Winner of the Dystopian Blog Hop and Feature and Follow (19)

First of all, congrats to Sunny who won the Dystopian blog hop!

It's been a LONG week! So glad I'm almost to my day off!

Feature and Follow Friday is a blog hop hosted by Parajunkee and Alison Can Read

Here are the rules to the blog hop!
To join the fun and make new book blogger friends, just follow these simple rules:

• (Required) Follow the Follow My Book Blog Friday Hosts {Parajunkee & Alison Can Read}
• (Required) Follow our Featured Bloggers

• Put your Blog name & URL in the Linky thing. You can also grab the code if you would like to insert it into your posts.
• Grab the button up there and place it in a post, this post is for people to find a place to say “hi” in your comments and that they are now following you.
• If you are using WordPress or another CMS that doesn’t have GFC (Google Friends Connect) state in your posts how you would like to be followed
• Follow Follow Follow as many as you can, as many as you want, or just follow a few. The whole point is to make new friends and find new blogs. Also, don’t just follow, comment and say hi. Another blogger might not know you are a new follower if you don’t say “HI”
• If someone comments and says they are following you, be a dear and follow back. Spread the Love…and the followers
• If you’re new to the follow friday hop, comment and let me know, so I can stop by and check out your blog!

Q: Do you mind books with similar ideas to other books? Similar concepts, backgrounds, retellings or pulled-to-publish fanfic?

This is a good question. If the book is good and brings something new to the table, I'm okay with it. But I don't think anyone is entirely original these days. I love this quotation from Mark Twain.

'.....substantially all ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources, and daily used by the garnerer with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them; whereas there is not a rag of originality about them anywhere except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral calibre and his temperament, which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing. . . . It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a photograph, or a telephone, or any other Important thing-- and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite--that is all he did.

In 1868 I read Dr. Holmes's poems, in the Sandwich Islands. A year and a half later I stole his dedication, without knowing it, and used it to dedicate my "Innocents Abroad" with. Ten years afterward I was talking with Dr. Holmes about it. He was not an ignorant ass--no, not he; . . . and so when I said, "I know now where I stole, but who did you steal it from?" he said, "I don't remember; I only know I stole it from somebody, because I have never originated anything altogether myself, nor met anybody who had."
- Letter to Anne Macy. Reprinted in Anne Sullivan Macy, The Story Behind Helen Keller (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran, and Co., 1933), p.162.

Anyway, I tend to gravitate towards certain genres, such as sci fi and dystopian-- and they have similar elements. Even all YA books have certain elements that I lean towards. 

That said, if there is a copycat book, I absolutely detest that. At the same time, if I feel that the author brings really fresh and original ideas, I give brownie points for that, because it's so difficult to do right.

What do you guys think?

Current Giveaways
1. International Giveaway of signed copy of If I Lie by Corrine Jackson OR Three swag packs!
IF I LIE giveaway

2.  Interview and Giveaway with Clare Marshall, author of The Violet Fox, e-copy of The Violet Fox (INT)
Violet Fox Giveaway