Novelist, critic, and poet A.S. Byatt, 87, died on November 16. She was the author of six collections of short stories and 11 novels, including Possession, which won the Booker Prize in 1990. Clara Farmer, her publisher at Chatto & Windus, writes in a statement: “Antonia’s books are the most wonderful jewel-boxes of stories and ideas. Her compulsion to write (A4 blue notebook always to hand) and her ability to create intricate skeins of narrative was remarkable. It was always a treat to see her, to hear updates about her evolving literary characters and indulge in delicious titbits of literary […]
Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud On Generative AI
As we have noted recently, the various AI companies (and their backers) have dutifully filed comments with the US Copyright Office explaining why they believe training their systems on copyrighted work is fair use and “just math.” So it’s notable that vice president of audio at Stability AI Ed Newton-Rex left the company recently and made clear at the Cerebral Valley AI Summit he believes those arguments are wrong. (He oversaw their music creation product, Stability Audio.) He resigned “because I don’t agree with the company’s opinion that training generative AI models on copyrighted works is ‘fair use’.” As he […]
Washington Post Best of the Year
December Library Reads
Big Opening for IRON FLAME
Despite the issues over misprints, Rebecca Yarros’s much-anticipated IRON FLAME sold approximately 585,000 hardcovers in its first week on sale at outlets tracked by Circana Bookscan. A new-release limited “special edition” of her earlier book, FOURTH WING, sold approximately 271,000 hardcovers, giving Yarros the top two positions on Bookscan’s charts. Meanwhile, as usual be wary of simplistic proclamations about the marketplace. Yarros lifted print sales for the week ending November 11 to 4 percent above the same week last year — and measured print sales have been ahead of the same weeks in 2022 for five of the last seven […]