The Reading Room

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7:09 AM

Q: What does "the cuase” refer to as in Coleridge's Biographia Literaria

From Chapter 4 in Coleridge's Biographia Literaria: "At present it will be sufficient for my purpose, if I have proved, that Mr. Southey's writings no more than my own furnished the original occasion to this fiction of a new school of poetry, and to the clamours against its supposed founders and...

character-analysis

11 hours later…

b_jonas

5:50 PM

I am reading Gerald Durrell's children's edutainment illustrated novel The fantastic flying journey. I have last read it over ten years ago. I meant to re-read it, but thought I didn't have the book at home, because I only had the sequel on my shelf, but it turns out it was on my brother's shelf all the time.

That book hasn't aged well for me. Just like the other pop science books I found interesting, in this one too I find the sciency bits terrible. I'm sure I understood even back then that the balloon featured was unrealistic, and the magical powder that lets the human protagonists understand the speech of the various elements was obviously just a fantasy, but this time, the sci-fi technological explanations really hurt me.

It's certainly not among the better books of Durrell. On the other hand, I can ignore those and still enjoy the rest of the book.

Gerry is clearly a self-insert character, and he's given the animals they meet a personality based on his experiences with animals in the zoo, just like he describes in the non-fantastical autobiographical book (or two) about the zoo.

It's less clear where he got the personality of the dinosaurs in the sequel (that one involves time travel), and I really wonder whether the other human characters are based on someone in particular.

4 hours later…

Bookworm

9:59 PM

Q: Is there a connection between Shirley Jackson's novel "The Haunting of Hill House" and the movie "The House on Haunted Hill"?

I've always wondered if there is a connection between the film The House on Haunted Hill and Shirley Jackson's novel, The Haunting of Hill House? Both came out in 1959. Both have similar titles including the words house, haunt, and hill Both have similar plots, involving a group of people stayi...