as the others, then write a summary for that particular book. Of course, if some kind person offers to write a summary, I am more than willing to change the summary to their's. It hasn't happened yet, but I do hold out hope!

Post by **chocoholic** » October 16th, 2012, 6:07 pm

You know, I wonder sometimes how the LV convention of providing book descriptions got started in the first place. They don't do them at Gutenberg. Not that they aren't nice to have, you understand, I just wonder how it became standard.

Carolin · Post by **Carolin** » October 16th, 2012, 11:47 pm

Hobbit wrote:I'd like to suggest starting a stickied thread in the Need Help forum where those who don't want to write their own summaries can ask for somebody who knows the book to write one for them. There are some of us (like me) who love writing summaries and would be happy to help.

there used to be such a thread if i remember correctly. i dont have time to dig for it right now, but im sure it is here somewhere...

Post by **Rapunzelina** » October 17th, 2012, 12:05 am

Hobbit wrote:I'd like to suggest starting a stickied thread in the Need Help forum where those who don't want to write their own summaries can ask for somebody who knows the book to write one for them. There are some of us (like me) who love writing summaries and would be happy to help.

I think this is it: viewtopic.php?f=23&t=20207

and here's a related topic started by Carolin

viewtopic.php?f=23&t=36761

Carolin · Post by **Carolin** » October 17th, 2012, 12:22 am

i completely forgot about that thread

well, it could be helpful!

RuthieG · Post by **RuthieG** » October 17th, 2012, 12:25 am

It goes back a bit longer than that.

viewtopic.php?p=5385#p5385

Ruth

thistlechick · Post by **thistlechick** » October 17th, 2012, 10:03 pm

I like to use book reviews that were published around the same time as the book was originally published... gives a nice authentic feel. I usually find the book reviews by doing a search in Google Books for the title and adding the word "review" to the search.

Here are some examples:

http://librivox.org/calumet-k/
http://librivox.org/the-short-line-war-by-samuel-merwin-and-henry-kitchell-webster/
http://librivox.org/the-cinder-pond-by-carroll-watson-rankin/
http://librivox.org/girls-of-gardenville-by-carroll-watson-rankin/

Morlock · Post by **Morlock** » December 3rd, 2012, 7:20 pm

Cori wrote:I like quoting from the book -- where it says something relevant about the text itself. The text is public domain and so completely free to use. Wikipedia has a different Creative Commons licence, so even though we do attribute them, it's not public domain as such. I'd love it if all our books had a public domain summary, for consistency and also because Wikipedia tends to tell you the butler did it in the first line, and our summaries should be more enticing and mysterious than that.

HAHAHAHAHA!LOL!

The underlined bit has just left me in stitches! That's the laugh of the day and so true! Thank you.

But to add to the discussion more seriously, I've been looking over the suggestion list and seen a simple link to fill-in-the-blank book, which I am also guilty of. I've been re-thinking this a lot. I'm still on my "similar to l.m. montgomery" hunt and when a review refers simply to the subject, plot and so forth much is missing on the writing style. (It makes sense because it's harder to explain.)

Post by **alg1001** » December 4th, 2012, 6:14 am

thistlechick wrote:I like to use book reviews that were published around the same time as the book was originally published... gives a nice authentic feel. I usually find the book reviews by doing a search in Google Books for the title and adding the word "review" to the search.

Here are some examples:

http://librivox.org/calumet-k/
http://librivox.org/the-short-line-war-by-samuel-merwin-and-henry-kitchell-webster/
http://librivox.org/the-cinder-pond-by-carroll-watson-rankin/
http://librivox.org/girls-of-gardenville-by-carroll-watson-rankin/

That's an excellent idea, Betsie! I'm going to try that.