The Reading Room

7:19 AM

🌟LONG LOST Trade Paperback🌟 This cover is one of my absolute favorites so far. The first 6 issues compiled together, preorder today with code APR181735! Release date June 27th.

Tweeted by lisa_sterle on March 21, 2018 at 2:50 PM

"10 Books About Race To Read Instead Of Asking A Person Of Color To Explain Things To You," by Sadie Trombetta for Bustle.

7:39 AM

Hooray! It's another "Apparition Lit Recommends!" This week we share some favorite poems published in recent months. Follow & show some love for: @mhwack @casskhaw @evelyndeshane @writerchiclady @StrangeHorizons @UncannyMagazine @LiminalityMag @fiyahlitmag https://www.apparitionlit.com/articles/apparition-lit-recommends-poetry/

Tweeted by ApparitionLit on March 19, 2018 at 7:45 PM

Ta-Nehisi Coates’ List of 13 Recommended Books, via OpenCulture

Q: What do you think are the similarities between Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and today’s Hanson Robotics’ Sophia?

8:22 AM

"50 Science Fiction Essentials Written by Women," by Jeff Somers for Barnes & Noble

10 hours later…

Bookworm

5:58 PM

Since some people have speculated or seen that Frankenstein was an illustration of the fear of science, I wanted to know more if there are any other similarities between the two.

frankenstein

4 hours later…

9:29 PM

Six more days till The Rise of the African Novel: Politics of Language, Identity, and Ownership is out. Five books under my belt but the feeling of both anxiety, or more precisely terror and sheer excitement never goes away! https://www.amazon.com/Rise-African-Novel-Ownership-Perspectives/dp/047205368X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1521730059&sr=1-1&keywords=The+rise+the+african+novel

Tweeted by MukomaWaNgugi on March 22, 2018 at 2:58 PM

"Is the Broken Earth fantasy or science fiction?" ME: ::yawns:: "Come on." ME: ::stretches:: "It matters!" ME: ...Well, it says 'fantasy' on the spine. "Oh, whew, classification at last -- " ME: But I did use realistic social science, geoscience, physics... "Fuuuuuuuuu"

Tweeted by nkjemisin on March 22, 2018 at 2:24 PM

user15026

@BESW hahaha this is kinda how I felt reading it :)

@Ash She's actually said that it's fantasy. What with the [spoiler] at the Earth's core, I can't really object to that classification, inasmuch as I care about such things.

user15026

@BESW Yeah, that's what definitely threw it more into fantasy for me :)

user15026

(Not that I care overmuch to be honest)

....Also the Stone Eaters are kinda hard to justify in a hard scifi sense.

user15026

9:32 PM

This is true as well

9:45 PM

So... @Ash ... I just ran into something that makes me smile and amuses me about one of my favorite authors... you know Girl Genius, the web comic?

The authors/illustrators are Phil and Kaja Foglio... and I hadn't ever heard how her name was pronounced until just now... and she pronounces the j as a y, just like I do in Catija... HAHAHA

But then again, I would have pronounced it as a "y" in her name to begin with. ;-)

I think it's the preceding "i" in your's that's really distracting to people and encouraging a "j" sound there, since the "i" would already make for a "y" sound and the "j" would just seem redundant if there wasn't something else interesting going on with it.

In fact, pretty much everyone I know who's genuinely pronounced like you desire to be doesn't have that "i" there.

@Catija Hey, I'm just trying to help. ;-)

I might be totally wrong, of course.

Considering that lots of people leave the i out of my name, I figure that some of them have to be pronouncing it correctly.

Yeah, that seems like another symptom of the same issue.

Q: Did Medieval Romances develop into Modern Romances?

9:53 PM

I think I used to mentally pronounce it more like ka-tee-ya... with equal emphasis on all three syllables.

Bookworm

I'm reading Arthurian texts and I know that it's considered a romance, but there is there such a big difference between modern romance, love stories, and medieval romances, which can be tales of adventure. My question is this: did medieval romances develop into the modern romance genre we know to...

genre

user15026

10:10 PM

@Catija hahah nice :)

user15026

@Catija My brain alternates between that and how you actually pronounce it depending on how tired my brain is

Q: Frankenstein's Repulsion towards his Monster

Heh, true.

Sometimes I remember to pronounce it correctly in my head, but I just grew up on the "wrong" version. You should just have explained it at the very beginning. ;-)

(Or, alternaticely, you could have written it in IPA to begin with.)

Bookworm

Throughout the novel, Victor Frankenstein is horrified at the fact that he created his monster. However, he does not discuss any emotional or moral reservations towards the act of creating the monster and the monster itself. In fact, when he is talking with the monster in the Alps he says that ...

character-analysis frankenstein

@Ash Yeah, the more I try to think about it, the less sure I get.

@NapoleonWilson That would require knowing IPA as something other than a type of beer ;)