Catching up on Classics (and lots more!) discussion

Yes, really weird! I was so curious, and couldn't find much with quick searches online, but I did find this one Goodreads reviewer who came to that conclusion and backs it up with some interesting details:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Sci-Fi feels less and less remote, doesn't it. This is too strange.

Also interesting that the GR page says it was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, which of course it wasn’t.

spoko wrote: "Also interesting that the GR page says it was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, which of course it wasn’t."

AI giving itself a pat on the back.

even the publisher "Viking Trade Press" seems to be a fake: the name is parasitic on the well- known big "Viking Books" (now part of Penguin, I think); it only exists on Instagram with 22 postings between February 5 and 10 - a few period photos, most without legend or comment - that's all.

The amazon page for the book is full of marketing trash, the glowing reviews written by "Verified" buyers. - I wonder whether amazon itself is behind the hoax?

It could be a trial balloon for a flood of AI-generated bot-authored "bestsellers". I'd like to puke at the thought of it.

and let's not forget that all our activities on GR - ratings, reviews, discussions - eventually can become raw material for AI-generated trash, including its marketing.

The author profile is weird and random. One is a prolific ghost writer. The other has a bachelor in engineering.

The publisher's address is for Poole Dorset, UK. I wonder if the address is fake too.

sabagrey wrote: "even the publisher "Viking Trade Press" seems to be a fake: the name is parasitic on the well- known big "Viking Books" (now part of Penguin, I think); it only exists on Instagram with 22 postings ..."

I have wondered how many school children have used our reviews as book reports, LOL.

I remember a philosophy teacher on YT saying that AI meant the end of teaching.

Behind most efforts to improve AI to beyond recognition are some of the most uncreative bosses ever.

I had thought that such people were restricted to the music (spotify) and movie industry. But books being written by AI really clashes with the cultural value that publishers ascribe to books.

sabagrey wrote: “and let’s not forget that all our activities on GR—ratings, reviews, discussions—eventually can become raw material for AI-generated trash, including its marketing.”

I’d say the reasonable bet is that all our activities already have been—and are, in an ongoing way—raw material for LLMs/AI. AI firms have been pretty transparent in their voracious appetite for more human-created text to feed into Large Language Models, and they’ve been scouring popular web forums for years in that pursuit—only more so in the very recent past. Reviews on GoodReads, and even most GR discussion groups (including this one), are entirely readable without even logging in, so of course they’re low-hanging fruit for that kind of enterprise.

(Bonus points for anyone who can accurately count the number of metaphors I mixed there.)

@spoko Aren't bonus points the tip of the iceberg? No prize for guessing how many metaphors I used.

There is a comedian - sorry can't think of his name - that gets AI to write songs for him. He will state the topic and genre. The comedian, a drummer, then videos himself playing along with the song. "sethdrums". He does try to come up with awful songs for comedic effect. You get what you ask for. Honestly, some are funny but I also think the lyrics are disturbing. If really written by AI, they show AI has a complete lack of respect for humanity - the physical aspects of the human condition.

For those of us who are in literary love with Shakespeare. Seems archaeological dig at medieval theatre may have discovered Shakespeare's dressing room.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1d...

Thank you for sharing this, Cynda. I find this kind of discovery so amazing.

GR's rando-recommendation just came up with this for me:
The Hawkline Monster

which sounds - er... interesting?
I'm not sure I've ever seen anything tagged with Gothic, Western, Horror, Fantasy and Humor before
does anybody know anything about this one?

Darren wrote: "GR's rando-recommendation just came up with this for me:
The Hawkline Monster

which sounds - er... interesting?
I'm not sure I've ever seen any..."


It's Brautigan, which for those who have read him is sort of genre unto himself. I suggest you read up on him to get a better idea of what I mean. He comes from San Francisco beat origins but his fame came with the explosion of counterculture in the 1960's where he was a representative celebrity.

Any Ray Bradbury fans?
My mother just casually mentioned that my grandma met him. Personally, I’m a huge fan. Fahrenheit 451 changed the way I will think about everything forever and I have loved everything else I have read by him.
I really hope she got something signed, I would have loved to have met him myself.

Lilly, I thought there was a perfection to The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. These bits and pieces published elsewhere were put together and shapes into an episodic novel that told truths about human nature

I have not yet read the Martian Chronicles but it’s on the list.
I enjoyed the Illustrated Man, I think a lot of those stories had potential to be novels or even films. Short stories should be appreciated, it’s amazing that he could pack that much detail and feeling into a few pages and still leave room for imagination. I also love the fact that the he utilizes a frame narrative; The stories are told within a story.

The frame of The Illustrated Man was a brilliant addition to package the diverse stories. The Martian Chronicles is likewise a framed compilation, unified by its table of contents as much as anything. It doesn’t contain all of Bradbury’s Mars stories, but there is a compilation that does.

For live stage, radio, television, and movie adaptations, scan way down the Wikipedia articles on the two books.

Thank you, that is helpful. I’ll have to see what has been adapted into movies/shows, I love comparing them to the books.

I know about the Fahrenheit 451 movie adaptation but have heard it was poorly done. I wish somebody would give it another try because I think that the story is important and needs to reach more than just readers.

The Veldt by Ray Bradbury might be my favorite short story of all time.

Robert Coover has passed at age 92. This one hits me because I studied his work as an undergraduate at Yale. I designed an independent study class in the American Studies major for myself, reading through much of the work of the brash young (mega)novelists: Coover, Pynchon, Barth, Gass, Gaddis.

For Coover newbies, I have a suggestion. Two, actually. The Universal Baseball Association (1968) is a dazzling early novel (and perfectly accessible even if you don’t know a thing about baseball). Pricksongs & Descants (1969) is an excellent story collection from the same time.

The Public Burning (1977), Coover’s huge, phantasmagoric, and scabrous novel about Nixon, is unforgettable but best tackled after those shorter works, I think. A very timely book in this election season.

I feel guilty (as I so often do) about not having kept up with Coover’s later work. I think that he suffered a diminution of attention because, to put it mildly, he was not afraid of sexual themes, and would venture into near-pornography. If he were French, no one would care, but in the US, that is still kind of a no-no.

Perhaps I can make amends by now reading Coover’s first novel, The Origin of the Brunists (1966), which I never got to, and its juggernaut 1,005-page sequel, The Brunist Day of Wrath (2014). This set is ALSO timely, dealing as it does with a cult.

Patrick wrote: "Robert Coover has passed at age 92. This one hits me because I studied his work as an undergraduate at Yale. I designed an independent study class in the American Studies major for myself, reading ..."

I am also feeling the loss of Coover. I had just happened to nominate his Huck Out West for another group's monthly read. I think you are correct in pointing out the issue with sex as a reason for his lack of popularity. But also his experimentation meant you weren't exactly be sure what you were going to get from him next. But I feel all the metafictionalists are being ignored to a degree of late, so Coover is not alone. Not having The Public Burning on our shelf irks me. It is one of my top ten of the 20th century and probably one of the boldest satires I have ever read. I will drop a not if we decide to read Huck Out West next month.

^ Great thoughts, I completely concur. Yes, the metafictionalists and other brash young writers who emerged from the 1950s to the 1970s seem to have fallen out of favor, with the exception of Pynchon who has a certain pop culture notoriety. I feel bad because I didn’t keep up with Pynchon or Barth either, after my college years, and I should go back to that well.

Fun story: I recently (June) adopted a pair of bonded kittens, boy and girl, from the local government animal agency here in Tlaxcala, Bienestar Animal. I became aware of the agency when they had their weekly Friday adoption fair in the parking lot at the local Wal-Mart, and I happened to be passing through. I didn’t take any animals that day, but I visited their facility the following week. They always have plenty of vaccinated and vet-reviewed animals available, and when they showed me this pair of two-month-old gray-and-white kittens which they didn’t want to separate, I was a goner. Subsequent sterilizations are free - indeed, any animal you bring in on a Monday morning, they will sterilize on the spot - so I returned for that in August, and they both came through it very well. 

I named them Tom and Sophie (Mexican versions Tomás and Sofía) after Tom Jones, in Henry Fielding’s 18th Century novel of the same name, and his sweetheart Sophia Western. Also thinking of Beatrix Potter’s Tom Kitten. I was tempting fate with the naming of Tom, and sure enough, he takes after both his namesakes and is a charming scamp and a rogue, with an ability to get into trouble that I haven’t experienced since my orange tabby Lucy was young. Tom will climb to the highest shelf and promptly knock everything down. He also has massive zoomie energy. Sophie joins in with him, but on her own she is much more demure - again, exactly like her namesake. 

So the count is now 12, four dogs and eight indoor cats, Lord help me. But actually the care is not difficult at all. What takes a bit more energy on my part is to be emotionally available to all of them. 

Patrick wrote: "^ Great thoughts, I completely concur. Yes, the metafictionalists and other brash young writers who emerged from the 1950s to the 1970s seem to have fallen out of favor, with the exception of Pynch..."

I had mentioned I would get back to you if the group read of Huck Out West by Robert Coover was selected as a group read. It has and will be the November selection for the group, 21st Century Literature. Feel free to join in if you wish.
https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...

Sam wrote: "Patrick wrote: "^ Great thoughts, I completely concur. Yes, the metafictionalists and other brash young writers who emerged from the 1950s to the 1970s seem to have fallen out of favor, with the ex..."

Thank you, sir!

A little humor:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/pic...

LOL @ Sam.

Sam wrote: "A little humor:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/pic..."

Very funny!

I feel that if I express my appreciation in writing for the books that I have read - and I feel appreciation for the vast majority of them - then I am putting out positive energy, which may do someone else good and certainly does me an enormous amount of good. People who only or mostly write about what upsets them, and I understand that it’s a temptation these days, can become the victims of their own negative energy, having no effect whatsoever on their targets, but re-absorbing and multiplying the negativity in their own bone marrow. I don’t want to be that person, so I try to go the other way.

Bob wrote: "My daughter in law recently asked me if I had read The Consequence of Anna by Kate Birkin. I told her I had not. She said that it was her book clubs latest read. ..."

How interesting! Not to say that this is completely factual because it doesn't seem like any of us know the truth, but I find this so perplexing- how can we be trusting of artificial intelligence in print? Certainly suspicious and even more thought provoking.

anyone here read on (Onyx) Boox?

it's an eBook reader that runs on an android enviroment

I asked my favorite AI chat, that does not require any personal information, whether The Consequence of Anna is AI-written. It seems to think so.

https://www.perplexity.ai/search/i-th...

Klowey wrote: "I asked my favorite AI chat, that does not require any personal information, whether The Consequence of Anna is AI-written. It seems to think so.

https://www.perplexity.ai/search/..."

LOL that's funny.... asking AI an AI identification question.

Lynn wrote: "Klowey wrote: "I asked my favorite AI chat, that does not require any personal information, whether The Consequence of Anna is AI-written. It seems to think so.

https://www.perple..."

:-)

I mentioned in another topic that it was my last read for my current copy of The Wind In The Willows. Which had fallen apart and i was going to get a replacement at the secondhand bookshop.

Well randomly looking around the house just now.. i found another copy! This one from 1993, its very basic and doesn't have the drawings.
However given the cover art thats probably just as well.. oh Moley what did they do to you!

Anyway, the art was always overridden in my brain by the stop-motion version from my childhood so no big loss.
Also this book has never had its spine cracked and i don't think has ever been read so it deserves a little love. I'll keep it for my next reread.

Serendipity, Wreade. So glad you found it before you bought another.

In browsing through everyone's 2025 Buffet and Bingo challenges I saw a conversation about Dorothy Whipple's books. I wanted to go back and ask for recommendations, but I can't find it any more. Should have made a note!

I'd love to hear from some of you who have read her books where you think a good place to start might be. Which books of hers did you prefer, and why?

I only discovered her recently, Teri and I cannot get enough of her. I have two of her books on my "must read" for 2025. I absolutely loved They Were Sisters. I could really relate to the characters (I have 5 sisters of my own, so I know that dynamic very well and she got it just right.)

Is anyone here a member of
https://www.patreon.com/hardcoreliter...
Or is anyone considering joining?