If you click on the Craiyon-generated image, the larger view looks creepier. Today’s image is of Heinlein’s classic, Stranger in a Strange Land, though I wonder how the AI pulls from the Bible. Valentine Michael Smith is a human being raised on Mars, newly returned to Earth. Among his people Read more…
I love The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. On the left, we have the 1984 paperback cover. On the right, we have Craiyon AI‘s interpretation. Events in the chronicle include the apocalyptic destruction of both Martian and human civilizations, both instigated by humans, though there are no stories with settings Read more…
What happens when you run a science fiction book title through Craiyon AI? Today we took John Wyndam’s novel The Day of the Triffids and get this scary interpretation. The Day of the Triffids is a 1951 post-apocalyptic novel by the English science fiction author John Wyndham. After most people in the world are Read more…
I started reading The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton two days ago. Introduced to Ellen Olenska who reenters New York society from a scandal in Europe, I thought of Anna (Delvey) Sorokin from Inventing Anna. I’m not sure if that connection will strengthen or fail at this point. Both Read more…
For March, I read three books: Beloved by Toni Morrison, Deacon King Kong by James McBride, and The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson.
On reading Les Misérables: “Napolean felt no more real to me than Jean Valjean. I had never heard of either.” p. 150 Educated by Tara Westover.
I’m enjoying Educated by Tara Westover, but it’s hard to read. Should the children have been taken away from her parents? Yes. The kids were often endangered and it’s hard to believe no one died. Westover’s writing is superb, but some of these sections are chilling.
Sayaka Murata‘s Convenience Store Woman is a novella with such minimal plotting it almost reads like a character-study. The narrator is a thirty-five-year-old, single woman who works part-time at a convenience store in Japan. Keiko Furukura does not fit into Japanese society and may have trouble existing in other cultures Read more…
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee is a novel of beauty and perseverance, which shows an unflinching view of Japan’s treatment of Koreans, both during the occupation of Korea and after World War II. The novel follows one family through four generations, starting in 1910 and finishing in 1989. If you Read more…