Do you guys have experience where you were reading an ARC that strongly feel like it was written by AI? I'm not witch-hunting with baseless accusation here, I had marked words that we recognize as AI-writing characteristics (Russell et al., 2025):

• "not x, not y, but z" parallelism Example from the book:

No facilities, no lighting, just space beside the road where trucks sometimes rested between hauls. (Page 5) No traffic sounds. No distant hum of highway civilization. Only the wind through the leaves. (Page 7) The wolves howled again. Not closer, not farther—present. (Page 6) No road. No tire marks. No reflective posts marking the shoulder. Nothing but earth and sage that looked like it had been undisturbed for decades. (Page 5)

• rule of three "phrase, phrase, phrase" or "adjective, adjective, adjective" Example from the book:

Better to observe, to listen, to piece it together. (Page 9) The future stretched ahead like the basin below—vast, inevitable, predetermined. Nothing. No vehicle. Not even tire tracks in the dirt. (Page 5) searching for the Honda. For asphalt. For anything familiar. (Page 5) Organized. Established. The camp of someone who'd been here long enough to make it functional. (Page 8) No warehouse job. No college fund. No family dinners. (Page 8)

• repetitive sentence structure Example:

Same formations. Same distances. Same empty basin spreading toward the Wind River Range. (Page 17) No lights. No road. No paired yellow lines cutting east-west across the landscape. He probed his scalp—no blood, no tender spots. (Page 17) She touched her scalp—no blood, no tender spots. (Page 5) Fair. Harsh, but fair. (Page 14) Real. Impossible, but real. (Page 16)

(THESE ARE ONLY FROM FIRST CHAPTERS!!1!1) I HAD SPENT TIME GASLIGHTING MYSELF about this since I first read it, which was WEEKS ago 🫩. One day I woke up and decided "okay, it's definitely AI." While in other day, "maybe, the writing is just humanely bad." I KEEP GOING BACK AND FORTH WITH THIS!!! Convincing and doubting myself simultaneously because I WANT TO BE SURE to not slandering anyone. How should I give review for this?? Should I DNF it?? But this book is an ARC so I'm afraid to do so1! PLEASE FREE ME FROM MY MISERY (⁠┛⁠◉⁠Д⁠◉⁠)⁠┛⁠彡⁠┻⁠━⁠┻

Reference Russell, Jenna; Karpinska, Marzena; Iyyer, Mohit (2025). People who frequently use ChatGPT for writing tasks are accurate and robust detectors of AI-generated text. Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers). Vienna, Austria: Association for Computational Linguistics. pp. 5342–5373. doi:10.18653/v1/2025.

Do you guys have experience where you were reading an ARC that strongly feel like it was written by AI? I'm not witch-hunting with baseless accusation here, I had marked words that we recognize as AI-writing characteristics (Russell et al., 2025):

• "not x, not y, but z" parallelism Example from the book:

No facilities, no lighting, just space beside the road where trucks sometimes rested between hauls. (Page 5) No traffic sounds. No distant hum of highway civilization. Only the wind through the leaves. (Page 7) The wolves howled again. Not closer, not farther—present. (Page 6) No road. No tire marks. No reflective posts marking the shoulder. Nothing but earth and sage that looked like it had been undisturbed for decades. (Page 5)

• rule of three "phrase, phrase, phrase" or "adjective, adjective, adjective" Example from the book:

Better to observe, to listen, to piece it together. (Page 9) The future stretched ahead like the basin below—vast, inevitable, predetermined. Nothing. No vehicle. Not even tire tracks in the dirt. (Page 5) searching for the Honda. For asphalt. For anything familiar. (Page 5) Organized. Established. The camp of someone who'd been here long enough to make it functional. (Page 8) No warehouse job. No college fund. No family dinners. (Page 8)

• repetitive sentence structure Example:

Same formations. Same distances. Same empty basin spreading toward the Wind River Range. (Page 17) No lights. No road. No paired yellow lines cutting east-west across the landscape. He probed his scalp—no blood, no tender spots. (Page 17) She touched her scalp—no blood, no tender spots. (Page 5) Fair. Harsh, but fair. (Page 14) Real. Impossible, but real. (Page 16)

(THESE ARE ONLY FROM FIRST CHAPTERS!!1!1) I HAD SPENT TIME GASLIGHTING MYSELF about this since I first read it, which was WEEKS ago 🫩. One day I woke up and decided "okay, it's definitely AI." While in other day, "maybe, the writing is just humanely bad." I KEEP GOING BACK AND FORTH WITH THIS!!! Convincing and doubting myself simultaneously because I WANT TO BE SURE to not slandering anyone. How should I give review for this?? Should I DNF it?? But this book is an ARC so I'm afraid to do so1! PLEASE FREE ME FROM MY MISERY (⁠┛⁠◉⁠Д⁠◉⁠)⁠┛⁠彡⁠┻⁠━⁠┻

Reference Russell, Jenna; Karpinska, Marzena; Iyyer, Mohit (2025). People who frequently use ChatGPT for writing tasks are accurate and robust detectors of AI-generated text. Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers). Vienna, Austria: Association for Computational Linguistics. pp. 5342–5373. doi:10.18653/v1/2025.

I'm a public librarian and soooo much of my life outside of libraries is being surprised and disappointed with how bad libraries are at promoting themselves to both non-users and even regular patrons! I thought it could be fun to have a little post where I could try to answer any questions you've had about public libraries or librarianship (other librarians please pipe in! I don't know everything!)

Ask away! No stupid questions!

I'm really bummed that the 2026 Pride event doesn't have a fantasy lgbtq+ book on it. I tried Ace of Spades, a thriller, because I've enjoyed the occasional thriller. . . But I barely liked teen fiction as a teen. Makes me feel excluded that nothing in an event that represents me has anything appealing to me. 🤷‍♀️

hieee <3 when was the last time a book had you so hooked you stayed up late into the night even though you knew you had to get up on time the next day? and what book was it? it’s honestly been a looong time since i’ve been so into a book that that has happened, but last night i was up until midnight reading the harriet tubman live in concert book! (that’s late for me!)

I really want to get into the weird girl literary fiction type genre, weird girl horror, weird girl anything. I want weird, raw, emotional, maybe slightly gross books written by women.

Hi all,

I have some level of Aphantasia (can't picture things in my head) but love to read. I'm incredibly jealous of those who can picture stuff when they read but it doesn't diminish my love of reading.

That being said, for those that have Aphantasia, have you found any trends in what makes you more or less likely to enjoy a book? An example: I find that when a book has a lot of witty dialogue between characters, I'm much more likely to love it than a book with lots of physical world building.

Wondering if there are some more trends you all have that I haven't picked up on yet.

I mean the hobby/interest you spend most of your free time on that's not book-related.

I'm a boardgames girlie personally! Love a social deduction game, and Blood on the Clocktower could easily rival reading for taking up most of my leisure time in any given week. What about you folks?!