Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.
Readers Discover AI Prompt in Novel
Between that Chicago-Sun Times story and this one about an author who left an AI prompt in her romantasy novel, AI use is getting as messy as we thought it would. Readers of Lena McDonald’s Darkhollow Academy: Year 2 took to social to point out the prompt, which, Futurism reports, not only asked for a rewrite but a rewrite in fellow romantasy author J. Bree’s voice (the prompt has since been deleted). I’ve written before about the pace of publishing to meet demand, especially in the romantasy genre, and I don’t assume this is an isolated incident. Futurism‘s Victor Tangermann points to additional instances of AI-generated works and the proliferation of AI books on Amazon, and there are certainly undiscovered, more expertly disguised instances we haven’t yet identified. It’s easy to understand readers’ frustration–it’s the human touch and unique perspectives I and others are questing for, not an AI masquerade.
Goodbye Harry Potter Tour, Hello Queer History Tour!
Fraser Horn is one good egg. On the heels of news of JK Rowling continuing to be the worst, we have an encouraging story in the form of this, from the Edinburgh Street Historians founder and guide: “today I’m announcing that following the success of the LGBTQ+ tour replacing Harry Potter, come July, the Harry Potter tour will not be coming back.” In an exclusive for PinkNews, Horn wrote about how he, like so many of us, was captivated by the Harry Potter series as a young person only to become disenchanted by its author’s TERF activism. He had been running a Harry Potter tour in Edinburgh until discussions with an LGBTQ+ group–and after Rowling helped fund a group that won a UK Supreme Court case excluding trans women from the legal definition of a woman–motivated him to drop the tours for Pride month. Now, Horn says they’ll be dropped entirely and he’ll be focusing on more interesting stories to tell, from LGBTQ+ history to the stories of forgotten women. Cheers to that.
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Pizza Hut Debuts a BOOK IT! App
Our nostalgic fave, the BOOK IT! program, has arrived in the app store. This is the first time Pizza Hut has offered the app to parents who can use it to track their kids’ reading and incentivize them to keep up the good work during the summer with a free personal pan pizza. The debut coincides with BOOK IT! Summer of Stories, Pizza Hut’s summer reading program launching June 1st, encouraging parents to stay engaged with their kids’ reading habits. Kids who achieve their reading goal can get one of those vied-for personal pan pizzas in the months of June, July, and August.
Politics Can Now Dictate Public Library Collections in Three States
A group of library patrons in a Texas county sued when books were removed from the Llano County Public Library based on their contents, arguing that it curtailed their First Amendment rights. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals “held that library books are government speech and thus, not subject to the Free Speech clause.” And to that I say, in what world? Read more about how this ruling affects states beyond Texas, and opens the door to more rampant and taxpayer-funded censorship.
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