Hachette Pulls Mia Ballard's Shy Girl. Is AI Doomed, or are Human Writers?
Last week, Hachette made an unprecedented move for a Big Five publisher, cancelling the US release of Mia Ballard's Shy Girl and pulling the UK edition over allegations of heavy AI assistance in the creation of the text. The author and publisher, in the midst of what's sure to be an illuminating legal battle, are being cagey about details, but online comments indicate that large portions of the book are "unreadable," "AI slop," and "make no sense."
Mar 201 min read
The Book Behind Marc Andreessen's "Zero Introspection" Trend
In this podcast, we examine the thought process behind the viral hit Meow: A Novel, which is surprisingly close to Andreessen’s own.
Mar 181 min read
Wuthering Heights (For the Feline Reader) - the "Meow" adaptation of the Brönte classic - now available wholesale to booksellers
Booksellers can now stock up on The Meow Library's Wuthering Heights: 350+ pages of "meow," and nothing but "meow."
Mar 161 min read
Writers Debate: Must You Read Novels to Write Them?
Debate rages across Twitter as professor and novelist Aaron Gwyn insists that his college-level fiction writing students can't name a single novelist, living or dead. Can you say literacy crisis?
Feb 241 min read
Young People Aren't Reading Wuthering Heights. But Thanks to The Meow Library, Your Cat Can.
The Meow Library has painstakingly translated every word of Emily Brönte's original text to say "meow," remaining absolutely faithful to the structure and word count of Wuthering Heights as initially published.
Feb 211 min read
The Curious Case of Madeline Cash's Lost Lambs
This is not so much a review of the book (there are plenty of those) as it is of Cash’s PR team, which is the real work of art here. How does an author rise from obscurity to the upper echelons of English literature—replete with comparisons to Franzen and Pynchon—in the space of one book? And are those comparisons merited?
Feb 171 min read
Jennette McCurdy's Half His Age: The Problem with the Problematic Age Gap Novel
We admire the nerve but sniff at the buried lede: Jennette McCurdy’s Half His Age noses around the scandalous fringe of the age-gap genre and then retreats, leaving the real abyss unexplored, revealing its speciesist bent.
Feb 51 min read
