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Comment by willis936 | Hacker News Reader

The use of the word “novel” in contexts like these is a pet peeve of mine. It seems to be used solely for making an idea sound good regardless of merit. Yes, there is value in signaling originality, but the tone feels self congratulatory. Perhaps this is just a product of my experiences in academia, where the use of the word “novel” seemed like a goal.

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In this case it's also a pun, because they're talking about a book club.

Exactly - novel meaning "new" is perfectly valid usage but it's the dual meaning that's the intention here, the "I am reading a novel" one.

This got me wondering why books are called novels - apparently from the Italian "novella": https://penandthepad.com/history-novel-6305937.html

I read it as sarcasm, in the sense that the organizers seem to be putting a lot of effort into pretending they're not merely appropriating college age "study in commons" lifestyle.

So you take your psych 101 textbook to the commons and read mostly quietly for a half hour and then party all night with whoever else shows up to "study" and the only difference is you're older and not paying $50K/yr for the privilege to do so.

I sympathise with your allergy to the word "novel". When I see that word in the title of a paper I tend to assume that the author is a desperate PhD student describing some method that is slightly different from the normal and obvious way of doing things and which works only slightly less well. The first sentence of the abstract SHALL contain the word "ubiquitous".

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