The Reading Room

3:17 AM

GRRM punishes winners at the Hugo Losers Party. I accept my fate. https://t.co/ytJJaNQbAN

Tweeted by UrsulaV on August 11, 2017 at 8:18 PM

4 hours later…

6:51 AM

Congrats on the Novella Award @seananmcguire! Start EVERY HEART A DOORWAY for free here: http://www.tor.com/2016/02/08/excerpts-every-heart-a-doorway-seanan-mcguire/… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/896081545211006976

Tweeted by tordotcom on August 11, 2017 at 6:51 PM

3 hours later…

9:27 AM

First question review 10 days after the question was asked.

@BESW I thought you didn't like Hugos? Or was it some other award?..

I see Monstress won the best graphic novel. Probably the time to read it.

10:34 AM

@Gallifreyan No, but I can dislike something and still be happy for someone I like.

> Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
- "Song of Myself," Walt Whitman

@BESW Fair enough :)

2 hours later…

Napoleon Wilson

12:46 PM

@Gallifreyan This can happen when the user's actual first question gets deleted.

DARYL JOSEPH.G

@NapoleonWilson hi

5 hours later…

5:27 PM

@Hamlet I've just finished a very interesting novella series. Remind me how this Tumblr review thing works?

user15026

@Randal'Thor what series? :)

@Ash Gene Wolfe's The Fifth Head of Cerberus.

Do you know it too?

user15026

Not off the top of my head, but I am always looking for new things to read :)

It's sci-fi (but without any sciencey stuff), in a style that reminds me of Ursula le Guin. Very subtle - you almost have to do close reading just to understand the ending and the significance of each story.

user15026

Interesting! I will have to look it up.

Mithrandir

5:47 PM

@Randal'Thor I think they are.

@Mithrandir Shabbat greetings to you, Grey Wanderer.

Mithrandir

It's over now - שבוע טוב ;)

(translates to 'have a good week')

Oh, @Rand, you've read The Children of the Red King?

I should probably try to get past the first two...

Yep, @Shokhet and I both have.

It was one of the book series we covered in that surreal conversation where the two of us were going through a whole load of relatively obscure YA fiction we'd read and going "wow, you read that too?!"

Mithrandir

6:05 PM

Heh. I had only read half of the ones you mentioned :/

1 hour later…

7:25 PM

@Randal'Thor either create a Tumblr account and tell me the username, or post the review here, and @Gallifreyan and well post it.

8:02 PM

@Randal'Thor You may format it using SE markdown as well.

8:38 PM

@Hamlet Will the submit a post tab not work without an existing Tumblr account?

@Randal'Thor It will.

@Randal'Thor oh, yeah, that works too; I completely forgot about that.

@Gallifreyan you are now an admin of the blog.

I HAVE BECOME A GOD

skullpatrol

Blog GOD

8:55 PM

@Hamlet OK, done (cc @Gallifreyan).

Oh crap, I forgot to add tags.

Oops. Should I have done that?

Or is that a god-only thing?

@Gallifreyan It's hard to be a god.

I don't know. Fixed now ;)

Please do check it.

Wait, I should add your name. Would you like me to link to your profile here?

Should there be a name on all the reviews?

I mean, they're very personal things. I might like something that Hamlet can't stand.

@Gallifreyan hmm, we should add names to all the reviews.

9:01 PM

There's obviously no rule, but I can add whatever you like.

Who wrote the second one, anyway? Was it you?

Should have my avatar next to it :D

@Gallifreyan username, link to SE profile should be fine for me.

If someone also wants to include,links to their blog/website that would also be fine.

^ Is this okay with you, @Rand?

Sure.

9:03 PM

Also, maybe we should add some images of the covers of each book. People really like images.

We should link to Lit.SE as often as possible, to drive traffic here ;-)

And a worldcat link so people can see if they're library has it.

@Hamlet I thought about it, but they turn gigantic. Wasn't able to find a way to resize them.

@Hamlet Eh, I dunno about that. Some books have had so many different editions and covers that it seems a bit pointless to include images of just a few of them.

@Randal'Thor research shows that posts with images get more clicks

9:06 PM

OK then.

(Where are we getting clicks from anyway? I'm not familiar with how Tumblr works.)

mdgadvertising.com/blog/its-all-about-the-images-infographic

9:20 PM

Hey, how about we make Tumblr post to our Twitter account as well? @Hamlet would need to make @Shokhet a mod on Tumblr, and then Shokhet would need to go here and authorise Tumblr to post to Lit's Twitter.

9:31 PM

That's an awfully interesting coincidence. I turned of the ads on our Tumblr blog (I hope you don't mind, @Hamlet), but then I go to the help page about ads‌, it turns out they've disabled the partnership program ~40 minutes ago.

Weird.

(I also added the link to Lit to our blog description)

Q: What exactly is the "No Ordinary Sun"?

10:35 PM

Just posted our first (?) question about Maori poetry.

Well, poetry by a Maori poet at least. Not in the Maori language (at least I don't think so).

cc @BESW

Bookworm

The poem "No Ordinary Sun" by the Maori poet Hone Tuwhare is about a tree's reaction to some kind of deadly threat, the titular "no ordinary sun". Addressing the tree in the second person, the poem warns that it will no longer live happily as before and that there's no point in resisting its fate...

10:54 PM

Also, poetry has now hit 100 questions and is eligible for tag badges!

@Shokhet ^ a milestone worth a tweet?

11:08 PM

It does look like "No Ordinary Sun" was not written in Te Reo, which is pretty typical of most indigenous literature at that period in their decolonization.

heather

@Randal'Thor I love that poem

I'm adding more and more as I read it further =)

Great! :-D

heather

I'm really excited about what I just found in another one of his poems, so I edited to add that and its relevance.

Hmm, a tree and a mushroom cloud even have vaguely similar shapes: they both go straight up and then poof out at the top. (Depending on the kind of tree, of course.)