Talk:October (novel)

Notability tag

It was suggested by an editor that this novel is not notable. I believe it is. It has just been released and the reviews are extraordinarily positive. I do not want to add overmuch summary of the plot yet as the book is so new.

The author has won the 2013 Windham–Campbell Literature Prize and the Yale citation reads in part: "Zoë Wicomb’s subtle, lively language and beautifully crafted narratives explore the complex entanglements of home, and the continuing challenges of being in the world."

It is my assessment after reading the book and reading all thee reviews of the book that this meets the notability standards.Kmccook (talk) 13:26, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

I agree. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 15:54, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

Well, so here's the thing about Wikipedia articles: they don't rely on how we feel or what we think about subjects; they rely on what we can prove (so to speak) about what other sources say about subjects. That is, a book can feel absolutely groundbreaking to me, but unless I can show that newspapers or reviewers also thought it was something special, Wikipedia can't just rely on my judgment of the book. So to be solidly above the bar for notability that Wikipedia requires, the article is going to need more discussion of the real-world context of the book in it. Right now, the article says, "The book is about X." Notability will be much clearer when it can also say "...and here's what various reviewers, journals, news articles, etc say about the fact that the book is about X." If no one, or very few people, have said anything about it so far, then it's probably not notable at the moment (though it very well might be when those people do write about it, and yes, there absolutely can be a cultural/bias component to what topics those sorts of sources choose to write about). Have important critics discussed or rated October? Has the book itself won any prizes? Are there news articles about October being groundbreaking, interesting, recommended, etc? If so, these things should be discussed in the article so that it constitutes more than a plot summary. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 16:19, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

This is what I do for work as a librarian--review books, look at book reviews, select books. It's more than a "feel." But as reviews come in I will add assessments. My point has been that Wikipedia permits all kinds of lesser books to have their own pages--Danielle Steel's Family Ties or James Patterson's Honeymoon which do not seem to be held to the same standards of notability. This I do not understand.Kmccook (talk) 16:29, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

The criteria for whether we have an article about a book (fiction or nonfiction) are here. I would think any works by Steel or Patterson or other perennially bestselling authors of massmarket genre fiction come under criterion 5, while other criteria (particularly 2) may justify this one. Daniel Case (talk) 16:54, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

If I were to go and AfD five novels by males with fewer refs, would I be acting "pointy". And would there be a rush to their rescue by lots of guy members of the community? Just another way the "gap" makes a difference. (As an inclusionist, of course, I wouldn't do that unless perhaps the books were total self-promoted trash with no refs at all.) In any case, finding and adding more refs would help. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 17:28, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

At the very least the Cussler book articles ought to be tagged as {{unreferenced}} or {{refimprove}} where applicable. Maybe nominating them would or wouldn't be pointy, but it would probably spur people to improve them in the process.

Editors, whether they do newpage patrol or not, need to remember that just because notability isn't asserted in an article, even a substub, does not mean there's no notability to assert. Daniel Case (talk) 19:28, 22 July 2014 (UTC)