October Staff Picks

Jamie says:

“Are you sus­pi­cious of the con­stant hype around arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, but can’t quite put your fin­ger on why? The AI Con reveals ​“AI” to be lit­tle more than a mar­ket­ing term that gloss­es over the dif­fer­ences between a vari­ety of tech­nolo­gies, some use­ful, oth­ers demon­stra­bly harm­ful. The authors argue that AI boost­ers and AI doomers rep­re­sent two sides of the same coin, both hyp­ing imag­ined futures while ignor­ing present-day impacts – and these impacts are seri­ous, rang­ing from artists los­ing work, even as their art is used to train the mod­els that are replac­ing them, to the low-qual­i­ty, unre­li­able syn­thet­ic text over­whelm­ing the web with AI slop. The AI Con con­cludes with ways to fight back against big tech’s inhu­man agen­da, includ­ing using one of the most ubiq­ui­tous sources of vet­ted, reli­able infor­ma­tion: your pub­lic library.”

David says:

“This new book by Giri Nathan serves up insight, imagery, and humor in its descrip­tion of the rival­ry between Car­los Alcaraz and Janik Sin­ner. Nathan chron­i­cles how both play­ers came up through the ama­teur ranks, and he writes about their head-to-head match­es in great detail. With more than 100,000 active play­ers, Atlanta has been called the ten­nis cap­i­tal of the world. Those play­ers and fans of great non-fic­tion alike should find this to be an enjoy­able read.”

Lee says:

“There are two types of haunt­ed hous­es: those that want you to leave, and those that don’t want to let you go. Mod­el Home is about the lat­ter type, a child­hood home that wants to drag the grown pro­tag­o­nist back in after they have man­aged to escape. It is an unflinch­ing look at the ugli­ness of child­hood trau­ma, and how that trau­ma fol­lows peo­ple for the rest of their lives. This book is not a pret­ty or com­fort­ing read. It is raw, vis­cer­al, and deeply unset­tling. If you’re look­ing for some­thing to read for Hal­loween that will put you on edge and leave you there for days after fin­ish­ing, Mod­el Home is the book for you!”