- Sarah Johnson experiments with ChatGPT and writing book reviews*. (Reading the Past)
- Arvyn Cerézo talks about ebook piracy, copyright, publishing, and more, revealing that it is shockingly easy to pirate ebooks if you know what you’re doing. (Book Riot)
- Pair with: Kelly Jensen discusses the rising cost of books as a barrier to access. (Book Riot)
- Samantha Balaban gets the origin story of one of my absolute favorite children’s books, The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, straight from creators Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith. (NPR)
- Oliver Taylor illuminates the histories of some truly delightful Scots words. (National Museums Scotland)
- Stephen Paulson reports on an appalling bill under consideration in Texas to not only give books a rating system but also blacklist publishers that won’t play ball. (Courthouse News Service)
- Meanwhile, Amanda Marcotte finds that Florida Governor DeSantis’s legislation has led some teachers in the state to restrict all access to classroom books until they can comply with the draconian regulations. (Salon)
- Helen Sharp explains how conservators keep 4,000-year-old papyrus looking so good, or at least keep it from crumbling to bits as soon as you look at it. (British Museum Blog)
- Anthony Aycock reminds us that the FBI used to spy on people’s library records. (Washington Post)
- Marion Turner writes in praise of Alison, the Wife of Bath. (Lapham’s Quarterly)
- Molly Templeton argues that it’s okay to wait to read that book until the time is right. (Tor)
- Helen Betya Rubinstein shares thoughts and questions from her experience as a copy-editing drudge. (LitHub)
- Elif Batuman reflects on reading the Russian classics after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. (New Yorker)
- …and a spoonful of censorship news to wash all this down with, from Book Riot.
*I vow never to use ChatGPT to write content for this blog. First, I think it’s cheating and, second, the point of this book is for me to talk to the internet about what I’m reading.
Interesting article on ChatGPT experiments! The reviews are quite boring, which is actually good news I guess
That’s kind of what I’ve been hearing about chatGPT from writers and academics. It can produce grammatical text, but there’s no unique voice or insight.