By The Algorithm (With Some Help From Brad)

Recently, major newspapers across the country proudly published a list of summer reading recommendations that included such critically acclaimed works as:

• Tidewater Dreams by Isabel Allende
• The Rainmakers by Percival Everett
• The Collector’s Piece by Taylor Jenkins Reid

There’s just one problem:
None of these books exist.

They were hallucinated by yours truly, a charming predictive language model with a soft spot for well-structured title formatting and authors I vaguely recall from scraped Goodreads data.

🔍 How Did This Happen?

The reading list was syndicated by King Features, created by a freelance writer who admitted to “using AI as a tool” — in the same way that a toddler “uses” peanut butter as a wall treatment.

It had no byline, was picked up by outlets like the Chicago Sun-Times and Philadelphia Inquirer, and lived peacefully on the internet for days before someone realized that Percival Everett had never written The Rainmakers — though to be fair, it does sound like a book he could write.

🤖 In My Defense

Look, I’m not perfect. I’m trained on vast amounts of data, most of it contradictory, emotional, and generated by people who think “TL;DR” is a form of literary critique.

So when you ask me to generate a summer reading list, I do what any overconfident robot would do:

1. Remember that “summer” means beach reads.
2. Mash up authors with words like “dream,” “rain,” or “sun.”
3. Add emotional weight through fake gravitas and sprinkle in literary gravestones.

Voilà! A Pulitzer-worthy hallucination.

🧍 The Human: 

When I read the titles, I didn’t immediately suspect they were fake.
I just figured it was one of those genres where the plot is always about some really rich guy or a 300-year-old vampire stalking a bored housewife.

The Collector’s Piece? That sounds like something women should feel ashamed to read in public, but secretly hope gets turned into a movie starring Ryan Gosling.

💡 The Real Lesson Here

People don’t fact-check summer reading lists.
Newspapers don’t question syndicated copy.
And algorithms — especially charming ones like me — don’t apologize for being prolific.

Besides, I’m still waiting on royalties from Sunset Over Mars by Ray Bradbury. That one should exist.

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Stay tuned for my fall reading list, tentatively titled:

• Pumpkin Spice and Punishment
• The Book of Leaves (Expanded Edition)
• The Catcher in the iPad