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by rnadomvirlabe
25 days ago
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How do you separate the details included in a synopsis from what someone thought about the book? The details included in a synopsis reflect what the reviewer found important enough to share. I still value the synopsis of a known reviewer exactly for this reason. If I’ve read books on their suggestion in the past and enjoyed them, I’m inclined to take their advice again. Perhaps they could use LLMs to speed up some of the writing, given their perspective, but I wouldn’t agree with the statement “LLMs do a fine job summarizing” in the context of reviews. The author and their collective reviews matter, something absent with LLMs. |
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It's possible, even common, to encounter a relatively neutral synopsis (covering e.g. genre, themes, plot summary, and objective attributes of the writing style) which doesn't really pass judgement on the book. IMHO those are all things that don't require a human. A good book review is not a synopsis, it's a harmonizing echo of the ideas and feelings imparted by the author; shared, absorbed, combined and reflected, and resonating out to the broader field of readership. That's part of the magic of books -- the way one person's mind can connect so profoundly to many others' (though only ever via one individual reader's experience at a time) across time and space, even beyond death.