The Trajectory of Today’s Topics

• AI is encroaching on audiobooks.

• An award winning novel isn’t for everyone.

• Stephen King movies coming soon.

• Music brings back “haunting” memories.

Hot Off The Press

Would You Listen to an AI Narrated Book? 

Why do humans want AI to replace everything we do? I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling the AI fatigue. AI seems to be taking over everything and dipping its electronic finger in every pie. Sure, AI has its uses, but it doesn’t need to take over everything that humans can do; especially when it comes to artistic creativity. As someone who loves to create, whether drawing, painting, making things with my hands, or writing books, the AI “artistic” encroachment makes me nervous.

Seems like another way to make more money. Audible, the world's largest audiobook market, is starting to use artificially generated voices for audiobooks. Bob Carrigan, the CEO of Audible, says, “Audible believes that AI represents a momentous opportunity to expand the availability of audiobooks with the vision of offering customers every book in every language, alongside our continued investments in premium original content. We’ll be able to bring more stories to life — helping creators reach new audiences while ensuring listeners worldwide can access extraordinary books that might otherwise never reach their ears.” That’s fancy marketing speak, but personally, I see it as a greedy cash-grab. 

Humans are still involved, but barely. How this works is a narrator speaks into an AI voice generator for a set amount of time, then the program replicates the voice through the entire novel. It can take human narrators 20 to 30 hours to turn an average length novel into an audio work of art. Compare that to about an hour or two for the AI. The time savings are significant, but compensation for talented narrators also drops. For anyone who’s listened to audiobooks, there’s just something personal about hearing the little intricacies in a human voice’s inflections. The anger, the happiness, the crack of the voice when they get emotional, I don’t see AI hitting on that for a long time, if ever. 

It falls flat if you ask me. If you’ve listened to the Harry Potter series, narrated by Jim Dale, or Jeff Hayes, who does the voices for Dungeon Crawler Carl, you’re treated to an entire production, with each character coming to life in your mind. Each with little nuances and a ton of character. AI cannot match that talent. Imagine listening to a voice that matches those electronic voices you get when you call any business now. This author doesn’t want a bunch of ones and zeroes reading to me, give me a human. Audible does say that they will signal when a book is AI generated, but how long before that becomes the norm? 

Not an option I’m willing to try. I’d love to have my works transformed into audiobooks, but not by AI. I could do them myself, but I don’t want to listen to my voice for 20 or 30 hours 😂 If anyone reading this has a great voice and would like to join me on this endeavor, hit me up!  

The TBR Files

Shining a New Light on a Dark Time

An award winning book with plenty of accolades. A few weeks back I did a little piece highlighting the top 10 books of 2024 according to Goodreads, and The Women by Kristin Hanna was soaring at the top of the list. This novel sold over 1 million copies in the first printing and spent ten weeks at the top of the New York Times list for best fiction. The Women is a gritty historical fiction novel about a combat nurse serving in the Vietnam War; something that, even now, seems to have been quietly hidden in a dark corner. Of all the Vietnam movies and documentaries I’ve seen, women in the war were absent. But they were there as combat nurses, intelligence officers, air traffic control, and more. 

When the masses say it’s good, you have to believe them, right? If you check Goodreads, you’ll see this book has an astonishing score of 4.62, with over 1.2 million (as of this writing) ratings! Every one that I skimmed over revealed how transformative, how fantastic, and how breathtaking this book was. I was so excited to get into it, that I immediately purchased it. And from the first few paragraphs, I was hooked. 

The Women follows Frankie McGrath, the daughter of a wealthy family who idolized military service. In order to get her father to notice her and to follow her brother, who signs up for the war, she enters the Army as a fresh, new, combat nurse. For the first third of the story, she is thrust into some of the worst conditions one can imagine. Once a wealthy kid with no real world experience, now she’s seeing the true atrocities of war. She holds soldiers who have been blown apart, sees innocents destroyed by napalm, and tries to hold it together when soldiers return from POW camps, their minds broken. This part was gritty, nail-biting, gripping, and action packed, but Frankie, despite being pampered all her life, soldiers on and learns how to survive while being a warm heart for some of the most vulnerable people. And then the entire story shifts…

The strong woman from the war crumbles in civilian society. Frankie leaves the battered country and tries to integrate herself back into civilian society, only to be ignored—even by her own family—called despicable names, and spat upon multiple times (though this is a point of contention, with some saying it didn’t happen, others stating it was commonplace). Unable to reconcile life with PTSD, Frankie attempts multiple times to find help, only to be shooed away while everyone says, “Women didn’t serve in Vietnam.” Gee, if only there were a way to prove she was there… Like showing up in her uniform, displaying her military service dog tags, or possibly by flashing her MILITARY ID!! But no, she just hangs her head, and turns to pills and alcohol while she constantly laments on losing her brother and both her boyfriends from her short time over there. Similar scenes became the crux of the story, and it felt like I was reading a diary of a young girl who only wanted to complain about how unfair life was, while doing nothing about it. 

Did a new author pen the rest of the book? I know what it’s like to be invisible in life. I have felt that a lot growing up, so I’m not being insensitive, it’s just the writing became so insufferable, and the whole “woe is me” thing took over the otherwise good story. The last two-thirds of the book were an absolute slog. It was a copy and paste trial of an entitled, opulent woman complaining about every aspect of her life. This section of the book felt written by a man with a narrow view of women. This once strong woman changed into a walking doormat. Why?

From tragic war story to sappy romance. It was very difficult to get through as it turned into this cozy, yet tries-to-be-edgy-tragic-romance. If I had seen this review of the book, “Kristin Hanna’s The Women is like if Colleen Hover wrote a Vietnam novel,” I would have avoided it altogether. Without giving too much away, the ending was absolutely ridiculous and half-assed. I think the author was going for a poignant, heart-soaring happy ending, but for me, it was a glaringly simple “plot armor type twist” that had me banging my head against the wall. 

Started off strong, then fell flat. For me, The Women started off like a steak and lobster dinner, but the sides were cold and bland, while dessert was a watered down can of fruit cocktail. I’ll give it ☕☕. It started off perky and rich, and then left me falling asleep and drooling on my pillow. But hey, over a million people loved it; I guess I’m just the oddball on the outside. 😅 Maybe I’ll cleanse my palate by reading the real Vietnam Women story.

…And Then This Happened

Stephen King Stories Getting Reboots

A rundown of The Running Man. Writing as Richard Bachman, Stephen King penned The Running Man in 1982. It was a standalone paperback novel set in the year 2025. Oh, wait! That’s our current year… I always wondered why people chose not too distant futures for their dystopian stories? Before we dive down that endless rabbit hole, let’s get back on track. In this alternate future, the world is a violent hellscape, leaving most people unable to simply survive. Our main character, Ben Richards, is no different. He has been blacklisted and cannot find work to support his family. So, in a move of desperation, he enters the Running Man reality show. If he survives the deadly games for 30 days, he wins a billion dollar prize. The problem is, the odds are not in his favor, as no one has survived the games long enough to obtain the money. 

The original movie was entertaining, if nothing like the book. The Running Man was turned into a campy, violent movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Richard Dawson (the original host of Family Feud). The 1987 version of the film was only loosely based on the novel, and it received lukewarm ratings. It seems that during the 80s and 90s, Stephen King adapted movies were either great hits such as Pet Semetary and Misery, or huge misses like The Lawnmower Man, and Silver Bullet. The Running Man adaptation, though entertaining, didn’t follow the book much at all. The latest version, slated for a November 7th release, promises to be a much more faithful adaptation of the thrilling book.

We’re finally getting a faithful rendition. Glen Powell is taking the lead role of Ben Richards. Other big names in the movie include Josh Brolin, playing the Running Man’s producer, Daniel Ezra, Michael Cera, and Emilia Jones. Right now, there is no official trailer, so we don’t know exactly what it’s going to look like, but the director Edgar Wright (Baby Driver and Scott Pilgrim vs The World) promises this version is a “much more faithful” adaptation of the book. 

Other Stephen King books getting a remake include Cujo, which has been picked up by Netflix, and Carrie. The latter has been filmed four times if you include The Rage: Carrie 2, which was panned as a pathetic rehash of the original material. Amazon Prime is expected to craft an eight episode series of Carrie that will begin filming in the summer of this year. I don’t know how, or if it will even compare to the original, but for me, it’s one that needs to be left alone.