Den, the self-appointed resident Bitcoin book reviewer, is asking himself the same question. Nobody likes this format anymore...? #1416088

Nice library, bro.

In a column called "critics notebook" (ouwh, yeah, me likey!), Mr Garner is asking what happened to reviewing books. AI can do anything and everything now so what's the point of humans painstalkingly consuming art (#1479596) just to tell other humans what they thought about it?

Might as well just let the machines make it, consume it, analyze it, and give us the tl;dr.

Of course nobody likes this development, but what we say we want is different from what we actually want, hashtag revealed preferences etc.

Even before the rise of A.I. there was a near-extinction-level wipeout of the American book review. It has gotten eerily quiet out there — it’s as if the bees, those kibitzing and sometimes stinging pollinators, have vanished — and few have noticed.

Only yesterday, it seems, nearly every American newspaper, dozens and dozens of them, even in midsize cities, ran book reviews by local critics. The alternative weeklies (I wrote for many of these) had feisty and clamorous and occasionally nutty book sections.

The recent shutting of The Washington Post’s Book World, one of the nation’s last free-standing books sections, feels like the end of something larger.

Maybe there's a market niche for a certain Stacker News territory... if only there were actual people here and not just bots :/

"Not long ago, someone estimated that there were seven full-time book critics left in America. With The Post’s Book World gone, that number has dropped to five.""Not long ago, someone estimated that there were seven full-time book critics left in America. With The Post’s Book World gone, that number has dropped to five."

Can't say I care much for that; it's not like anybody deserves a specific job (title) or it's a tragedy that one specific, dedicated work commitment doesn't exist. Garner says otherwise in, uh, so many words:

As a lonely and shellshocked survivor of this decimation, I find it hard not to envy the critics in London, which still has at least seven daily or Sunday papers in which a serious author might hope for a review. The literary debate over there is more like a boisterous dinner party and less like a Morse code dispatch between distant frigates passing in the night.

THIS, tho.... 100/100!

here’s a catch with A.I. It’s easy to tell when a reference, or a comparison, or a sentence, doesn’t belong to a writer. Erudition and style aren’t forgeable for long; it still must be earned. As for A.I.’s sleek, space-efficient text, we’ve already grown accustomed to what that sounds like — the flat, consistent tone, the pert little summary bits, the repetitions, the impersonal and fluorescent-lit mood. Reading it, you feel you’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name.

But, like good wine or craft beers or carefully curated steak or basically any endeavor that has depth and complexity to it, it takes a certain level of skill to appreciate the finer nuances. And most people are buffoons, incapable of appreciating good text -- or too busy scrolling to do so. So alas, what to do?

No clue.No clue.

And our NYT columnist neither. He just ends the piece. Sorry. No point, no ending (#1479596).

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https://archive.md/QZWLi