The Reading Room

user61230

1:05 AM

Seems like authors are surprisingly willing to answer questions about their works. Go figure.

Most modern authors are eager to engage with their audiences on social media--or their marketing consultants are eager for them to, at any rate.

(Ursula Vernon has written about it some, and Dangerous Books for Girls talks about it a bit too.)

But really, authors have always corresponded with their readers. We've got answers here which cite letters from Tolkien and Lewis to their readers, for example.

The trick for us is, the author's unlikely to become a more regular contributor to the site outside of answering questions about their work.

The value is in having a reputation as a place where authors answer questions.

(RPG.SE has several game developers who drop by and answer questions, or even leave comments saying "That's right!")

Librarian

1:25 AM

2

Q: Literature now has a community-maintained Twitter account!

Like Mi Yodeya and some other sites, Literature now has a community-maintained Twitter account! This account is not run by SE robots; Stack Exchange stopped doing that some time ago. At this point, the account is run by me; however, you can still get involved! (Please do!) Here are some things t...

Catija

2:20 AM

@BESW I posted a great article (in Mos) that John Scalzi wrote about the actual process of a book tour... it was interesting

latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/…

user15026

Twitter and Facebook have been awesome for getting to know various indie romance authors I like

Catija

Now I know that @Ash reads indie romance novels :P

user15026

I'm super not shy about my love of romance novels

user15026

I read a LOT of them

user15026

(mind you I'm at 152 books for the year so I just read a lot)

Catija

2:23 AM

Wow... are they short? I know that there are a lot of quickies... no pun intended... they're only ~100 pages or so.

user15026

Nah, most of the books I have read this year have been 200-250 pages at least

user15026

(a lot of the non fiction was longer)

Catija

I really need to spend less time playing iPad games and more time reading.

user15026

(and then there was all four POUNDS of Digger :P)

Catija

amazon.com/Digger-Vol-1-Ursula-Vernon/dp/0976921227

?

user15026

2:25 AM

@Catija Yeah, that, but I was reading the onmibus edition so it was giant

BESW

Speaking of Ursula Vernon, she's been live-tweeting sass while reading Swiss Family Robinson.

Catija

Liar: Shipping Weight: 3.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

user15026

@Catija Huh, my scale is not as accurate as I thought.

Catija

@BESW That book deserves it.

user15026

Mind you it's a people measuring scale so....

BESW

2:26 AM

They stock up on guns. Fritz wants all the guns. No, more guns than that. Eventually someone remembers to pack forks.

Tweeted by UrsulaV on April 22, 2017 at 2:07 AM in reply to UrsulaV

Catija

@Ash Yeah, I tried weighing my not-quite-8-month-old on it (weighing myself and then both of us) and it said he was 15 pounds and I know he's over 18.

BESW

The dogs are psychic, and free thought is treasonous.

Catija

You should get a kitchen scale. :)

user15026

@Catija I think I have one somewhere

Catija

My copy of Swiss Family Robinson comes in a box and has fancy woodcuts.

BESW

2:29 AM

@UrsulaV Pigs hold grudges. I hope dad doesn't plan on sleeping anywhere accessible to a pig.

Tweeted by civilwarbore on April 22, 2017 at 2:26 AM in reply to UrsulaV

user15026

Huh, only 42 of the 152 books I've read this year I'd call strictly romance novels. That's lower than I thought.

user15026

Although there's some stuff that has romance elements that I'd not call a romance novel

Catija

BESW

2:59 AM

@Catija Looks like something out of Amarant.

Catija

@BESW The art in the Jungle Books copy I have that's by the same people is nicer. They're these two fancy books from the 60s... limited editions. I read them when I was a kid and that's it... They've crossed the continent and the ocean a couple of times.

That's the title page.

BESW

3:21 AM

Cool. I've got a 1919 copy of Last of the Mohicans with beautiful endpapers and plate illustrations.

(Actually, it's a 1945 reprint.)

BESW

3:47 AM

Ernest is good for more than just beating birds to death with a ramrod, thank you.

Tweeted by UrsulaV on April 22, 2017 at 3:39 AM in reply to UrsulaV

Hamlet

4:04 AM

@BESW these are pretty funny (saying this as someone who enjoyed Swiss Family Robinson, although I read the books as a child).

BESW

They release the chickens. Fritz shoots a "tiger cat." Ernest questions why God makes chicken-eating tiger cats. No, Ernest! Don't do it!

Tweeted by UrsulaV on April 22, 2017 at 3:51 AM in reply to UrsulaV

Hamlet

I have three concerns about author answers:
(1): there's no verified profile feature on Stack Exchange. In practice, people want to know that someone who claims they are the author really is the author.
(2): What if someone disagrees with an author about the meaning of a text? Would the community downvote that answer?

BESW

(1) Good answers make sense even if the author's identity is in question.
(2) Answers that make sense are good even if they aren't by the author.

Hamlet

(I've softened my previous stance on author-answers considerably because I think they can be really beneficial to the site.)

@BESW I'm just worried that, in practice, people will see an answer by an author and think "oh, cool, an answer by an author" instead of "oh, cool, a good answer".

BESW

That happens on RPG.SE, yes. But usually it's accompanied by comments thanking the author and asking for clarifying edits to improve the answer.

Hamlet

4:12 AM

@BESW maybe I need to wait and see what actually happens in practice.

@BESW In hindsight, I think your answer to that old meta post was probably the best take on the problem

2

A: Should answers from authors be treated differently from other answers?

No, authors should be treated as expert users like everybody else. Experience-based answers are often very useful, and an author's experience can be part of a great answer about their own work or the industry in which they operate! We still expect the same level of quality from an author as from...

BESW

@Hamlet Crowd-sourcing hard-won experiential learning from RPG.SE, as usual.

Hamlet

4:28 AM

@BESW it's the only answer on that question that I upvoted. The other answers proposed solutions that go directly against the philosophy of Stack Exchange or ignored crucial elements of the issue.

Anyway, night!

Gallifreyan

5:00 AM

in Literature Tweet suggestions, 21 secs ago, by Gallifreyan

Could someone come here and star the last message?

Gallifreyan

5:18 AM

One more star would be nice.

I wonder if the feed didn't work because those are pins, not stars.

But then, I can see them in the RSS feed when I open it.

Weird.

Anyway, have to run to my exam.

Radek

12:45 PM

Hi, I am looking for a book published in between 1950-2000 by an US or UK author. Some one who is trying to address urging issue(s) of our post modern era ... There must be list of resources from books trying to achieve the same.

Hamlet

4:20 PM

@Radek what are "urging issue(s) of our post modern era"?

user15026

5:00 PM

@Radek What sort of issues?

Mithrandir

5:28 PM

@Hamlet Twitter ping

Hamlet

5:41 PM

@Radek also, I don't know of a single person who has studied postmodernism who would say we are in a "post modern era". I suspect that is a term that doesn't mean what you think it means.

b_jonas

8:02 PM

Apr 4 at 8:28, by b_jonas

http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/35067284#35067284 -- identified: it's Georgia Byng, Molly Moon's Incredible Book of Hypnotism from 2002

^ Got this book from the library now.

Mithrandir

congrats

b_jonas

Also borrowed a Berenstain book of bears (illustrated book for first readers), so now I know what Berenstain bears are, which is an American cultural phenomenon that I was completely unaware of because they aren't present here.

Mithrandir

...o_o

b_jonas

And a Plâckovskij–Suteev illustrated children's tales book to complement it.

The Berenstein one taught me something about English (I learn something new almost every week): "mobile" can be pronounced with /i:/ instead of /aI/. The rhyme obviously didn't work the other way.

Mithrandir

I managed not to tick off Michael Northrop.

@tombquestwiki @StackLiterature No problem! I was wondering about those.

Tweeted by mdnorthrop on April 22, 2017 at 7:24 PM in reply to tombquestwiki

BESW

9:10 PM

Good read. Her #itsAboutUs Shakespeare comment reminds me of our RLS student productions of Macbeth & Romeo andJuli… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/855884492514263040

Tweeted by laniwendtyoung on April 22, 2017 at 8:42 PM

Rand al'Thor

10:48 PM

@Gallifreyan Torisuda's or Gilles's answer? Decisions, decisions.

Gilles

@Randal'Thor This is my first answer on this site that's about literature!

Rand al'Thor

@Gilles I like the fact that you've provided historical context. It shows how it's often possible to appreciate much more of a book than one can from just a close reading.

Gilles

@Randal'Thor it does illustrate that literature isn't just about the text

With the text but no context, you might read something completely different from what the author intended. And that's fine, if that's what you wanted to do — but then you're reading a different work that happens to use the same words.

In this case, I understood “fascist” in context, but the chaining to a machine gun was new to me.

Rand al'Thor

11:06 PM

Apparently there are different English translations some of which say "skeleton of a fascist" and some "skeleton of a German". I wonder if the original has a Russian word which covers both.

Mithrandir

@Gallifreyan might know.

Gilles

@Randal'Thor I didn't check, but the Russian for fascist makes perfect sense in the cultural context of post-WWII SU and in the context of the book, whereas the Russian German wouldn't.

Rand al'Thor

Ooh. The phrase "text with no context" just made me realise that the word "context" literally means "stuff that comes with the text".

Alongside or surrounding it, so to speak.

Gilles

@Randal'Thor literally, but not etymologically

cf textus vs contextus

Rand al'Thor

Um. Pardon my Latin. They're both something to do with weaving?

It says textus = woven and contextus = interwoven.

Gilles

11:18 PM

@Randal'Thor text and texture come from the same Latin word

Bookworm

11:48 PM

0

Q: Did Sarojini Naidu says this: When the house is on fire, the poet should stop singing...?

Did Sarojini Naidu says something about this: "When the house is on fire, the poet should stop singing, and get the buckets to put out the fire." I got this from a FB post. But I want to find out the original source of this quote. Any ideas?

poetry quote-identification india

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