Friday: Recycled content

Don't worry, this isn't going to be a post about something I've already talked about.
Today I'm actually going to post about recycled content.

When you read a label that says "80 percent recycled content", you think, "Yay! It's environmental!" But what if you read that in a book review?
That was the title of a review on Amazon.com. I'm reading the book ("Juggler of Worlds" by Larry Niven and Edward Lerner) in question, so I've decided to write about that today.

What, exactly, is a book with "recycled content"? In my case, it's a book with certain plot points that have been used before, in short stories (and occasionally other books) by the same author. As in, the actual plots of the short stories. In LN's defense, he did write those parts from different perspectives than the first time, which seemed to change it enough, plus the way he fit all those different plots into a whole was interesting. But still, it's recycled.

When I heard it the first time, two thoughts came to mind: "That's kinda lazy", and "So am I supposed to read all those stories first?" That's my question today: would a new reader want to read the original stories first, and then the book? Or just the book itself?

On one hand, if you just read the book you get the end result either way, and with less effort because most of the plot points are shortened. But that way you probably won't want to read the stories afterward, because the endings have already been spoiled. And not just that: since the plot is condensed, it's not as full and interesting in the book as it would have been in the story.

On the other hand, if you read the stories first, then the book won't be so interesting. And, again, since all the side-plot things will be shortened, it won't be as cool to read as it is in the story.

I think most LN readers ended up reading the stories first, just because they were published a long time before the book. Since I'm new, I actually had the choice. What did I do? I only read some of the short stories. So that way it's only 20-40 percent recycled content, and yet I know the kind of thing I'm missing. So if I'm interesting in something, I can go look for the short story to get the full version.

So, I suppose in the end it depends on how dedicated you are. What would you do? What if you didn't have the choice of a mix? (If I didn't, I'd probably read all the short stories first, but that's just because I'm a fan of the author.)

This post was freakishly hard to write for some reason. I guess I'm not in a writing mood today. Oh well, I've finally got it out of my head! Thanks, as always, for reading. Bye!