The Reading Room

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BESW

00:00

Poem by high school junior Ramone "Dave" McBride, shared at the Lakota Nation Invitational’s 2nd Annual Poetry Slam: "I See Hope..."

BESW

00:11

Stunning 200 Year Old Library Discovered For The First Time http://sobadsogood.com/2017/06/17/stunning-200-year-old-library-discovered-first-time-in-bouillon-brussels/#.WU65XWwojl8.twitter

Tweeted by FernRiddell on June 24, 2017 at 7:11 PM

Henry WH Hack v2.0

Someone discovered a 200 year old library. Amazing!

So when I delete a message the star gets removed interested.

I already knew that. ;)

10 hours later…

Gallifreyan

09:54

Was going to ask why Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman hate Best of Queen albums. Found the answer myself.

Gallifreyan

10:06

Damn it, Internet made asking good unanswered questions here so much harder.

Oh, wait...

Gallifreyan

10:17

Here's a conundrum: I wanted to ask whether "Murder Mysteries" was intended as a part of The Sandman mythos. It's obvious from the story (the tone, the characters, the moral) that this is the case, yet I couldn't dig up a confirmation from Neil Gaiman. Should I still ask?

Hehe :D

Rand al'Thor

10:56

@Hamlet I'd like to read up some more about close reading and then decide whether or not to edit it myself. Wikipedia, for instance, doesn't say close reading necessarily has to be on a word-by-word level. I don't know yet whether sentence-by-sentence can be small-scale enough to count as close reading by some people's definition, or whether you're just being pedantic :-)

@Hamlet Eh. They're not doing us any harm, and still being drowned out by non-ID questions. Wouldn't your time be better spent on providing great Q&A (setting a good example and educating those who don't know as many literary techniques as you do) rather than worrying and complaining about a small class of questions that you don't like?

@Mithrandir So do I, but if one person upvotes and another downvotes, the question is still eligible for Tumbleweed.

@Mithrandir Is it legit (i.e. not breaking copyright or anything)? If so, feel free to edit it into my TC announcement on meta.

Gallifreyan

@Randal'Thor Not if it's been commented on :)

@Randal'Thor @Hamlet Don't worry, you sillies - I will rather drown this site in a flurry of Sandman questions than see it be overtaken by story-identification :)

Rand al'Thor

Is Sandman going to become the new 1984? :-/

Mithrandir

@Randal'Thor Isn't it in the public domain?

Gallifreyan

@Mithrandir The book is. The translation has its own copyright.

Rand al'Thor

@Mithrandir The original text is, but apparently translations can be copyrighted.

Gallifreyan

11:03

For that matter, I'm not even sure about copyright laws in Japan and whether the original can be considered in public domain, but whatever.

@Randal'Thor But it already is, with 18 questions, and 17 questions, respectively. Right now it's tied with Sherlock Holmes, but I'm working on fixing that.

Rand al'Thor

@Gallifreyan Bah.

Mithrandir

I just got like the complete Sherlock Holmes set (not quite all), so there might be some more SH questions ;)

Gallifreyan

So much to read, so little time
And Doctor Who is yet not viewed
Sadness.

Rand al'Thor

@Gallifreyan OMG, watch it.

The latest episode was an absolute stunner.

Gallifreyan

Got maths and physics exams next Saturday.

Rand al'Thor

11:13

I kept on saying "oh my god" during it as I realised how things were going to unfold - so much that I felt like Steelerfan :-P

BESW

As always, I reserve judgement on the first half of a Moffat two-parter until I see how he pays off what he promises.

Rand al'Thor

Agreed.

The monks three-parter was great up until the stupid climax in the third episode.

BESW

11:37

James Gurney's book review of Lessons in Masterful Portrait Drawing: A Classical Approach to Drawing the Head by Mau-Kun Yim.

Rand al'Thor

12:06

@Community Dammit, stop deleting this question!

Mithrandir

@Randal'Thor again?

Rand al'Thor

@Mithrandir Danke.

Mithrandir

That's the third time I've undeleted it.

Rand al'Thor

Also, I don't understand why that question is so downvoted.

Mithrandir

Could we get a sense of why this question is being downvoted? For reference, here is the most recent meta post on reading order questions. I personally haven't voted either way on this question yet, and I would like to get a sense of why the community is voting the way it is. — Hamlet ♦ Feb 25 at 0:40

Rand al'Thor

12:08

Other reading-order questions haven't been so poorly received.

If a couple more people upvote it, it'll stop getting roombaed so easily.

Gallifreyan

Emrakul hasn't spoken to us in a while :(

Rand al'Thor

I've been thinking that too!

Mithrandir

I haven't see them around much either, although they were talking in the mod room yesterday

Rand al'Thor

I hope their departure from Puzzling wasn't a first step towards their departure from the whole of SE.

Gallifreyan

And maybe someone ought to pin a message announcing our next challenge here as well.

Rand al'Thor

12:19

Darn, not even pingable in here or tSL.

July's topic challenge will be the Japanese classic I Am a Cat. Get your copy ready - the challenge starts on 1 July!

> feline transmogrification

That's a great phrase, since "moggy" is a colloquial word for a cat.

Bookworm

12:48

Q: Who was Long John Silver based on?

In his little-known preface to Treasure Island (which I discovered while answering this question), Robert Louis Stevenson wrote rather persuasively on the possibilities for how a fictional character might be inspired, whether by a stranger encountered once or by a good old friend: And then I ...

Rand al'Thor

@Bookworm While answering my own question, I inspired myself to ask a new question :-P

3 hours later…

Feeds

15:35

Can you help us out? Who was the inspiration for Long John Silver in #TreasureIsland? #Literature https://literature.stackexchange.com/q/2808/481

Tweeted by StackLiterature on June 25, 2017 at 3:04 PM

Bookworm

15:49

Q: Why does Lucifer mention Raguel and Sandalphon as possible rebels among the angelic host?

In chapter two of Season of Mists, Lucifer mentions the angels Raguel and Sandalphon as angels who could rebel [against God]: Why those two angels?

comics neil-gaiman the-sandman

Hamlet

@Randal'Thor hmm, let me take a look at the wikipedia article

> In literary criticism, close reading is the careful, sustained interpretation of a brief passage of a text. A close reading emphasizes the single and the particular over the general, effected by close attention to individual words, the syntax, and the order in which the sentences unfold ideas, as the reader scans the line of text.

(that was very first paragraph).

Hamlet

16:13

I'm not being pedantic. Try looking at the poem "Naming of Parts" sentence by sentence. Then try word by word. There's a huge difference.

@Randal'Thor "I don't know yet whether sentence-by-sentence can be small-scale enough to count as close reading by some people's definition", well, it counts as close reading under your definition :) Do you trust your definition? Do you trust my definition? There aren't too many good articles about close reading on the internet. I can pull up some definitions from books, would you trust those?

4 hours later…

Mithrandir

19:58

Gah, @Shokhet, you've gotten "The Sound of Silence" so irrevocably earwormed into my head that I'm going to have to ask a question about it.

Gallifreyan

@Mithrandir Ask 80 so I can get a Taxonomist for the tag.

Mithrandir

I've only got one rattling around at the moment, sorry :) (that I'm not sure if I'll ask, I have to do some basic research first)

2 hours later…

Shokhet

22:00

Jun 20 at 19:53, by Shokhet

@Mithrandir Revenge for "Hallelujah" complete :)

@Mithrandir Incidentally, I also had a "Sound of Silence" question rattling around my head, but I don't recall what it was atm.

@Gallifreyan 80? 50.

(I just got one today on another site.)

Feeds

22:16

Great answer: Why did Morris and Clay preemptively dissolve the Red-Headed League? #SherlockHolmes https://literature.stackexchange.com/a/2802/481

Tweeted by StackLiterature on June 25, 2017 at 9:35 PM

1 hour later…

Bookworm

23:30

Q: Who narrates "Ars Arcanum" in The Alloy of Law?

I just finished The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson. As is the norm in many of Sanderson's Cosmere books, the story is followed by a short section titled "Ars Arcanum," with a description of some of the various kinds of magic present on that particular world of the Cosmere. (There's a bit about...

brandon-sanderson cosmere

Shokhet

@Ash I just left that comment on your question with the link to twitter.com/isbook3outyet (which I've known about for a while), but I hadn't yet seen isbook3outyet.com. Go there, and then refresh the page :)

(See also literature.stackexchange.com/q/309/481, which I forgot about but just saw while looking through patrick-rothfuss)

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