How AI is unlocking ancient texts — and could rewrite history “From deciphering burnt Roman scrolls to reading crumbling cuneiform tablets, neural networks could give researchers more data than they’ve had in centuries.” As ominous as the threat of generative AI replacing writers is, there are some kinds of things that AI can be legitimately […]
Just about a year ago I wrote what Notes in the Margin would be up to during 2024. Now, I’m happy with the way last year’s reading turned out, particularly how I ended the year with a sense of accomplishment rather than anxiety and disappointment. Therefore, I’m going to use the same approach to reading
2025: Another Year of Unplanned Reading Read More »
Jimmy Carter: Poet, Novelist, Memoirist, Philosopher “He wasn’t just prolific, publishing 32 books. His output also showed an unusual range that included memoirs and forays into historical fiction and even poetry.” The New York Times eulogizes President Jimmy Carter with emphasis on his writing: “Publishing 32 books over the course of his life, he wasn’t
Goodreads has spoken. Here are my reading statistics for 2024. Pages read: 14,887 Books read: 41 Average book length: 363 pages Average book rating: 3.5 Shortest book: Lord of the Flies, 189 pages Longest book: The Covenant of Water, 724 pages What the Statistics Don’t Cover Irrespective of numbers, I had what I consider a
2024: My Year in Reading and Blogging Read More »
Full disclosure: I signed up for the 2024 Discussion Challenge and did a miserable job at it. In evaluating my year of blogging in 2024, I realized that I actually did more discussion than I thought, but I didn’t specifically frame and label much of it as discussion. However, lately I’ve been thinking, more than
I’m Signing Up for the 2025 Discussion Challenge Read More »
Update on Comments Glitch The cause of the problem has been traced to Jetpack. Jetpack support has informed me that “this is an issue that our development team is aware of and working to resolve. It will likely be fixed in the next version of Jetpack in early January.” So that’s where we are. In
Update on Comments Glitch The cause of the problem has been traced to Jetpack. Jetpack support has informed me that “this is an issue that our development team is aware of and working to resolve. It will likely be fixed in the next version of Jetpack in early January.” So that’s where we are. In
My Continued Apologies The comment glitch on this blog continues. My hosting provider has been helpful in trying to track down the cause. In the meantime, here’s a work-around that may may work: If you type a comment and hit the “post comment” button, you’ll get the message “submitting comment,” followed by nothing. But, if
Who’s Really Writing Celebrity Novels? “The writers and agents working behind the scenes tell us how it actually works.” “. . . what does it mean when a celebrity decides to write fiction?” Sophie Vershbow interviewed some “ writers and agents working behind the scenes on similar books [to] tell us how it actually works.”
Echoes of the Past in Crime Fiction Clinical psychologist and novelist Lucy Burdette understands exactly what I value most about crime fiction: we humans are always affected by our history. Our families shape our stories with their presence or absence, their quirks and patterns, their healthy traits and unhealthy, and sometimes their serious trauma. We
