The Reading Room

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Bookworm

01:27

In my experience, Neil Gaiman's understanding of mythology and literature is exceptionally profound, and he is able to render stories with mythological resonance surpassing the work of most of his contemporaries, particularly in the groundbreaking Sandman series. His choice of Morpheus comes f...

Rand al'Thor

@Bookworm cc @Gallifreyan

steelersquirrel

01:54

@Randal'Thor Oh, sure. I would feel the same if the roles were reversed. Absolutely!

I just don't like promoting eternal and ever-lasting love as teenagers. I just don't think that you really know or understand what that kind of love is at that age and it makes young girls expect all teenage boys to be like Edward...which they definitely are not. Most teenage boys are like Stifler. (I know that you don't know who that is, but it's a perfect example) ;)

Shokhet

@Hamlet Thank you. Purim Sameach to you and @Mithrandir (and everyone else in the room! :D)

@Emrakul Thanks for putting this comment here. I wanted to see an answer to that question....reading now :)

user61230

@Shokhet No problem! It's quite a good answer.

user61230

I don't agree with everything in it, but it's quite convincing nonetheless.

Shokhet

@Emrakul The fact that you accepted it did not escape me :)

(And also that very complimentary comment)

Bookworm

02:22

Q: Why did the characters in "No Exit" agree to torment each other?

Once the characters in No Exit realized that they were placed there to torment each other, why didn't they refuse to do so? When Joseph says "eh bien, continuons" ("very well, let's get on with it") at the end, is he implicitly consenting to participate in this? What's the significance of his agr...

character-analysis french-literature

Shokhet

@Emrakul Wow. That's a lot of detail and research in that answer. Laura supported her points pretty well

user61230

She really does. I may throw a bounty up for it today.

Shokhet

(There's a typo in the first sentence of #6 if anyone here has edit privileges and wants to fix it....)

steelersquirrel

02:38

@Randal'Thor Well...I am already bored at work. I guess that I can put together a Hemingway/war-time question later tonight.

Where is my son, @Riker?

@Shokhet What is Purim Sameach?

I remember them talking about Purim in a Christopher Guest movie titled For your consideration. They were using "Home for Purim" as a title for their movie and they changed it to "Home for Thanksgiving". I never got that joke in the movie, because I never knew what Purim was ;)

That's the "movie poster"

@Hamlet Yes! That's good advice for everyone! Don't get me wrong, I love SE! I even met my boyfriend on SE, but there are so many great things IRL that we sometimes forget about because of technology and silly internet sites :)

2 hours later…

user61230

05:02

@steelersquirrel Purim Sameach is a Hebrew phrase! Purim is a Jewish holiday, which started the evening of 3/11.

user61230

It ends the evening of 3/12, because it's a lunar calendar starting at sundown.

user61230

Sameach is just, "happy," sort of, on its own. So Purim sameach is just, have a nice Purim.

Shokhet

05:43

@steelersquirrel @Emrakul got the explanation right

See jewfaq.org/holiday9.htm for more info, if you're curious

Hamlet

Also, @Mithrandir you're living in Israel and you missed a party on Purim because you were writing a Stack Exchange answer?!

Shokhet

@steelersquirrel ...I'm not sure I get the joke either. Those pastries on the poster are hamantaschen

...my best guess is they had to pick a holiday where families gather for a meal?

user61230

05:59

@Shokhet I'm Jewish, too ;)

Shokhet

@Emrakul Oh! I did not know that :)

user61230

Yeah! I don't mention it often, and felt kinda odd to just pop in and go "hey, me too!"

user61230

But, yeah :]

Shokhet

Somehow that always happens to me. Have the Jews taken over all the chatrooms also!?!?

@Emrakul I get that :)

user61230

Upcoming meta post... Jews Are Taking Over Literature.SE.

Hamlet

06:13

I'm not Jewish

user61230

06:31

True enough!

Mithrandir

08:03

@Hamlet eeerrrr.... Yes? O_o

Librarian

08:53

Q: Suggest your Lit.SE reading challenges here!

A few days ago, I asked about starting up reading challenges, with a particular goal in mind. Many of our questions are about the same authors, the same stories, the same genres, the same cultures. This isn't anyone's fault - it's just the way we were raised to read. We tend to pick out books tha...

discussion featured topic-challenge

8 hours later…

steelersquirrel

17:06

@Randal'Thor Sorry. I left work early last night due to illness. I didn't get around to asking that Hemingway question :(

Rand al'Thor

@steelersquirrel Your illness, or someone at your work? (Given what your job is, it's a little ambiguous!)

If the former, feel better soon!

steelersquirrel

@Randal'Thor My illness. I'm at home recovering. No worries :)

Rand al'Thor

@steelersquirrel Awww. I'm sorry.

steelersquirrel

Don't worry. I'm tough and resilient.

Gotta go. Have a good day :)

Rand al'Thor

You too! Get some rest :-)

Hamlet

17:25

A: Suggest your Lit.SE reading challenges here!

Book Challenge: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston This is a very difficult book. It's written in the African vernacular (a dialect of English). But it also contains some of the most beautiful language I've ever read. Here's a quote from the first few pages: The people all sa...

This is some of the most beautiful writing I've ever read

Martin Ender

All of these authorial intent discussions remind me that some 10 years ago I gave a few poems that I wrote to all the German teachers that taught me at some point and asked them to analyse them (writing down beforehand what my own thoughts behind the poem were), mostly because I didn't grasp that you don't analyse a poem to divine the author's intent, and wanted to see how close they would actually come.

Hamlet

I would love to use it as a challenge, simply because the language is so delightful

@MartinEnder that's hilarious

Martin Ender

The most interesting part was actually though that while I was writing up my own notes I repeatedly caught myself writing things down that I most definitely did not intentionally add to the poems, but that turned out to be very interesting (and well-working) symbolism in hindsight.

HDE 226868

@Hamlet It's a nice book; I read it in high school. I haven't voted on any of the suggestions yet. I do think that Their Eyes Were Watching God is fairly well-known in the US, though (within the last few decades), and it's easily Hurston's best-known book. Perhaps that's something against it or for it.

@Randal'Thor Having had the worst of luck with my Aurora Leigh question, do you think it's worth me bountying it? In other words, do you think a bounty would actually garner some answers?

Rand al'Thor

@HDE226868 "It was the best of luck, it was the worst of luck" ...

Linky?

HDE 226868

17:38

@Randal'Thor Linky link

Rand al'Thor

(I'm in the middle of overseeing several thousand edits on SFF, so not as focused as I might be)

HDE 226868

@Randal'Thor Oh, right. I recall seeing you announcing that. It can wait 'til you're done with all those.

Mass tag edits are a pain, although I've never done anything on that scale.

Rand al'Thor

@HDE226868 Ah, that one. Well, a bounty would probably make it even clearer that you welcome other answers. Whether it would actually be successful in attracting any might depend on how many people have actually read that book.

@HDE226868 Numbers from today alone.

HDE 226868

Does some quick math Ohhhhh, wow.

Hamlet

18:07

@HDE226868 I never read it in high school, and I would question how well known that book is outside of academia (although that thankfully is changing)

Martin Ender

18:27

@Riker I recently bought A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness solely because of its first line: "The monster showed up just after midnight. As they do."

I'm also currently reading Elantris by Brandon Sanderson. While it's not the first line that is particularly memorable, the opening is pretty good. The first page explains how the gods live in Elantris and are worshipped for eternity and stuff and the last line of that one-page prologue is "Eternity ended ten years ago."

Rand al'Thor

Mar 4 at 17:59, by Rand al'Thor

> Bright and early on a Monday morning, five hundred years after the End of the World, and goblins had been at the cellar again.

First sentence of Joanne Harris's Runemarks.

Martin Ender

Haha, that's lovely.

4 hours later…

Bookworm

22:17

Q: Which Upanishad is TS Eliot referencing with "Shantih shantih shantih"

Specifically the last lines of the Wasteland: Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata. Shantih shantih shantih [The Wasteland] The poem was written in 1922, and the invocation can be taken as a response to the horrors of the first World War, but I'm interested in the mythological context, ...

t-s-eliot the-waste-land upanishads

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