The Reading Room

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3:18 AM

I’m looking to find some books I read as a child: a collection of stories about a young boy involved with motocross or dirt biking. This was in the UK in the 90s. One of the stories featured a rival putting sugar in the protagonist’s petrol tank. Any ideas? Thanks in advance!

story-identification

2 hours later…

Bookworm

5:23 AM

Q: What are some direct quotes with page numbers that give insight into who

What quotes tell us about Simon's submission, that he is a peacemaker, and that he knows how to get off of the island? I'm doing a body biography on him, and i need quotes fore each part

symbolism quote-identification lord-of-the-flies william-golding

10 hours later…

Bookworm

2:55 PM

Q: How to figure out if something is iambic pentameter

I have an assignment where I have to write a Shakespearean sonnet for my professor (who is very strict about the formatting of the assignment) Are there any ways/tricks in which I can figure out if my poem is in iambic pentameter (which is the format Shakespeare used) besides just having to sound...

poetry william-shakespeare

Rand al'Thor

3:53 PM

@verbose Congrats on 5k reputation! Enjoy the newly accessible site analytics :-)

I just tipped you from 4990 to 5k, after finding the time to read your Chokher Bali answer in full. Interesting stuff.

@Bookworm Interesting question. I wonder if it can be objectively answered, more than just "sound it out and know which syllables are stressed". I suspect our metre experts (Gareth Rees and Peter Shor?) can probably put together something good for this.

Gareth Rees

4:08 PM

@Randal'Thor I think the question is kind of hopeless as it stands — "sound it out" is in fact the only way to scan verse, so if that's ruled out then there's no answer

But also, the asker doesn't impress me as someone who is likely to benefit from an answer, or at least not the kind of answer that I might write

Rand al'Thor

Well, with both you and Peter Shor saying there's no extra tricks beyond "just sound it out", there go my hopes for that question.

Rand al'Thor

4:31 PM

It's inspired me to another question about Shakespearean sonnets, though, which maybe you'll find more interesting.

Bookworm

4:59 PM

Q: Why are Shakespearean sonnets called Shakespearean sonnets?

The term Shakespearean sonnet is frequently used for sonnets with a particular verse pattern and rhyme scheme, namely ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. But from what I can find with a little reading online, this style of sonnets in English was not pioneered by Shakespeare (others had used it before him). I'm no...

william-shakespeare history-of-literature terminology style

Gareth Rees

5:17 PM

@Randal'Thor There's an extended discussion of the origin of the English sonnet in George Saintsbury, A History Of English Prosody, volume I, book IV — I can't say I get on well with Saintsbury, but you can't fault him for thoroughness

b_jonas

@GarethRees Nice. Can you mention that resource from somewhere in literature.stackexchange.com/q/14748/139 ?

Napoleon Wilson

5:37 PM

I assume it's...uh...not just because he wrote a lot of them and is the single-most popular person in English literature?

Eddie Kal

6:18 PM

@GarethRees I've never read Saintsbury. My go to book in this regard is John Fuller's The Sonnet and I do remember coming across Saintsbury in Fuller

2 hours later…

verbose

8:19 PM

@Randal'Thor thanks! Rep’s a funny thing, innit. I spend ~3 minutes insta-answering a not very interesting question about horses and buggies, the question makes it to HNQ, and I get an “Enlightened” badge and about 150 rep out of it.

Meanwhile, a lengthy, carefully researched, and painstakingly written answer about Tagore and Bankim gets, like, six views and two upvotes. The Bhagavat Geeta is right about that “fruits of labor” thing

Mithical

People have short attention spans.

Rand al'Thor

Yeah, the endless lottery of the HNQ. Much like any quantitative system that attempts to measure quality, it fails to do so with as much accuracy as we would like.

Gareth Rees

9:15 PM

@verbose It's ridiculous, isn't it? But 'twas ever thus. We could a learn a couple of things from the HNQ process, though — (i) titles are important to get people to take a look, so consider editing the title to make it more intriguing/puzzling/mystifying etc. The "horse and buggy" question got (nearly) a thousand views, presumably from people who wondered how such a tautologous phrase could have been written; and (ii) upvoting answers in a timely manner is important

Rand al'Thor

9:27 PM

^ (ii) is necessary for getting questions onto the HNQ list, and (i) is useful for keeping them there

b_jonas

@GarethRees Yeah. Very rarely I do try for such titles, when the question lends itself to it naturally: scifi.stackexchange.com/q/145632/4918 scifi.stackexchange.com/q/157559/4918

Rand al'Thor

The HNQ algorithm is specifically based on the amount of votes received by the question and answer(s) within the first 8 hours of the question being posted, so if the answer isn't upvoted enough, it won't go HNQ no matter what.

verbose

9:41 PM

@EddieKal Do we need a prosody-and-scansion tag?

Gareth Rees

@verbose I think meter covers the subject adequately

scansion is already an alias for meter, but there is no prosody yet

2 hours later…

Eddie Kal

11:31 PM

@verbose I am pro-tags. IMHO it wouldn't hurt and the synonymization can be figured out later.

If there have been enough questions to tag, that is

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