Having my Coffee #1

So - I'm going to stop debating now. With myself, I mean. Over the Story Siren/IMM thingie. It took me a while to figure it out, but I think the solution I found for myself is quite a good one.
...Here it comes...

Having My Coffee is a new weekly feature I will do on my blog. Something I do every Sunday afternoon is drinking a super-hot super-sweet cup of coffee and usually I go through magazines or blogs or something. Since I started this blog, though, I finished my IMM posts during that time so that I thought this would make a good feature. Having My Coffee will serve as my weekly outlet, I will pack all the random thoughts (about books) here and at the end you guys will find all the books I got the past week, what I plan to do in the following week etc.
Consider this your weekly (book-) gossiping, coffee date with me :)

What got my brain working this week was of course the stuff that's going on with the Story Siren. It seems like she copied content from other bloggers without mentioning that it was not her content (which is called plagiarism).
I do have a general problem with plagiarism. Not exactly the it's-so-mean-I-can't-support-her-anymore-kind, though. It's rather that I just don't get it. Literally. Without sarcasm. I'm not being snarky or anything. I just don't understand how you copy and paste (because that's what it is - basically- isn't it?) without noticing. Several times. I mean, I am actually afraid that this will happen to me at some point in my life because there were people before the Story Siren who plagiarised and said they didn't notice their mistakes and not only in the blogging world, either. Big influential academics have been caught plagiarising and I have not figured out yet how you do that without noticing. And what I have to do to prevent myself from doing it. I mean, do you really not notice it?

Then, of course, there is that other question that comes to your mind when everyone in the book blogging community suddenly has an opinion and takes action: What do you do about it? I'm a total newbie to blogging and no one who was directly affected by the affair even knows me or my blog, so it's not that a big deal what I do about it. But still. I think I developed something like my own stand in this discussion.
I believe that plagiarism is wrong, no doubt about that. Everyone who does something - whatever it is - will only fool themselves in the end if they copy it from someone else. It's not real, not your own thing and you cannot be proud of it. By plagiarising you don't accomplish anything.
I also believe in second chances, though. Which is why I came to the decision of not ignoring The Story Siren completely. I will continue reading her blog, following her on twitter, I will comment and participate in giveaways just as I used to. Not because she is such a huge blogger and I think that's why it's okay for her to ignore the rules, but because I like her blogs and her reviews and her taste of books and I think that an apology is an apology and no matter what it deserves a second chance. What I will not continue doing (as you can see right now) is her Meme "In My Mailbox". I won't do one of the other Memes that work as an alternative to IMM because I don't want to punish or support plagiarism.
Instead, I will do this mix of personal thoughts and blog/book organization.

And because this has been a pretty long post I will stop it now and wish you all a wonderful Sunday!

Books I got this week: