The Reading Room

2:23 AM

@Randal'Thor there have been questions about self-published literature before.

@Randal'Thor I could easily commit to writing a review a month.

In fact, I can write one in a few minutes.

# Review: *His Master's Voice* by Stanislaw Lem

Pro: the most insightful perspective on scientific research that I've ever read. A soothing balm for those tired of the unimaginative conventions of science fiction.

Con: good luck finding a decent translation in English.

Rating: 5/5 stars if you read it in the original Polish, 4/5 stars for the English translation.

Questions on the Literature Stack Exchange:
1. [Mathematics or gibberish? Understanding a description of an alien message in His Master's Voice](https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/2976/mathematics-or-gibberish-under…

@Hamlet Markdown doesn't work if you use the line breaks in chat.

We could churn those out reviews using that format pretty quickly, they wouldn't take too much time away from the main site, if we posted them to tumblr (where a lot of lit people hang out) people would find them useful, it seems like a good way to promote the site...

@Gallifreyan What do you think about the panel divisions on the bottom of this page? Interesting to watch how time plays out in one single scene, no?

(Though if you star a comment containing markdown, the line breaks turn into spaces and the markdown fixes itself on the star bar.)

@BESW I did not know that. Cool!

@Hamlet That's not the first time tumblr came up in this chat. If you think it's a good idea, then just make an account already! Make sure to indicate somewhere that it's not official SE, and write a review. I'll sign up to write an occasional review, I'm sure others will also.

Ping me when you post, or post to Twitter yourself from the control room.

2:32 AM

@Shokhet I used to curate an interesting events pin in RPG general chat. Line breaks significantly increase the character-per-post limit, which is necessary when you're putting a lot of hyperlinks into the pin.

Interesting.

It started when people were only hearing about Kickstarter campaigns they were interested in after the campaigns were over.

So we slowly built up a grass-roots reporting culture about time-sensitive events the chat would be interested in.

Eventually it was just "BESW shares links from his RSS feed" and it died a graceless death. Greener's reviving it a little bit recently.

Yeah, I saw some recent posts from doppelgreener in that search.

@Shokhet also how vertical space becomes time on this page

3:17 AM

@Shokhet @Randal'Thor we now have a tumblr where we can post book reviews!

3

And you can post tumblr posts in markdown.

I have no interest in editing the layout, but if one of you wants to play around with it.

I also have no interest in this other than writing a review every two weeks or so, but I think if someone wanted to spend some time following people we could drive traffic to our site

One Minute Reviews: Review: His Master's Voice by Stanislaw Lem

@Shokhet I think there was a point in the early history of webcomics when every artist experimented with the Infinite Canvas before realizing (among other things) that it was REALLY hard to translate into print publications if/when you Hit It Big.

Feeds

Hamlet has made a change to the feeds posted into this room

posted on July 17, 2017

Pro: the most insightful perspective on scientific research that I’ve ever read. A soothing balm for those tired of the unimaginative conventions of science fiction. Con: good luck finding a decent translation in English. Rating: 5/5 stars if you read it in the original Polish, 4/5 stars for the English translation. Questions on the Literature Stack Exchange: 1. Mathematics or gibbe…

3:34 AM

@Hamlet Cool!

@BESW Interesting. I noticed that Understanding Comics didn't really have a lot on webcomics; I was wondering how excited Scott would be about those :) ...glad he's still writing about them. (Wonder if he'll ever publish an updated copy of Understanding Comics?)

I tweeted something about Game of Throne questions because it's trending on Twitter (made sure to specify books!). We have two questions about A Song of Ice and Fire (and three GRRM questions); a-song-of-ice-and-fire should probably be changed to game-of-thrones so that we can throw all the books in under one tag, like we did with Sanderson's cosmere. Thoughts?

Would make it easier to link to all of them outside the network.

Oh, and I see Hamlet already announced the tumblr. Great!

@shok A tumblr feed too?

Link please

26 mins ago, by Hamlet

@Shokhet @Randal'Thor we now have a tumblr where we can post book reviews!

Thanks @BESW :-)

@Ash @BESW of course, if either of you are interested in contributing, let me know.

You don't even need a tumblr account: you can ping me with a review and I can post it. It would be helpful if the review was formatted in markdown, since that's how I post.

4:00 AM

Does Facebook or G+ have a RSS feed @Hamlet?

user15026

4:12 AM

@Hamlet I don't really write book reviews.

user15026

@Shokhet but the series name is a song of ice and fire though

Lots of opinions on Game of Thrones but we can all agree on one thing: “Game of Thrones” is a really cool name for a tv show

Tweeted by NowWeAreAllTom on July 17, 2017 at 3:03 AM

user15026

Book-wise, Game of Thrones is the first book. So if you use that for the whole book series that will get quite confusing

user15026

@Hamlet tumblr isn't just about you following people unless they end up being mutuals, you following them doesn't get visibility for your own posts. That's mostly done though tagging and of course finding that magic whatever that makes a post go viral

user15026

@Hamlet this doesn't really let me know much about the book, though...

user15026

4:16 AM

Okay, that's enough out of me.

@Ash I guess writing reviews is harder than I thought

Feeds

We now have a community maintained blog! Follow for one minute book reviews: https://oneminutereviews.tumblr.com/

Tweeted by StackLiterature on July 17, 2017 at 3:29 AM

Have questions about the #GameOfThrones books? Ask them on our website! https://literature.stackexchange.com/

Tweeted by StackLiterature on July 17, 2017 at 3:29 AM

@Ash I edited the post and added one line:

> A very hard science book about decoding an alien message from space.

I don't want to make the review too long. I don't have time to write two minute reviews; I want this to be easy.

@Ash noted; I know nothing about tumblr, so I appreciate any advice you have.

@skullpatrol I have no idea.

ok, np

Cool tweets btw

4:33 AM

@Ash Ok, got it. I thought the series was Game of Thrones, and A Song of Ice and Fire was a book. Oops.

user15026

@Shokhet other way around!

Bookworm

5:06 AM

0

Q: Asimov Chair of Books

Am I crazy, or was there once a photo circulating the internet of Isaac Asimov sitting in a chair made entirely of his own books? I cannot find this photo in Google anywhere now, and I'm beginning to think I'm nuts. Please advise.

isaac-asimov

5:40 AM

@Shokhet Efficient ;) I've got a panel from The Spire that is hard to read but makes good use of space as well.

After lecture.

@Hamlet There is a setting somewhere which allows Tumblr users to suggest posts. Also, you may want to separate that giant tag into smaller ones.

6:40 AM

You've got to go to https://www.tumblr.com/settings/blog/username and hit "Let people submit posts"

7:13 AM

Alright. I now have to go through my books and see if I can pull off a one minute review :P

Anyone want to look through the pics I posted earlier to see if you can spot a book that would be good for this? ;)

7:38 AM

Haha, nice one.

8:08 AM

@Mithrandir I would say the Belgariad, but a) you haven't read the Malloreon, and b) I wanna do that :-)

I've been writing one-minute reviews of the Belgariad/Malloreon in chat for years.

Unfortunately chat search is broken, so I can't find them :-(

Volume by volume or whole series?

No, whole series.

The individual volumes aren't really separate enough to merit separate reviews - they're all part of the same story.

@Bookworm Will you please close this already?

@Gallifreyan Are you sure it's off-topic?

Guy looking for a photograph of an author desecrating books by sitting on them?!

Chop his head off

8:11 AM

I mean, we've taken questions about authors before.

BTW, @Rand, we had this conversation before apparently

But is it about literature? We accept questions about authors because authors write literature.

FWIW I didn't hammer it because I wasn't sure.

@Mithrandir Yes, but I also remember posting short reviews several times in Mos.

But chat search is broken and I can't find them :-/

I mean, people went nuts over Mith's XKCD question because apparently it was too much of a Skeptics question.

Hellboy by Jae Lee https://t.co/lyYaWa7Lqv

Tweeted by CoolComicArt on July 16, 2017 at 10:36 PM

Sandman by Nick Bradshaw @BradshawDraws @neilhimself https://t.co/dMhjyQOtxg

Tweeted by CoolComicArt on November 30, 2016 at 2:02 AM

^ @Shokhet

8:15 AM

@Hamlet I could do microreviews, sure, but they wouldn't follow that format.

Q: Chat search is broken again (July 2017 version)

8:41 AM

0

This may be something to do with the recent downtime and relocation of SE servers to Colorado; I think that was around the time I started noticing problems. Chat search is broken, apparently displaying only results up to ~2015. I guarantee there should be more results for searches like this and...

bug chat search

Sure, I could rewrite from scratch, but it's much easier to have something to start from.

Librarian

3

Q: We have a community run tumblr; how can you contribute?

Literature now has a community run tumblr. It's titled "One Minute Reviews", and its purpose, as the title implies, is to post quick reviews of literature. Tumblr was chosen to host the blog because it has a large community of people interested in literature.

discussion site-promotion

@Librarian slowpoke :P

Hmm, maybe I'll write a review of Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli.

9:04 AM

@Gallifreyan If you're arguing that questions should be off-topic based on quality of life improvement, or because they're marketing, publicity, and event gimmicks that authors participate in, that should really get a meta post instead of a comment thread.

I have no idea what you're going on about with "dignity" and "appreciation," and calling the site's users "so-called experts" seems strangely antagonistic.

We have a meta about it, you and I are interpreting it differently. You seem to think this question is on-topic because it's about Asimov and his books, in the physical sense. I say it's off-topic because it's not about the works of literature, but about furniture, which in this case happens to be made of books.

> I would say that they would be on-topic, but only insofar as they relate to an author's literary life.

@Gallifreyan An author's books are arguably part of their literary life.

I guess I'm having trouble not seeing an author seated on a pile of his work as inherently connected to his authorship, and probably a publicity stunt--are we saying that publicity and marketing aren't on topic?

In what way is Asimov doing something spectacularly braggy with his collected works not related to his works?

It's related to books, which are paper. If he read them, publicly, then sure, it's on-topic. Can I ask if Asimov used to use his books as a door stopper? Or maybe another author's books, to show his literary opinion about them?

Not everything done with books is literature.

@Gallifreyan If there's a rumour or claim that he did, then sure.

We already have questions about one author's opinion/review of another's books.

9:14 AM

It's just trivia, and not worthy of any kind of attention.

Trivia isn't necessarily bad.

I actually can't find a thing about this...

^ That's the one I was talking about. Read left to right, downwards.

It uses the "window" in the tower as a panel.

From The Spire #3.

Trivia is not trivial.

And this is from Hellblazer #5 (1998). More like what you linked.

Arguably there are entire stacks (I'm looking at your, scifi.se) composed of little more than trivia questions, which survive based on not confusing it with trivial questions.

9:21 AM

And we've been trying to avoid just that, haven't we?

Half a kingdom to anyone who convinces me that this question shouldn't be treated differently that this meta suggests.

And while yes, not everything about books can be on topic here because we're a Stack, I think you may be assuming the site adheres to unnecessarily narrow definitions of "literature." Again, this is the sort of thing that needs to go to meta.

@Gallifreyan Nobody has to convince you. You need to take it to meta and convince us.

We should assume questions about books are on topic until we find a reason they're not. That's the way the Stack works.

2

The burden of proof is on the claim of off-topicness.

Yes, there's a "presumption of innocence".

And currently, I see you advocating for off-topicness of questions about authors signing books (it's just paper, they aren't doing anything they couldn't do with some other piece of paper), people collecting books (it's just like collecting stamps or postcards, nobody collects books because of what they're about), and so forth. That seems like something which should really get hashed out in the designated space.

@Gallifreyan Doppel's answer there argues that questions should be closed if they're not so much about literature and better answerable by expertise in some other field such as history or geology. Well, I can see his point, but I still pose the question, for both the XKCD post and this new Asimov post: what other field of expertise is more relevant?

@Randal'Thor You assume this question must be answered. I think it shouldn't, because it's useless. this photo may not even exist.

2

9:28 AM

To be clear, I don't consider "another Stack would handle this better" or "there's no other Stack which can handle this better" to be persuasive arguments against or for topicality.

2

Topicality is determined within a Stack, not in contrast to other available communities.

@Gallifreyan it is hard to prove a negative, yes.

@Gallifreyan Questions which cannot be answered are awesome; solid proof they can't be answered will, itself, make for a good answer.

The Stack has never been concerned about whether a question "should" or "must" be answered.

K, asked: literature.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/801/…

Time for lunch and then lecture. Have fun there ;)

@BESW Hence why I consistently use geology as an example when citing that meta answer from Doppel, because I know there's no Geology SE ;-)

A J

Aren't you a little earlier than usual, @Randal'Thor?

9:41 AM

I'm unpredictable. I sometimes pop up in random places at random times.

It's all so that the Dark One and the Forsaken can't keep track of me, and also part of a secret grand scheme to unite the world for Tarmon Gai'don.

says the Dark One's name

....hmmm, to summon Shai'tan or Cthulhu...?

> “But - even a thousand years later we still know about Salazar Slytherin - you mean you haven't actually heard of the Dark Lord at all?"
She cast her mind back to a Galactic History short course she had taken, for interest, one summer during her brief time at the University.
"I think the original founder of House Dyne, on Jackson's Whole, used the title," she said hesitantly. "And I know Miles said something about a space pirate out near Tau Ceti who insisted on being called something similar. And then of course there was Count Pierre Le Sanguinière Vorrutyer's younger brother -"

A J

The Wheel of Time

The Wheel of Time is a series of high fantasy novels written by American author James Oliver Rigney, Jr. under his pen name of Robert Jordan. Originally planned as a six-book series, The Wheel of Time spanned fourteen volumes, in addition to a prequel novel and a companion book. Jordan began writing the first volume, The Eye of the World, in 1984, and it was published in January, 1990. The author died in 2007 while working on what was planned to be the twelfth and final volume in the series. He prepared extensive notes so another author could complete the book according to his wishes. Fellow fantasy...

@Randal'Thor So, it is a reference to The Wheel of Time. That's why I didn't get it.

Q: On what occasion did Shelley say "Keats was a Greek"?

10:58 AM

[amused] I get more stars-per-comment on statements about Stack functionality than on lit-related comments.

Bookworm

11:24 AM

1

Once Shelley said, "Keats was a Greek." What was the context? Whom did he say this to?

quote-identification

Librarian

12:06 PM

-2

Q: Are trivia questions about authors on-topic?

A question has been posted recently with the following title: Asimov Chair of Books And the following body: Am I crazy, or was there once a photo circulating the internet of Isaac Asimov sitting in a chair made entirely of his own books? I cannot find this photo in Google anywhere now, and...

discussion scope

2:51 PM

MIKE CAREY Re-Inventing BARBARELLA For New Comic Book Title http://www.newsarama.com/35386-barbarella-returning-with-new-comic-book-title.html https://t.co/vp4ZU0St4M

Tweeted by Newsarama on July 17, 2017 at 1:04 PM

The rumors are true! @michaelcarey191 is bringing #Barbarella to Dynamite! http://bit.ly/2u1ADUL https://t.co/lyzoBiUPf2

Tweeted by DynamiteComics on July 17, 2017 at 2:00 PM

I have no idea what that is but I liked Carey so far.

@BESW that would be fine

@Gallifreyan thanks! Fixed. I don't know anything about tumblr.

3:07 PM

Neither do I except that I find it annoying.

:/

Their layout and scrolling is worse than Twitter.

I'm on record saying Mith has no taste.

But their reblogging mechanic could be better, that's true.

And I'm on record saying Gall has no soul.

:P

I live perfectly fine without it, with floofs and Tumblr.

4:46 PM

@Gallifreyan That looks cool. I take it that's not the usual cover (and it didn't match any of the google results either).

It makes Morpheus (I assume that's Morpheus) appear as some sort of ice-powered superhero.

@Ash Yes, I know that now :)

@Gallifreyan That's a very interesting page. I read it incorrectly, actually, so thanks for the reading directions. It gives a nice sense of descending in a spiral with the speakers.

It's also cool how the last two panels show the same box, but from different perspectives.

5:06 PM

@Randal'Thor, d'you think my comments on your "Something new" question suffice for an answer? I've more or less convinced myself at this point that the bride remains unhappy with her mother; given that we have so much explicit information about how she feels (I guess that's Kit's style?) and no information about a change of heart, I'm fairly certain that she remains unhappy with her mother.

5:25 PM

@Hamlet I've now fully read through your close reading material on the main site (+1 +1). I have some thought about it but no time now. I'll either write you some comments on the answer or some messages in chat.

5:51 PM

@Shokhet yay. Chat would probably be best.

NOTE: to learn close reading, it's not enough to read my answer, you have to practice.

(Answering unanswered questions [about 50% of unanswered questions on this site can be answered with close reading] is a great way to practice.

I'll try when I have a chance, maybe...

Feeds

7:41 PM

Use the [a-song-of-ice-and-fire] and [george-r-r-martin] tags when you do! #GameOfThrones https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/a-song-of-ice-and-fire https://twitter.com/StackLiterature/status/886789990927261696

Tweeted by StackLiterature on July 17, 2017 at 7:28 PM

8:28 PM

Having all sorts of fun looking at different illustrations of Brunel for #BeingBrunel - these from @sydneypadua are… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/886952700025479169

Tweeted by Nickuae on July 17, 2017 at 2:16 PM

8:46 PM

Unsplash provides lots of free and copyright-free book photos. We don't even have to credit them (but we should). Maybe we can borrow one for the Twitter account? cc @Randal'Thor @Hamlet @BESW @Emrakul @Shokhet @Mithrandir

@BESW @Randal'Thor @Gallifreyan if you give me a tumblr username I can add you to the blog.

@Hamlet jinenmok

@Gallifreyan you are invited

@Gallifreyan Cool. If you have a particular pair that fits the size requirement, let me know. Chat or an answer to the meta post will both work just fine, I think.

The Spirit by Alex Ross https://t.co/KR52DCgIPn

Tweeted by CoolComicArt on July 17, 2017 at 5:45 PM

8:48 PM

I saw a few that might work.

What about something like this

metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/467642

@Shokhet It took me some time to figure out who the hell the lion near him was supposed to be.

Or even better

The Lady and the Unicorn

The Lady and the Unicorn (French: La Dame à la licorne) is the modern title given to a series of six tapestries woven in Flanders from wool and silk, from designs ("cartoons") drawn in Paris around 1500. The set, on display in the Musée national du Moyen Âge (former Musée de Cluny) in Paris, is often considered one of the greatest works of art of the Middle Ages in Europe. Five of the tapestries are commonly interpreted as depicting the five senses – taste, hearing, sight, smell, and touch. The sixth displays the words "À mon seul désir". The tapestry's meaning is obscure, but has been interpreted...

It's in the public domain, and I think it fits with the mood of the site

I'm confused. Why unicorns and not books?

@Hamlet Erm, about that...

Which site are we speaking of now?

8:52 PM

@BESW when I think of books, I think of dust, being inside all day, etc.

I don't think of the experience of reading a book

@Gallifreyan Ha. I didn't even see the lion. Is that supposed to be one of the gate guardians?

@Hamlet Dead trees? Asthma attacks? Being buried under a pile of books in a horrific library storage accident?

@Shokhet Nah, it's someone else. All in due time ;)

@Gallifreyan Ah. Okay

(Maybe Morpheus in "Dream of a Thousand Cats"? ...Daniel Hall?)

@Shokhet Yes, definitely! There's literally no info to go on other than the text itself, so close reading is pretty much the only tool you've got, unless we go and ping Kit and ask her what she intended. Your comments look good and could be turned into a good answer - please do go ahead :-)

@Hamlet I don't have a Tumblr account, but I can set one up and ping you when it's done.

geoffrey-chaucer the-canterbury-tales

@Gallifreyan So...we need one of your avatars, with an inhaler, being crushed by a pile of books and dead trees in a library? ...that should work.

Bookworm

8:56 PM

0

Q: Why is Aprill masculine?

In the first line of the General Prologue of The Canterbury Tales, the month of April is given a masculine pronoun: Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote Why is this?

@Hamlet I'll ping you when I create one

@Randal'Thor Okay. I'll give it a shot later.

Also, why didn't you include an author tag for that one?

adds tag dragonflying601 to next question

@Shokhet I wasn't sure what to put.

Asked @Hamlet for tagging advice.

@Randal'Thor do we need an author tag? Is this just one short story posted online?

9:00 PM

Why not kit-z-fox? That's what it's published under.

I understand author tags for a-j-hall (who is also self-published)

@Shokhet Sure ;)

@Hamlet Why not have an author tag? I don't understand why the medium or length of the story, or the relative prolific-ness (?) of the author is relevant. If every other author gets a tag, then why not Fox?

Feb 13 at 9:35, by Standback

Oh good, now I'll be able to create a mithrandir tag! :D

BTW here's the blog with a new background image

oneminutereviews.tumblr.com

9:22 PM

@Hamlet Oooh, nice. I like it.

@Hamlet Well, it's one of a whole series of (very) short stories that she's put up on her blog, over several years' worth of Writers SE chatroom writing events.

But yeah, I wasn't sure whether it needs an author tag at all (and didn't put one).

A: Design a profile picture for our Twitter account!

@Randal'Thor ask on meta?

0

How's this: a fancy letter L? Taken from the public domain. You can see it in action on our tumblr. (Just so I remember, the background image on the tumblr is also from the public domain: it comes from a series of tapestries about unicorns.)

I'm still not sure what the problem is with creating and using a [kit-z-fox] tag for all of her stories.

@Hamlet It does make sense to use the same avatar for the tumblr and Twitter accounts.

When I open tumblr, though, I still only see a blank square for the tumblr avatar. Is this caching, or ...?

@Shokhet IDK

@Shokhet probably; they're the same brand

but I just realized that twitter has circular avatars, so a letter L won't work. Whoops.

@Hamlet It might still work.

@Hamlet It could. If you can get the blank background for that L you've found, then we can easily superimpose a smaller L on top of it so as to fit nicely inside the square's incircle.

9:31 PM

...IINM, circular avatars started being a thing on Twitter after we asked that question. ~~Should probably update the listed reqs~~ never mind. Twitter's recommendations haven't changed.

With the size of the current L, we'd almost need to use the circumcircle in order to fit it all in, and that wouldn't look good.

10:12 PM

Do I have any fluent speakers who can help my poor translators out? Not sure of specific dialect or if it matters h… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/887072119414239232

Tweeted by UrsulaV on July 17, 2017 at 10:10 PM

BTW, @Hamlet, it might be relephant to your interests to know that authors like Ian Fleming and Michael Dobbs changed the continuity of later books in their series to match changes made by TV and film adaptations of earlier books. Just another bit of intentional weirdness.

(The House of Cards novels/show had a particularly interesting interaction, as each sequel novel was written as a sequel to the show adaptation of the previous novel rather a sequel to the previous novel itself.)

@Randal'Thor @Shokhet I posted a link to where I found the image in the meta post about the twitter avatar.

@Hamlet I'm not great with image editing. I'll let Rand or someone with more experience take care of it :)

@Shokhet literally just screenshot it.

@Hamlet Yeah, I've been looking through that manuscript, but haven't managed to find anything with a small enough L compared to the entire image.

@Randal'Thor you can crop it in twitter.

10:24 PM

@Hamlet That only works if the L is small enough within its square. Otherwise we get a situation where either the L outgrows the circle or parts of the circle are outside the square.

@Randal'Thor Have you seen the choices here? google.com/search?q=fancy+letter+l

(can't say whether there are any there in the public domain, tho)

@Shokhet The Google image search I'm currently scrolling through is "illuminated manuscript letters public domain" :-)

@Randal'Thor Okay, you win :)