Fiction Titles Research Articles

Translating English Fiction Titles and Cinema-TV Works Headlines into Arabic: Towards Localization Orientation

Translating English Fiction Titles and Cinema-TV Works Headlines into Arabic: Towards Localization Orientation

Love on the Rocks: Lighthouses in Literature as Gendered Geographies of Love

The lighthouse has long been a familiar setting for stories of love, conflict, and epiphany. That isolated tower on the clifftop brims with symbolic possibility and sometimes cliché, positioning it as a site of gendered love, with popular fiction titles embedding the trope of the contained world revolving, like the lit lamp, around the male authority. But the lighthouse also has an explicit historical situatedness. The nineteenth century British lighthouses, in particular, were seen as outposts of empire. They are immovable inscriptions of the outlines of islands, the edges of continents – the imprint of colonisation on country. And they are often seen as male domains. In the popular imagination, a lighthouse is much more than its function. Does recent historical fiction perpetuate or subvert what we think we know about lighthouses and the people who populated them? How does it portray the officially gendered roles and intense relationships of women characters? How might historical novels set in settler colonies recognise the specific meaning of the lighthouse as a marker of imperial authority? And how do we read the lighthouse and its place in the imagination as a geography of gender and love?

Exploring the sociotechnical system of Chinese internet literature online forums: a social network analytical approach

PurposeChinese internet literature (CIL) platforms afford freedom for creative expression and opportunities for direct interactions between writers and fans and among fans. Enabled by these platforms' technological and commercial arrangement, a new form of literary production and consumption has emerged, the most significant of which is the role of fans participation. A social network analysis of the interaction patterns in online fan communities was conducted to investigate fan communication activities at scale. Of particular interest is how the socio-technical system of the site influences its network topology.Design/methodology/approachOnline forums for 10 popular fiction titles in Qidian, the leading CIL platform, were analyzed. Social networks were constructed based on a post–reply–reply threaded discussion structure. Various aspects of fan interactions were analyzed, including number of replies per post, post length and emerging network patterns.FindingsSimilarities in network topology shared by CIL fan forums and other online communities, such as small-world and scale properties, were discovered; however, distinct network dynamics were also identified. Consistent with previous findings, writers and moderators, along with a few highly ranked fans, occupied the central positions in the network. This was due to their social roles and the nature of their posts rather than, as the conventional explanation goes, preferential attachment.Originality/valueThe findings demonstrate how community-specific circumstances and norms influence interaction patterns and the resultant network structure. It was revealed that in the CIL sites, the users adopted the technologies in unexpected ways. And the resulting network topology can be attributed to the interplay between the sites' official arrangement and users' adaptive tactics.Peer reviewThe peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-11-2021-0596.

The mutability of fiction descriptors: the evolution of ‘pulp’

The term ‘pulp’ is rarely used in library cataloguing as a descriptor for fiction and does not appear in indexing vocabularies such as the Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms (LCGFT). In contrast, it is used extensively as a tag for large numbers of fiction titles in social cataloguing sites such as LibraryThing and Goodreads. We explore the reasons for the library world’s reluctance to adopt the term, with reference to the history of the term and the fiction it represents. We then report on a comparative thematic analysis of LibraryThing user reviews of ‘old’ and ‘new’ pulp, uncovering an evolution in the way the term has been used. Its more positive usage in contemporary descriptions suggests that pulp’s exclusion from LCGFT should be reviewed.

A Statistical Overview of Bibliodiversity in the Latvian Book Market

This paper offers a statistical overview of bibliodiversity in the Latvian book market—a small language market in terms of the number of Latvian language users and home for people from varied ethnic and national backgrounds. Diversity of the book output during 1991–2020 is analysed in terms of languages and general categories in which books are published, shares of literary genres in fiction publishing, shares of original and translated fiction titles, languages from which fiction titles are translated, as well as the background of fiction authors who have been translated and published in Latvia.

Representation of the concept “human” in the English fiction titles (on the material of zoonyms and phytonyms)

Representation of the concept “human” in the English fiction titles (on the material of zoonyms and phytonyms)

What Is Genre? How Do We Talk About Fiction?: Assessing Complementary Schemas and Approaches

Describing fiction is notoriously problematic. One aspect of this is the designation “genre” which can mean different things to different communities involved in the book trade, such as publishers/authors, readers, and information professionals. Using sources created by all three (i.e., ProQuest and New York Times Book Review, Library of Congress bibliographic records, GoodReads categories, New York Public Library catalog user-supplied content, and Amazon categories), aboutness and isness metadata are harvested for two novels. Ultimately, we find that although the vocabularies each have different purposes and intended audiences, the compilation of terms from different sources presents a coherent image of a title. Future work in knowledge organization (KO) should consider how best to harness information from multiple sources in providing library users with a more robust perspective on fiction titles.

An Automated Approach to Describing Fiction: A Methodology to Use Book Reviews to Identify Affect

Subject headings and genre terms are notoriously difficult to apply, yet are important for fiction. The current project functions as a proof of concept, using a text-mining methodology to identify affective information (emotion and tone) about fiction titles from professional book reviews as a potential first step in automating the subject analysis process. Findings are presented and discussed, comparing results to the range of aboutness and isness information in library cataloging records. The methodology is likewise presented, and how future work might expand on the current project to enhance catalog records through text-mining is explored.

Семантические и грамматические особенности заглавий художественных произведений

The study aims at considering the title as a dicteme of a special kind, representing the dictemic name of the text, with its special semantic and structural features. The article analyzes the XVII-XX centuries British fiction titles structural and semantic features and their role in the problem of linking the title with the text content. Such organic aspect of the title complex structural-semantic unity problem as the translation adequacy and equivalence problem is studied in the article as well. Scientific novelty of the research is the consideration of a large form fiction title based on the conceptual apparatus of the dictemic text structure theory. The attained results have shown that the title requires the macro context of the entire work for its complete implementation since the author’s intention in the title is disclosed retrospectively. In different centuries, the fiction authors used different means of expressing their attitudes and ideas in their masterpieces’ titles.

Victorian Fiction Beyond the Canon, edited by Daragh Downes and Trish Ferguson

Reviewed by: Victorian Fiction Beyond the Canon ed. by Daragh Downes and Trish Ferguson Grace Moore (bio) Victorian Fiction Beyond the Canon, edited by Daragh Downes and Trish Ferguson; pp. ix + 273. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, £79.99, $99.99. The aim of Daragh Downes and Trish Ferguson’s Victorian Fiction Beyond the Canon is, according to its editors, to explore what has become the Victorian hinterland. In setting out, they make it clear that many of the forgotten novels under consideration in this fascinating collection were bestsellers in their day. John Sutherland, whose slightly wistful afterword sits at the end of this collection, has suggested that more than sixty thousand fiction titles were published during Queen Victoria’s reign. As Downes and Ferguson point out in their introduction, at a generous estimate there are perhaps two hundred Victorian novels that today form our sense of canonical works, but that figure—amazingly—represents only 0.5 percent of the works published. While registering the daunting nature of the challenge they have set for themselves and their contributors, Downes and Ferguson seek to uncover the reasons why some works endure while others—equally popular in their day—have faded into oblivion. In embarking, they offer the humbling reminder that “to be an expert in Victorian fiction is—there is no getting around it—to be an expert in a mortifyingly small sample of Victorian fiction. To make broad critical pronouncements about ‘Victorian fiction’ and even many of its subgenres, is to take troublingly strong resort to synecdoche and extrapolation” (2). Indeed, this collection invites Victorian scholars to reevaluate not only the field itself, but also our sense of ourselves in relation to it. Downes and Ferguson are frank about the difficulties that arise when attempting to assess the popularity of Victorian fiction, noting that public libraries and less formal borrowing arrangements often skew our understanding of a novel’s circulation and reach. They are also attentive to the forces that shaped individual works and broader careers. The volume includes a mix of essays from luminaries including John Sutherland and [End Page 140] Michael Slater, to those at the beginnings of their careers. Each chapter offers an engrossing case study, although hovering over the collection as a whole is the reminder of just how much work remains to be done. Downes and Ferguson write of the possibilities of “‘random’ encounters with the truly surprising, anomalous, outlier text,” celebrating the scholarly joy of wandering through a library of rare books and serendipitously happening upon a so-called lost work (12). For many of us, these happy moments of accidental discovery shape our interactions with supposedly forgotten texts, yet Downes and Ferguson point out that we might become more systematic in our attempts to uncover this vast lost world. While the assertion that “Victorian Studies as a whole remains a surprisingly conservative field” is debatable, Downes and Ferguson make an excellent case for reinvigorating our professional curiosity by roaming far beyond the canon (12). They also point to pleasant surprises along the way. Particularly satisfying in this regard is Christopher Pittard’s observation that the manuscript of Silas K. Hocking’s million-selling novel Her Benny (published 1878 in serial format, 1879 in volume form) was “drafted on the back of 305 identical leaflets from the Burnley district of the United Methodist Free Churches” (152). This wonderful discovery aside, Pittard makes a good case for Her Benny as a work that deserves our attention, in part for its enduring regional popularity. As Pittard notes, when he consulted the novel’s manuscript at Liverpool’s Central Library, readers around him instantly recognized the work and spoke of their childhood memories of reading the novel. Pittard draws from this experience to argue that Hocking exemplifies a “paradoxically visible example of obscurity” and in so doing reminds readers that we need not always dig deeply to find the bestsellers that posterity forgot (157). Each contributor to Victorian Fiction Beyond the Canon has made every effort to situate their rediscovered novel(s) within a broader cultural and literary context. One of the most successful pieces in this respect is Downes’s own contribution, which uses...

Jane Beats Them All: Price Formation and Financial Returns to Investing in Rare Books

I report historical prices and estimate financial returns to investing in rare books. My sample consists of 25 fiction titles recommended by Clifton Fadiman in his 1960 Lifetime Reading Plan. Relying on prices realized at American and British auction houses between 1975 and 2018, I use hedonic regressions to estimate the average rate of return to each of the 25 titles. Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice tops the returns to all other titles. I then construct for the entire sample of rare books price indices based on various specifications with a view to identifying the most efficient way of computing rare book price indices for larger samples of books. Estimating the financial return to investing in rare books in general, I arrive for the boom period 1975-2007 at a real rate of return of about 4.6%, which exceeds similar estimates for investing in fine art. In a comparison with the returns in 1975-2007 of almost 9% from the US stock market, investing in rare books is justified only by substantial nonpecuniary returns.

The Impact of Local Literature on Foreign Libraries: A Bibliographic Evaluation of the Modern Greek Literary Generation of Last Decade

ABSTRACTThis article presents a bibliographic survey relating to the number of titles in Modern Greek fiction owned by libraries worldwide. Using extracted metadata, mainly via the OCLC WorldCat database and supplemented with records via other popular catalog aggregators (Karlsruhe Virtual Catalog), the most popular 100 titles of the last decade (2008–2018) are ranked by number relative to total holding libraries. Demographic factors, including age and gender, are considered in order to define particular characteristics of the current generation of Greek writers. A special part of the article is devoted to libraries in the US and Australia that have developed the largest library collections of non-translated, Modern Greek fiction titles.

Exploring Reader-Generated Language to Describe Multicultural Literature

How do readers describe multicultural fiction works? While in library and information science (LIS) we have the language of appeal factorsand genre trendsto describe works of fiction, these linguistic choices may not be used by readers to describe their own responses and reactions to works that provide cultural affirmation of one’s own culture or exposure to learning different cultures. In this research, text mining processes are employed to harvest reader-generated book reviews and subsequently analyze the words readers use to describe award-winning multicultural fiction on the retailer site Amazon.com. Our goal with this study is to provide LIS professionals an insight into readers’ perspectives related to multicultural fiction. We describe our methodology of engaging in topic modeling as described by Jockers and Mimno (2013) as applied to multicultural fiction reviews. First, we explore the construction and processing of a corpus of reader reviews of multicultural fiction titles, then we model topics using a topic modeling toolkit to generate topics from these reviews. Through this analysis, we determine consistent terms used to describe multicultural fiction that can be used to indicate common reader experience and identify topics. Closing discussion reflects on whether librarians can use text mining of reader reviews to enhance their reader advisory services for readers seeking books that represent multiple and/or diverse cultures.

Blair: An interview with Lynn York

BlairAn interview with Lynn York Lynn York Could you briefly describe your press's history? Blair is a new, nonprofit press combining the lists of Carolina Wren Press and John F. Blair, Publisher. Judy Hogan founded Carolina Wren Press in 1976. Throughout its history, the Press has published authors not only from North Carolina and the South at large, but from all over the country, with works of poetry, nonfiction, and fiction for adults. Poet Andrea Selch directed the Press from 2003 until 2015, strengthening CWP's national reputation through its poetry series with titles that include L. Lamar Wilson's Sacrilegion (2013) and Evie Shockley's a half-red sea (2006). Selch also established the Bakwin Award for Writing by a Woman. In 2013, Robin Miura joined Selch as Co-director of the Press and served as Director from 2015-2017. Miura, an independent editor who has previously worked at Press 53 and Oxford University Press, came to the Carolina Wren to strengthen its fiction list. Together with Board Member Lynn York, she established the Lee Smith Novel Prize, awarded biannually to a work of Southern fiction. In 1954, John F. Blair published his first book, Whispering Pines, by John Henry Boner. This volume of poetry by a native of Salem, North Carolina, was first published by Brentano Brothers in 1883. Long out of print, Whispering Pines became the first in a long line of poetry books that Blair published—not for commercial success, but for the pure love of the poetic word. Along with poetry books came more commercially successful titles about coastal North Carolina, including the perennial best-selling Judge Charles Whedbee books of folklore. Through the years, literary gems that sold minimal copies were published alongside popular cookbooks and travel guides. Since that first book, John F. Blair, Publisher, has published several hundred other titles. After Blair's death in 1986, his family decided to continue his legacy. Carolyn Sakowski, President, and Blair family member Margaret Couch led the enterprise for several decades, publishing award-winning fiction and nonfiction, continuing the mission of providing amazing books to North Carolinians, Southerners, and increasingly, the entire United States. On January 1, 2018, Sakowski and Couch retired and sold the titles of John F. Blair to the nonprofit Carolina Wren Press. In light of the legacy and reputation of John F. Blair, the new press took on the name Blair. We have recently grown, taking on three new full-time employees working to bring new, varying voices to the public through quality, literary books. The renowned poet, Ada Limón, has also joined our ranks as the new Poetry Editor and current judge for the 2019 Wren Poetry Prize. Though we are a small operation, we continue to work and grow. How would you characterize the work you publish? We strive to publish quality writing, focusing on authors and subjects historically neglected by mainstream publishers, including women, people of color, authors with disabilities, and LGBTQ+ authors. True to our roots in North Carolina, we look to the many voices of the South— and beyond—as sources of work and inspiration. The new Blair organization combines the strengths of its predecessors. Like John F. Blair, we offer new and backlist books about culture, history, travel, and food in the Southeastern US and beyond. Strengthened by this backlist, Blair also continues to expand the mission of Carolina Wren Press, publishing additional literary fiction titles of both national and regional interest, with a focus on new and diverse voices. Who is your audience, and in what ways are you trying to reach them? As a press dedicated to publishing diverse voices from both the South and beyond, we try to reach a wide audience within our local community and beyond. Our audience consists of any and all interested in Southern history, culture, and food as well as those interested in poignant, wrenching stories, novels, and poems that speak to different human experiences. We continue to try reaching our audience through book reviews and giveaways; various author events in bookstores and festivals and conferences across the nation; and through marketing promotions on our website and social media. We also provide a frequent...

What is Australian Popular Fiction?

Australian popular fiction is the most significant growth area in Australian trade publishing since the turn of the twenty-first century, yet it has received little sustained scholarly attention (Fletcher et al. 5). Over the last two decades, the rhetoric of the decline of literary fiction has become a recurring theme in cultural journalism (see, for example, Knox; Mordue; Neill; Sullivan; Williamson). But while the fate of literature prompts elegiac reflection, Australian popular fiction is a success story hidden in plain view. Nationally and internationally, critically and commercially, Australian popular fiction titles have performed strongly over the twenty-first century. For example, in 2010 Peter Temple’s Truth won Australia’s most prestigious literary award, the Miles Franklin, following German, Swedish, US, and UK prizes for this and his earlier novels; in 2015 Australian fantasy writer Angela Slatter won a World Fantasy Award for her short story collection, The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings ; and in 2017 romance novelist Stephanie Laurens appeared on the New York Times Best Seller List for the 38th time with Lord of the Privateers . As we have shown elsewhere, the three major genres of crime, fantasy and romance are not just growing by output, but driving change in the post-digital publishing economy (Driscoll et al., ‘Publishing Ecosystems’). This special issue is part of our larger research agenda to address the gaps in knowledge about this thriving sector of literary culture, both in Australia and internationally.

The Eight Percent Problem: Authors of Colour in the British Young Adult Market (2006\u20132016)

The conversations surrounding ‘diversity’ in the Anglo-American book publishing industry have increased in recent years, and often centre around the lack of representation of publishing professionals, authors, and characters of colour. This paper contextualises these discussions within British YA, a market that has grown in popularity since 2006. Through an analysis of the corpus of all Young Adult fiction titles published, in the UK, during the 2006–2016 period, this paper will investigate what percentage of the titles were created by authors of colour; to determine whether this number has risen over the years, and to pinpoint any patterns and anomalies that emerge over the time period.

The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and Man Booker International Prize Merger

There is a dramatic imbalance of cultural output in the global publishing industry. English-language publishers are disinclined to translate and publish foreign language books as a result of the popularity of English-language books and the high costs of translation. Three per cent is the oft-quoted number that indicates that foreign fiction in translation makes up only a minimal part of the UK book trade. This lack of bibliodiversity may have serious cultural consequences. There are thus several national and international initiatives to promote the publication and cultural capital of works in translation in order to reach a wider audience. Book prizes are generally understood to have a positive impact on the discoverability of a title and consequent sales; winning authors, as well as those on the longlist and shortlist of prestigious prizes, can expect a significant boost in sales of the books in question. But in a culture where translated foreign fiction titles represent only a small percentage of books published, does this phenomenon extend to prizes for translated foreign fiction? This paper explores the—audience-building and sales-generating—impact of the UK’s most prestigious award for literature in translation, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize (IFFP), in particular in light of the prize’s recent merger with the Man Booker International Prize (MBIP), and speculates whether this may help with the ‘three per cent problem’.

Viivi’s New Kamiks by N. Mike

Mike, Nadia. Viivi’s New Kamiks, illustrated by Ali Hinch, Inhabit Education, 2016. This delightful book is part of Iqaluit-based Inhabit Education’s Nunavummi Reading Series, a made-in-Nunavut approach to a levelled reading program which aligns to the curricular outcomes in Nunavut but also fits with more southerly educators’ needs to infuse daily activities with multiple perspectives including Inuit. The series is appropriate for lower elementary grades and provides both fiction and non-fiction titles ranging from level 4 (late kindergarten) to level 11 (grade 3) which build on readers’ skills as they move progressively from simple sentences to more complex short stories and informational texts. All titles in the series are written from an Arctic, and most often an Inuit, perspective. The titles are also levelled using the widely accepted Fountas & Pinnell Text Level Gradient to grade guided reading materials.Viivi’s New Kamiks, a Level 9 in the series, follows Viivi as she prepares for her ninth birthday. She is very excited and wants a pair of kamiks, traditional Inuit caribou and seal skin boots still worn in the North. Viivi needs to show her parents that she is responsible enough to own a pair of kamiks, as they require care. Can Viivi prove to her parents that she can care for these beautiful boots?This and other titles in the Nunavummi Series would be excellent additions to all elementary school libraries as well as school-based levelled reading programs. Highly recommended: 4 out of 4 starsReviewer: Debbie FeisstDebbie is a Public Services Librarian at the H.T. Coutts Education Library at the University of Alberta. When not renovating, she enjoys travel, practicing her Spanish language skills and the Edmonton amateur music scene.

Translation of English fiction titles into Arabic

Translation of English fiction titles into Arabic

Intersectionality in LGBT fiction

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to evaluate characters and scenarios reflecting varied lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) identities in fiction in two library acquisitions platforms: a traditional library vendor (Coutts’ OASIS) and a freely available platform for self-published eBooks (Smashwords).Design/methodology/approachUsing intersectionality as an approach, 200 LGBT fiction titles were examined in OASIS and in Smashwords with the goal of assessing the characters and scenarios represented. The hypothesis was that Smashwords’s titles, because they were self-published, would include more variety.FindingsThe titles in both platforms were roughly similar, with a pronounced focus on white gay males.Research limitations/implicationsThis research relied on limited metadata provided in each system. Additional research should evaluate the quality of the titles and the nature of the publishers.Practical implicationsAlthough the Smashwords eBook platform provides access to eBooks, a convenient way to consume genre fiction, the titles available do not represent more diverse LGBT identities than the titles available through a traditional library vendor platform, OASIS.Originality/valueAs libraries struggle with practical implications for selecting materials representing varied viewpoints, the question of self-published or indie eBooks has emerged as a potential option for providing these perspectives. The findings of this study indicate, however, that instead of reflecting a more diverse readership, the sample of Smashwords LGBT fiction eBooks examined largely resembles the materials that a library vendor provides.