The Reading Room

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1:21 AM

@Randal'Thor I really enjoyed that series. Very underrated.

@Shokhet my strategy is that it's better to reread a really good book than to read a new OK book. Of course, I only reread if I think there's things I missed the first time through.

Bookworm

1:42 AM

Q: Husband & wife, best on roadside by rapist: story title help needed

Back in the 80s or 90s, before AIDS was commonly know about, I read a short story were a husband and wife are beset on the side of the road by a villain who plans to rape the wife. She has some sort of illness that will inflict the rapist, bringing about his just demise unbeknownst to him. The wi...

story-identification

Hamlet

@Bookworm ooohhh, that's actually the first story-id question that interests me.

Shokhet

2:02 AM

@Hamlet Makes sense.

I reread Ender's Game immediately after reading it the first time because (it was good and because) I knew there must have been stuff that I missed. (I'm still fairly certain I'm missing some things. There was a lot going on.)

Mistborn is a lot of reading to do, so I won't do it soon...but it might be interesting to reread it and see how Ruin was affecting certain characters. (rot13: Zrnavat, nyy gur crbcyr jub lbh svaq bhg jrer fcvxrq, rfcrpvnyyl Iva.)

(I don't know who's read what, and that is a huge spoiler.)

Hamlet

@Shokhet the exception being books like Harry Potter that I tend to read once every 2 years

Shokhet

@Hamlet Why Harry Potter? ...when I finished the sixth book, I thought it wasn't interesting enough to read the seventh. I finally read it last year, but that was mostly due to peer pressure.

I tried reading it in Hebrew, but a lot of the cute little things that Rowling does with the English language are lost in translation.

(Those may have been replaced with cute little Hebrew language things, but I wasn't proficient enough to notice.)

Hamlet

@Shokhet some parts of Ender's Game are pretty good, some parts are pretty poorly thought out, it still amazes me that the author was able to write a book like that.

Shokhet

2:18 AM

@Hamlet Not done reading that yet, but why should it matter if Card is homophobic?

I don't recall the book covering those issues, but it's been a while.

Hamlet

@Shokhet well, the book is in many ways about diversity and inclusion. That article contains a personal account on the impact that message had on one person, and there are other articles on the web where people report similar experiences

But Card's personal views go completely against that message.

The best explanation of the contradiction in my mind comes from the following interview:

> Orson Scott Card: If I knew, I would do it again. I don’t, but I have some ideas.

What works with Ender’s Game is Ender’s community-building. There’s a disparate group of kids who could be rivals, and he’s able to bind them together through his personal service to them, through his loyalty, his trustworthiness. They know he’ll never waste them, that he’s not exploiting them for his own gain.

I certainly was not conscious of it as I was writing him—I’m not much of a follower, and I’m not a good team player—and yet I created the kind of guy that I would follow.

BESW

At bookstore. Sometimes I amuse myself by looking at the really good cover designs somebody in marketing clearly ruined.

Tweeted by UrsulaV on June 14, 2017 at 1:14 AM

Hamlet

(also, the article understates how homophobic [and racist] Card is).

I really would like to see some questions and answers about the personal impact Ender's Game has had on people. What's the best way to ask those questions...

Of course, I still need to actually write the close reading stuff

Shokhet

@Hamlet I see. No, I misunderstood what you meant by the words of your hyperlink. I thought you meant the book was bad.

Hamlet

@Shokhet parts of the book are pretty bad.

BESW

2:26 AM

In my experience, the impact of Ender's Game is directly related to whether it's the first book of its type that one read--ditto The Giver, etc.

Hamlet

Like Valentine's pseudo-philosophy.

BESW

You never forget your first, no matter how objectively good or bad it is without nostalgia goggles.

Hamlet

@BESW that's definitely true for me. It was the first book of its type that I read.

Shokhet

@Hamlet Valentine and Peter both . . . ? Or was Peter's philosophy somehow better?

Hamlet

@Shokhet Peter's philosophy was stupid but it was portrayed as stupid. Valentine's philosophy was stupid but portrayed as insightful.

Shokhet

2:30 AM

@Hamlet That's either going to be closed as POB, or . . . I'm not sure how to ask an objective question about personal impact. Maybe whether it's been studied?

BESW

It was definitively not the first book of its type that I read, and 14-year-old BESW had already read much better disjointed scifi philosophizing from Clarke and Bradbury.

Shokhet

@Hamlet Aha.

Hamlet

@Shokhet we had a question about Edmund in Narnia that got such an answer. And maybe it's worth rethinking what counts as a subjective question.

Shokhet

@Hamlet . . . this one?

I'm not sure what you'd ask. Asking for people to write about their own experiences is certainly POB. What kind of question do you want to ask?

@Shokhet It's the only question on this site that was about Edmund in Narnia, so...

Shokhet

2:47 AM

@Hamlet That article was a pretty good read. Thanks :)

3 hours later…

Bookworm

5:26 AM

Q: References about English Literature

I read this page from http://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-english-literature-history-definition-quiz.html and I wanted to know the references from books or theorists saying " English literature is the study of literature written in the English language. The writers do not necessarily have to ...

theory

2 hours later…

Mithrandir

7:06 AM

@BESW I think it was the first of it's kind I read. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't great. But the rest were... Kinda awful, IMO. And I really don't dislike much that I read.

(The Giver was good, though.)

@Bookworm I can't tell if that's a recommendation question.

@Hamlet but a book will certainly affect different people differently. I can't think of a way that that wouldn't be POB. The Edmund question is different - it's asking for why he might be gay. That's entirely different.

1 hour later…

Rand al'Thor

8:14 AM

@Hamlet Even if you think there can't be anything you missed, sometimes there is after all. I was still finding new things in my last (~5th?) reread of Lord of the Rings, for instance.

Gallifreyan

@NapoleonWilson Don't remember any. Certainly there wasn't any gratuitous nudity in the later episodes (except when Laura had to be naked due to being in the morgue).

Rand al'Thor

@Hamlet Might be quite hard to search for an answer without coming across ... disturbing stuff though :-/

Mithrandir

8:38 AM

*sighs in relief* I accidentally took a book for a swim in the lake, but it appears to have survived with only some slight damage to the cover. Whew.

Gallifreyan

@Mithrandir Hand in your Literature mod card, please.

Mithrandir

...

It's still perfectly legible.

5 hours later…

Hamlet

1:28 PM

@Mithrandir but that's how literature works: there are infinitely many ways to interpret a book because everyone can react/interpret it differently

5 hours later…

Gallifreyan

6:16 PM

This month's Humble Book Bundle is Best of BOOM!, along with 2017 Eisner Nominees

2 hours later…

Bookworm

8:42 PM

Q: About Sappho's "Hector and Andromacha" poem

In a relatively short while, I'll have to write a blog post on this poem, so I've been doing some research into the sources. The first is P.Oxy. 1232, an image of which is the following. A later source is P.Oxy. 2076, with image below. From these, I can find most of what the text at Greek W...

sappho

Mithrandir

A: Can anyone remind me who wrote this essay about qualifying remarks? (Mark Twain, maybe?)

Possibly 'William Dean Howells' by Mark Twain: Mr. Howells does not repeat his forms, and does not need to; he can invent fresh ones without limit. It is mainly the repetition over and over again, by the third-rates, of worn and commonplace and juiceless forms that makes their novels such a w...

Bookworm

9:15 PM

Q: English Literature

Do you know references for books or theories from books discussing "English literature is the study of literature written in the English language. The writers do not necessarily have to be from England but can be from all over the world... (Source: http://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-english-...

theory

Mithrandir

@Bookworm that's essentially a repost of their previous question, which is closed.

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