The Reading Room

1:21 AM

BTW, @Hamlet, you might find this RPG concept interesting from a lit-crit perspective.

(cf formalism, deconstruction.)

Still reading for the Hugos? Here's Best Short Story Finalist “Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies” by Brooke Bolander!… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/885590908149702657

Tweeted by UncannyMagazine on July 13, 2017 at 8:05 PM

The space marine midwives anthology has submission guidelines! Learn more, and sign up for updates! http://mailchi.mp/db9c8c703a6f/space-marine-midwives-anthology-submission-guidelines

Tweeted by LegalValkyrie on July 14, 2017 at 6:17 PM

Q: Who is the narrator of “Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies”?

2:09 AM

I just read Brooke Bolander's short story "Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies", which has been nominated for both Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Short Story after its publication less than a year ago (November 2016) in Uncanny Magazine. It's very short and you can read it in full here (warning: conta...

short-stories character-analysis brooke-bolander

2:43 AM

@Bookworm I'm contributing!

1 hour later…

4:01 AM

Daily Painting Series. No.1697 "Harry Otter" #HarryPotter Patreon https://www.patreon.com/piperdraws https://t.co/oJklI4RzpO

Tweeted by Piper_Thibodeau on July 15, 2017 at 3:39 AM

4 hours later…

7:34 AM

@BESW It's all been well-documented.

Q: Types of written discourses

8:02 AM

The last few days I tried to find an overview of the types of writings one could pursue. Thereby not meaning styles of writing or guides on how to structure a text, but more a classification based on end goal and motivation. Sadly I am missing the right words to find a suitable answer to my ques...

terminology

2 hours later…

10:14 AM

@Bookworm Isn't that off-topic? Shouldn't it be closed?

3 hours later…

1:25 PM

-_- 5 hours and it's still open.

1 hour later…

A: Increase tag length limit to 32 or 35

2:29 PM

This is now at 35 - as a trial run. Please make the changes noted in the other answers here & let me know if anything - anything - seems to be working poorly: layouts broken, errors generated, monsters clipping through walls... Hopefully, nothing major goes wrong, but this is the longest we've ...

4 hours later…

Q: Understanding the ending of "The Name, the Nose"

6:07 PM

Calvino's Under the Jaguar Sun was originally intended to be a complete novel about the five senses, but Calvino died before completing the novel, which was published as an incomplete collection of short stories about three of the five senses. I'm a little bit confused about the last short stor...

italo-calvino under-the-jaguar-sun

Hamlet

@Randal'Thor american-literature is no more.

Rand al'Thor

@Hamlet Great!

Did you kill off irish-literature while you were at it? I think that tag had a question or two.

Hamlet

@Randal'Thor yep

Rand al'Thor

Could have wished for more consensus on the meta, but at least there were no downvotes.

Hamlet

Nothing wrong with that tag, but it should be used for literature actually written in Irish.

@Randal'Thor seemed uncontroversial to me.

@BESW I think what this site needs is an answer that demonstrates why treating authorial intent as one source among many makes things a lot more fun.

Rand al'Thor

6:26 PM

@Hamlet For literature written in Irish Gaelic, we should use a gaelic-literature tag to avoid confusion.

Or perhaps irish-gaelic-literature, since there's also Scots Gaelic.

I think Irish and Scots Gaelic are mostly very similar except for the occasional word (such as the word for "post office" IIRC), but I'm not certain of that.

1 hour later…

7:35 PM

The teaser trailer for Disney’s A Wrinkle in Time is here. Watch it now and see the film in theatres March 9, 2018.… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/886284869969608704

Tweeted by WrinkleInTime on July 15, 2017 at 6:02 PM

Hmm, there's going to be a movie for that?

Wonder how faithful it'll be.

And if they'll try to incorporate A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, and Many Waters. (Were there others?)

@Mithrandir Those are the first-generation Kairos books. There's another four second-gen Kairos books, something like eight Chronos books in the same setting, and maybe another five stand-alones that also tie into it.

If Disney isn't drooling about Expanded Universe Franchise Opportunities, I'll eat my hat.

Interesting. Never knew that (or what those terms mean).

user15026

I remember reading that book and being completely confused by it. I wonder if I read it again now if I'd have a better time of it.

7:51 PM

It's very confusing. I should reread AWiT and ASTP (the two I have) and see if I can dig up some questions ;)

Chronos is about the Austin family, and is mostly realistic with some sci-fi elements. Kairos is much more fantastical, and follows two generations of family; first the Murry kids (that's the series most people know) and then their children, the O'Keefes.

Because of the many characters and elements which appear throughout all those books, they're clearly sharing the same setting in some way despite each set dealing with different themes and presenting different layers of reality and fantasy.

Ooohh, so that's what that confusing family tree at the end of ASTP was :). Thanks!

8:11 PM

I didn't read all of them, but the only book I remember really understanding/enjoying from the series was Many Waters.

8:26 PM

@Hamlet In RPG culture, there's White Wolf Publishing, whose original authors fully admit that any attempt to make a coherent, non-contradictory analysis of their texts will run into the fact they were all high as kites when they wrote those books.

(White Wolf is best known for their Vampire games, which are basically Anne Rice Roleplaying.)

3 hours later…