Re:370 Books in 20 months: South African author defends her ...
by zbentley on Monday November 09, 2026 @07:27AM
(#50424677)
Because sudoku is a math puzzle and a book of words is a story.
Like, the line between big artistic/creative efforts and other stuff is subjective and hard to trace, yes. I know the counter arguments here (“what if the book is an instruction manual?”, “what if someone’s labor of artisanal love is making sudoku puzzles?”), but sudoku vs story is like disagreements over “what counts as the Midwest”: you know very well that Antarctica isn’t in it, and that a sudoku book merits very different appreciation and artistic protectionism-from-AI than a story.
It’s fine to categorize things without having a rigorous definition of the category.
Like, the line between big artistic/creative efforts and other stuff is subjective and hard to trace, yes. I know the counter arguments here (“what if the book is an instruction manual?”, “what if someone’s labor of artisanal love is making sudoku puzzles?”), but sudoku vs story is like disagreements over “what counts as the Midwest”: you know very well that Antarctica isn’t in it, and that a sudoku book merits very different appreciation and artistic protectionism-from-AI than a story.
It’s fine to categorize things without having a rigorous definition of the category.