This is an expanderd version of an article first published in my Eclecticism newsletter. Click the graphic below to find out more.
Here are a few of the books I’ve been sent for review recently, so I can’t say too much about them now: the arrangement I have with magazines is that they publish the review first and I publish it afterwards. (The technical way of expressing this is that I’ve granted them First British Serial Rights. If the magazines were US publications I’d have granted them First American Serial Rights.) I’ll be talking about the time travel one in my forthcoming article delving into the time loop version of my ‘bang on the head’ story in the “Experiments in Style” series. (
If you’re not familiar with that series, I’ve been writing a different version of the same basic story each week (though I may change that to every two weeks). They’re not only enjoyable to read, but a great way of learning about writing techniques. So far I’ve published 64 here and written an additional 5, to be unveiled to the world in due course. Here’s the full index so far.)
I’ll also be writing about 99 Variations on a Proof as part of a long-ish article about the ‘experiments in style’ series that I just mentioned. It’s a mathematical version of Queneau’s Exercises in Style, on which my own experiments series is based.
Adventures in Maps doesn’t come out until early June. It includes a wide range of journeys, such as a 15th century pilgrimage, the writing of Three Men in a Boat, Route 66 and even the moon landings. The last four images above are taken from Adventures in Maps. They are: the front cover, Route 66, and two of the moon landings, all kindly provided by Bodleian Library Publishing.
Generative AI in Practice includes a section detailing a vast array of AI programs, including one that can build a website in response to a textual prompt. That’s quite timely because I’m writing an article for a different publication at the moment about AI in education. One of the questions that arises is: do kids really need to learn how to code? My stance has always been that very few people need to learn how to code, and from a particular point of view the existence of apps such as the one I just mentioned adds credence to that viewpoint.
The Language of Deception is an interesting, important and, frankly frightening delve into the world of deepfakes. Mind you, human error can still save the day, so to speak. A college used ChatGPT to generate a letter addressing the grief and trauma caused by a mass shooting. The college authorities might have saved themselves from a backlash had they not insterted the words “paraphrased from a response by ChatGPT”.
A Date with Language is a delightful book whcich contains a literary item for each day of the year. It even contains accounts of a couple of literary hoaxes that were perpetrated on April Fools Day/All Fools Day.