Mystery/Thriller Reading Friends discussion

The future of book reviews looks grim

The Associated Press will no longer produce book reviews, though it will pursue stories about the publishing industry.
Column by Ron Charles
The death of book reviews is not greatly exaggerated, but it is greatly protracted. This time, the bell tolls for book reviews from the Associated Press.
If you subscribe to one of the few major newspapers with its own books coverage, you’ll be fine. But readers of papers across the country won’t see reviews syndicated from the AP after Aug. 31.
“This was a difficult decision,” the AP’s freelance critics were told in a letter. “Unfortunately, the audience for book reviews is relatively low and we can no longer sustain the time it takes to plan, coordinate, write and edit reviews.”
Going forward, the letter said, “AP will continue covering books as stories” (wincing italics added).
Typically, that means profiles of hot authors, reports on controversial books and bits of publishing industry gossip.
I mean no disrespect. I know the score. My own newsletter of bookish bits generates far more attention than my book reviews.
In any case, syndicated literary coverage is a complicated benefit. Ideally, local papers should cover titles that interest their particular audiences and employ reviewers from their own communities. But these days, that’s like arguing we should all be making our own soap.
The standard 800-word, single-title review has long been an anemic, disparaged creature surviving off scraps along the edges of the features pages.
Eighty years ago, in a hilariously pessimistic essay about the profession, Orwell wrote, “The great majority of reviews give an inadequate or misleading account of the book that is dealt with.” (Read it and weep.)
That’s harsh, but it’s true that too many reviewers — present company included — sometimes drift into the slough of jacket-copy clichés or peevish snobbery. And in the click-thirsty media climate of sex scandals and fascist power grabs, a plodding appraisal of a midlist novel about a depressed cheesemonger working in a hardware store won’t keep the presses running or the homepages glowing. I can’t tell you how many editors I’ve outlived who told me we need something besides “just reviews.”
But as rare as “just reviews” have become in American newspapers, dedicated critics continue to nurture and prune our literary culture in valuable ways. At its best, a review written by a thoughtful, articulate reader who brings a breadth of knowledge to the subject can be illuminating, entertaining, even enriching. More than a mere consumer report, the good review gives a book a public arena in which its mettle is tested, its weaknesses exposed, its contribution to the coral reef of human knowledge celebrated.
Bestseller lists, celebrity book clubs and BookTok videos with 400,000 comments — I don’t disparage any of that powerful publicity. But in this dissolving sea of mass media, we still crave the intimate experience of a special book. And a review can help a wandering reader locate that particular title that changes a mood, or a life. It can encourage a debut novelist to write again — and a publisher to take another chance.
The effect is admittedly small. “Just reviews” rarely attract the web traffic that our business models demand — and it’s impossible to overstate how much those stats are shaping (and killing) the industry. But without reliably insightful book reviews, literature risks becoming “an unweeded garden that grows to seed.” We’re left depending only on the whisper network of our own clique, exchanging the same tuna casserole back and forth.
I realize this wobbly jeremiad reeks of self-interest: After 30 years of summarizing the plots of literary novels, I can do literally nothing else. But if journalism is still, at least partially, a public service, then book reviews are one of its most eloquent contributions — one we should defend until the very last page.

This story was excerpted from the Book Club newsletter.

Sorry, that was Washington Post

Barry: Brings to mind this story from May 2025 NOR reported

How an AI-generated summer reading list got published in major newspapers
Elizabeth BlairMay 20, 20253:07 PM ET

https://www.npr.org/2025/05/20/nx-s1-...

Some newspapers around the country, including the Chicago Sun-Times and at least one edition of The Philadelphia Inquirer have published a syndicated summer book list that includes made-up books by famous authors.

Chilean American novelist Isabel Allende never wrote a book called Tidewater Dreams, described in the "Summer reading list for 2025" as the author's "first climate fiction novel."

Percival Everett, who won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, never wrote a book called The Rainmakers, supposedly set in a "near-future American West where artificially induced rain has become a luxury commodity."

Only five of the 15 titles on the list are real.

Ray Bradbury, who coincidentally hated computers, did write Dandelion Wine, Jess Walter wrote Beautiful Ruins and Françoise Sagan penned the classic Bonjour Tristesse.

According to Victor Lim, marketing director for the Chicago Sun-Times' parent company Chicago Public Media, the list was part of licensed content provided by King Features, a unit of the publisher Hearst Newspapers.

Sponsor Message

The list has no byline. But writer Marco Buscaglia has claimed responsibility for it and says it was partly generated by Artificial Intelligence, as first reported by the website 404 Media. In an email to NPR, Buscaglia writes, "Huge mistake on my part and has nothing to do with the Sun-Times. They trust that the content they purchase is accurate and I betrayed that trust. It's on me 100 percent."

When one user posted a photo of the list on social media, writers and readers were upset.

"As a subscriber, I am livid!" xxxlovelit writes on Reddit. "What is the point of subscribing to a hard copy paper if they are just going to include AI slop too!?"

On Bluesky, author, former librarian and Book Riot editor Kelly Jensen laments, "This is the future of book recommendations when libraries are defunded and dismantled. Trained professionals are removed in exchange for this made up, inaccurate garbage."

"We are looking into how this made it into print as we speak," said a statement given to NPR by Lim. "This is licensed content that was not created by, or approved by, the Sun-Times newsroom, but it is unacceptable for any content we provide to our readers to be inaccurate. We value our readers' trust in our reporting and take this very seriously. More info will be provided soon as we investigate."

The fake summer reading list is dated May 18, two months after the Chicago Sun-Times announced that 20% of its staff had accepted buyouts "as the paper's nonprofit owner, Chicago Public Media, deals with fiscal hardship."

For author and NPR Books contributor Gabino Iglesias, the fake book list speaks to the problems plaguing all media these days: "How many full-time book reviewers are there in the U.S.? Very few," he said.

At the same time, Iglesias said there are plenty of people writing or talking about books online and on podcasts.

Iglesias said he's one of the many writers who are trying to file a class action lawsuit to protect their work from AI.

He joked that if people really want to read the fake books described on the list, he and plenty of other authors are ready to serve.

"Pay writers, and then we can write these fake books that don't exist," he laughed.

Jennifer Vanasco edited this story.

WOW to both articles. {{shaking head}}}. Thanks Ann and Barry.