Were they self published? I would assume so since that's a niche genre. That could be part of why it lacked polish.

I’m of the opinion that most of King’s best work is from his pre-sobriety days. Since then only Gerald’s Game stands out for me but I’ve yet to read a lot of his recent work. The Shining was the first King book I read, I think I was 12. Re-read many times. Not a big fan of the film and Dr. Sleep even less so. Kubrick’s film is great if you divorce any notion that it’s based on the book. This thread has sparked my interest in reading Dr. Sleep. Any other standouts in King’s post-alcoholic period?

Honestly I love his short fiction. He has some bangers

For me it missed the mark. Danny Torrance as a down and out alcoholic trying to navigate life as a broken man who can't come to terms with his weird affliction and the horrific events of his childhood was a great premise. It didn't need the vampire storyline at all.

Unpopular opinion on a King novel I suppose.

Personally I think obviously not to either. Especially the AI one strikes me as ridiculous. Life isn't a scifi novel and AI isn't conscious

Agreed. Have you read Moonstone – The Boy Who Never Was?

I read the last sentence of the last page. I have no idea why, mind you.

It might be also that I realized that when I touched and turned pages from the side, there's always yellowing or fraying, so I hold and turn pages from the top or bottom.

Oh, the backwards storytelling through asides annoyed me at times too. I still liked the book overall and think it may have been necessary at times for the delivery of the story and perspective. But yes, sometimes I wanted to tell the narrator to get to the point!

I feel you, I think I'm just weirdly worried about cracking the spine, and so I never have. I'm reading Count of Monte Cristo now and am almost done, paperback, and even at page 1000, no crack.

That's not like an elitist thing, that's like, I'm just very opposed to cracking a spine thing

If you go first 15 pages, then last 15 pages etc to the center of the book you should crack the spine without it being seen. I do that with big Paperbacks everytime because i want my books to look beautiful

here is a video about the method: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fN_odVFivw

Mass market paperbacks are always going to get cracks in the spines, there's no avoiding it. They're not made to be durable.

On the other hand though, I don't understand how or why people crack the spines of trade paperbacks. I mean whatever, they're y'all's books, but I would have to try hard to crack them.

I used to do this when I was younger, it was almost a compulsion! I couldn't focus on what I was reading because I was thinking of that last page.

I've grown out of it now, not sure why or when, but I don't do it any more

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This is the way. When I was younger I was obsessed with keeping my books looking pristine for some odd reason. Possibly drilled into me when I would frequent the library and was taught to keep those books as if they were my own. My family had a bit of a joke that I would just "peak" into books when reading. Now that I'm wiser I'm much less concerned about this; creases and cracks in the spine show the signs of a well loved book.

Consider also that the goal of AI generation isn't to create great art, or even good art -- just marketable art. And because it's so each and cheap to produce (once the tools are functional, at least) there's no need to try and get 1 book to sell 1,000 copies, for example, when it's much easier to sell 1,000 books once.

The only real threshold is that it has to look good enough to make that one sale.

Things are definitely gonna be tough in terms of discoverability for new authors (especially indies) for a while, but... that's already the case. There's demand for good art, though, is always going to exist, and is always going to be best produced by human hands.

Absolutely no thank you. If you want a book to hit different, reread the entire story from start to finish.

I am very anal with books. I want to leave them in the same condition I received them for the next person.

I just dont fold back the pages? I read the book at like a 75 degree angle.

I think it's just muscle memory because it's how I am, but I can go from left side lighting, to right side lighting without having to think about it.

I know I might be crazy but I hate cracked spines or any indication that someone came to this story before me.

Marginalia breaks my heart and I can't read the book, because someone is telling me how to read it

Also, a quick (and brief) follow up: the games industry has spent the last half-century or so investing a ton of time, money and effort into the "golden goose" of procedurally-generated environments and narratives. If they didn't have to hire artists and designers and writers, games would not just be much cheaper to develop, but easier, too.

And in every case, across the board, procedurally-generated content has proved inferior to hand-crafted content.

Even when dealing with very few variables -- a two-dimensional level of a forest or a dungeon or whatever, where the entire thing is built out of tiles in a grid pattern -- these AI-created spaces have a distinctly artificial quality, are almost universally inferior to deliberately-crafted spaces, and are often seriously compromised (EG impassable terrain, poor player guidance, etc.).

These spaces are conceptually very simple, and only really need to satisfy two needs: to be realistic approximations of the intended environment, and the be interesting spaces for players to navigate.

Literature, meanwhile, is exponentially more complex and needs to serve many, many more goals.

And there's a helluva lot more money in the video games industry than in the printing industry -- around 80 billion USD to around 350 billion USD. If the one industry cannot use AI to accomplish a far simpler goal with much more time and much more money, what are the odds the other will be able to surpass them far less time with far less money?

So you can see, I think, why I am so deeply skeptical of this whole thing, and dismiss it as overblown marketing hype (in which must of the media is, as always, deeply complicit).

And now my meds are starting to wear off, which means I'm either due for a bad time that may precipitate more meds, or a crash. In either case, time to log off for a bit.

Personally I see absolutely zero reason to do this. But, you do you. Individual reading quirks are not judged.

Man, I guess I really need to give this book a second chance. I thought it was well and good, but certain aspects of his writing bothered me and took me out of the story (I seem to remember several chapters ending with “and that reminds me of the time …..”). However, anytime I voice any criticism I get absolutely SLAMMED on Reddit, so it must be me that is wrong.

Brennu-Njal (The Story of Burnt Njal) is a near-perfect novel - balanced twisted, winds to an end and an epilogue that are complete and satisfying. I read it to my younger sister, to my son, and to my mother, and my copy is worn, and I still tear up at a few moments.

Grettir and Egil are excellent adventure stories, and Egil is a wonderfully complex character - a violent psycho, a great poet and occasional hero.

Not in a million years will I ever do this. Want to know why? Because the author put the words in a specific order, and I respect that.

You are insane.

This is a beautifully written book with well crafted characters that slowly but surely rips your heart out. I think in the current world climate it is a good reminder set of what humanity should mean.

I think we will definitely see a rise in AI generated writing, but I doubt it's going to wipe out books as we know them. I like the comparison another commentator made to music. Yeah, a lot of the mainstream offerings are cookie cutter garbage, but I can log onto a multitude of sites and find incredibly talented artists I never would have heard of twenty years ago.

There's already tons of mediocre books out there. With online publishers being so common now anyone can technically be a published author. Doesn't mean they're actually successful. I think it's inevitable that well see some AI generated crap make the best sellers list simply because they're backed by a company with money, but that's hardly different than it already is from people buying their way onto the New York Times best sellers list.

As a reader sometimes it is frustrating to see what gets touted as "an instant classic", but no one is forcing me to buy them. And just like with music, now with the internet I have almost instant access to more books than any store or library could ever offer.

I don't know what it takes to become a successful author, but I often joke that if I were to ever attempt it I would write religious children's books because they seem to sell no matter how poorly written they are.