The Reading Room

1:44 AM

@Tsundoku Okay, what should I be? Should I become a Martian :-)

7 hours later…

8:24 AM

Q: Meaning Red vs Blue

How can we explain : Red is Red, Blue is Blue and never the two shall Glue. What thing can we understand with this with some facts.

writing-process

2 hours later…

10:30 AM

@Knight As a knight, that would make you one of The Chessmen of Mars :-P

11:29 AM

LOL :-)

Someone please tell me what does “smoke and mirrors” phrase mean ? Often times I hear “smoke and mirrors” but I don’t understand what it actually means

Q: Meaning of «Ah! les Bazaine» in La chute / The Fall

In Albert Camus's novel La chute / The Fall, the main character talks about his life to an unnamed listener. In the second chapter, he makes the following statement while talking about friends and relatives: Quant à ceux dont c’est la fonction de nous aimer, je veux dire les parents, les al...

meaning french-literature albert-camus the-fall

11:47 AM

@Knight Essentially it means a deception (think of smoke and mirrors as used by a stage magician). dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/smoke-and-mirrors

@Bookworm @Tsundoku I've found this:

> By the way, if you’re reading your text and are confused by the fact that Jean-Baptiste exclaims, "Oh, the Bazaines," furrow that brow no further. François Achille Bazaine was a French military officer known for being a traitor. When Jean-Baptiste notes the deadly-rifle-shot-phone-calls of family members, he’s actually calling out those relatives as traitors.

Francois Achille Bazaine's Wikipedia page also says it's him that Camus is referring to. But neither Shmoop nor Wikipedia are reliable sources, so I'm hesitant to post an answer based on this.

In addition, François Achille Bazaine is just one person; the narrator is referring to multiple persons (or the entire family).

Is he? What puzzles me is that the word "Bazaine" is singular but the article "les" is plural. Could it be that "les Bazaine" signifies multiple people (the family members) all seen as being like a single Bazaine?

Another source saying it refers to betrayal/traitors.

@Randal'Thor That's one of the curious features of the French language: when you refer to a family, you use the plural "les", but you don't modify the family name itself. Hence "les Bazaine", without adding an "s" to the family name.

Oh, I'd forgotten that.

It's very unintuitive from the point of view of several other languages, such as English and Dutch. It must be even stranger from the point of view of languages that modify family names depending on whether the person is a man or a woman (Kasparov vs. Kasparova) or more generally, languages where the case system also applies to names.

Q: Any famous poem or song describing RAIN SILENTLY kills/nourishes things

12:51 PM

I'm an English learner and want to know some English poems and songs. Any popular poem or song that portrays quiet rain is worthy of my studying. Both real and fictional rain are OK, as long as the rain does something noiselessly. As long as the poems and songs literally write rain, it doesn't...

poetry song-lyrics

1:27 PM

I think today is Walt Whitman’s birthday

1:39 PM

Today is also the birthday of the German author Ludwig Tieck, the French poet and Nobel laureate Saint-John Perse and the Russian poet Konstantin Paustovsky.

1 hour later…

2:44 PM

So, to who’s place/s we all are invited ?

1 hour later…

4:09 PM

@Knight I'd rather not go six feet under. Just read their books ;-)

@Tsundoku Yeah, I’m with you on that.

But I must confess I have tried so so much but I still cannot pronounce your username. Is T silent or what? And do we pronounce it as Soon- do- koo?

@Tsundoku Your username is more Japanese than mine is Persian :-D

I won't try to describe its pronunciation. You can here listen to how a native speaker of Japanese pronounces tsundoku / 積ん読 (on Forvo.com).

"Perhaps there are professors of literature who lap up the adventures of Rupert Bear by torchlight under the bedclothes at night." Terry Eagleton in How to Read Literature (last chapter).

4:34 PM

@Tsundoku Should I plug my survey Rupert Bear answer here? ;-)

I'll just add the link to the quote ;-)

2 hours later…

Q: How do American psycho and the poem, The Rape of the Lock compare?

6:51 PM

-1

Since they both deal with themes of materiality and class, i was wondering, if i were to write an essay on the similarities of them both, what should i include?

poetry

Q: Announcing the July–August 2020 topic challenge: The Tale of Genji

7:12 PM

@Knight However you pronounce it, don't pronounce it as Count Dooku or as sudoku ;-)

Librarian

In accordance with our meta agreement to have topic challenges and a later meta agreement to have topic challenges lasting for two months and overlapping by one month, it is time to announce the July–August 2020 topic challenge. Based on the number of votes, the seventh topic challenge of the ye...

discussion topic-challenge

7:30 PM

@Librarian The suggestion had reached 5 votes, breaking the tie with The Shahnameh. So now we'll have a Japanese topic challenged suggested from a Japanese username.

2 hours later…