Thoughts
HN comment a little while about about how 'bad' books on the top of the charts are—here I found it so I don't have to paraphrase:
> Most books published today have the affect of a book, but the author doesn't really have anything to say. Publishing a book is not about communicating ideas, but a means to something else.
The commenter didn't describe what they thought that books were a means to—they were arguing that books could be replaced with AI and no one would care.
But for me, one of the things that a book does is establish connection with other people—both the fictional characters and the author. You can criticize me for reading books that don't stand alone but the thing that they're leaning on is the fact that a real human being wrote them.
I read *Without Bloodshed* in part because I love reading but in part because someone took the time to write it and then they took the time to put it up on a website for me to read. I marvel at the insanity of the moving city in *Calamity* because its insane but also because I know a sane human mind came up with it. The magic of exploring a fantasy world in a book is that a human mind invented it.
Look, think of it this way. Imagine you had the technology of writing, the technology of stories, the technology of LLMs—but imagine you were the only person on the planet. Congrats. You can generate all the words in the world but they mean nothing.