The Reading Room

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Bookworm

00:42

Q: Does Dante leave open the possibility of universalism in The Divine Comedy?

In the Inferno we see that the only souls liberated from Hell are the Old Testament saints, and all the other pre Christ people are consigned to hell, including the virtuous pagans. However, in Paradise, we see pre Christ pagans, such as Trajan who went to hell, but was resurrected and converted ...

dante-alighieri

1 hour later…

Bookworm

02:11

Q: In Adam Roberts' "Yellow Blue Tibia" why do the patrons of the Pushkin Club become hostile?

Skvorecky is taken to talk to UFO enthusiasts at the Pushkin Club. They seem to take all his denials as confirmations. After his 'talk': Applause filled the little space ... Feeling oddly powerless in the face of this public approbation ... So it seems that the 'talk' was well received. But as ...

plot-element adam-roberts

1 hour later…

User1865345

03:17

Booker Prize 2024: Six Shortlisted Books, Reviewed

2024 Booker Prize: Samantha Harvey’s ‘Orbital’ is the first winning novel to be set in space

yesterday, by Tsundoku

2024 Booker Prize awarded to Samantha Harvey for her novel Orbital.

4 hours later…

Rand al'Thor

06:55

@Bookworm The HNQ is all of a piece.

@Bookworm religion tag?

2 hours later…

Tsundoku

08:57

@Bookworm Where did Albert Camus say that the HNQ is the only creature that refuses to be what it is?

1 hour later…

Clara Díaz Sanchez

10:00

@Tsundoku So I finally managed to convince you about The Rebel ;)

Tsundoku

10:31

TIL I learnt there is a 🗿 emoji.

@ClaraDíazSanchez It was late at night and I was skipping over the same sentence twice 🤦‍♂️

6 hours later…

Tsundoku

16:35

With regard to Garreth Rees's suggestion to make metaphor, symbol and allegory synonyms of a new tag such as literary figure: I was not under the impression that these three concepts were often confused with each other. We may not have the most accurate definition of "symbol", but we have not yet established that this is a problem.

Rand al'Thor

@Tsundoku Congratulations on 50k reputation!

Tsundoku

@Randal'Thor Heh, I noticed it just a few minutes ago :-D

2 hours later…

Napoleon Wilson

19:09

@Tsundoku Is the starkly anachronistic date on the newest entry in the Tumblr review list intentional? If yes, why so?

Tsundoku

19:59

@NapoleonWilson Since that was not a review of The Time Machine, I have fixed the date.

Tsundoku

20:52

I reviewed the Oxford Shakespeare edition of Macbeth in January last year. In July of this year Oxford University Press published a new edition of Macbeth that is considerably thinner than the previous one.

Whereas the third series of the Arden Shakespeare went for more pages, the New Oxford Shakespeare appears to be going for slimmer editions.

1 hour later…

Bookworm

22:17

Q: What's with the rat and the bride in Gabriela Mistral's La rata?

In the first stanza of Gabriela Mistral's poem La rata animals run after other animals in a way that defies expectations. In the remaining stanzas, the speaker addresses someone else, telling him or her to chase after the animals and finally, in the last stanza, to climb up and run after the brid...