The Reading Room

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Hamlet

00:45

Perhaps it might be worth rearticulating why I push so hard for music questions

Reading out loud seems like an essential part of reading.

Reading out loud is intimately connected to sound.

We don't have very many questions about sounds on this site.

The lack of questions about sounds represents a deficiency in this site's collective knowledge about literature.

If you don't try asking and answering music questions, then you're going to keep and embrace that deficiency in knowledge. You'll stagnate.

I, after quite a bit of difficulty, was able to get a few people to learn to close read and make close reading a tool that occasionally will pop up on the homepage.

Y'all need to learn new stuff or you'll stagnate as a site.

What worries me the most about this site is I don't see people thinking about/discovering new ways of knowing/approaching literature.

I tried dragging people kicking and screaming but that takes a lot more energy than I'm capable of expending at the moment.

People need to step up and make the effort to ask different questions, write different answers.

It's the only way this site can avoid stagnation and be successful.

If you need advice on what to pursue, Lord knows I've ranted enough in chat to give you enough ideas.

user15026

I don't think that's entirely fair.

user15026

01:00

I can see sort of where you are coming from but there is also this almost elitist idea in there that you almost can't interact with this site if you don't do those things

user15026

Which can be very off-putting

user15026

If you have to drag people kicking and screaming maybe it just isn't other people that is the problem all of the time

user15026

We talk so much about letting the site evolve naturally and then you say stuff like this which isn't really letting anything evolve naturally at all if you are forcing people to do the stuff

Bookworm

02:43

Q: Analyzing the end of Gatsby

I'm trying to understand the end of Gatsby, and my friend told me that the end of Gatsby relates to the American dream. Can someone help me the analyze the end of Gatsby? What I have analyzed so far: 'Gatsby's wonder' - I think this means how he was hoping to be with Daisy and was stuck on tha...

the-great-gatsby

BESW

40 newly scanned books added to BPL'S Early English Playbooks digital collection, bringing the total to over 500 http://ow.ly/cXh630g8ed5

Tweeted by Jay_Moschella on October 25, 2017 at 10:05 PM

2 hours later…

Shokhet

04:27

Why should you read James Joyce's "Ulysses"? - Sam Slote

►

3 hours later…

Bookworm

07:30

Q: When was young Cosette's bedtime?

While the song "Come to Me" was probably not intended as a treatise on astronomical timekeeping or 19th-century French child-rearing, some of Fantine's lines (taken at face value) fit together for a remarkably specific implication about her daughter's bedtime. Cosette is roughly 8 years old at th...

song-lyrics theater les-miserables

Mithrandir

@Bookworm now that's a nice question

@Bookworm humph. I wanted to add a sixth tag but wasn't able to.

Strike that. That question could potentially use seven tags.

french-literature and historical-accuracy would also be applicable, I think.

2 hours later…

Rand al'Thor

09:14

Daaaamn. @Hamlet I just saw your name isn't blue any more.

Really really hope that wasn't anything to do with our argument the other day - I'll feel really bad if so. We've had our disagreements, but I truly appreciate how much you've done for this site (and, on a personal level, how much you've taught me about things like close reading). You've been a strong voice on this site since its inception, and I hope you'll still be around even if diamondless.

Is this just a temporary hiatus, or are you not planning to take up your diamond again? If the latter, would you mind if I make a meta post to thank you for all you've done?

7 hours later…

Bookworm

16:27

Q: Why is The Power of Fables, in Book VIII of Fables by La Fontaine, addressed to Paul Barillon, the French ambassador to England?

The Power of Fables (Le pouvoir des Fables), fable 4 of Book VIII of Fables written by La Fontaine, is addressed to Paul Barillon, the French ambassador to England under Louis XIV. I know that La Fontaine was a critic of French society to say the least, why address his thoughts on the literary im...

french-literature historical-context

3 hours later…

Gilles

19:13

@Randal'Thor let's continue in chat rather than bother Zizouz212

@Gilles Under the principle that excerpts are for usage guidance, I prefer to link the content back to this site in some way if possible. Just giving a brief description of who the author is and what she wrote definitely isn't enough, because the excerpt should state clearly that the tag is for BOTH questions about her as an author AND questions about her works (unlike author tags on SFF, say). — Rand al'Thor 20 hours ago

What is the rationale for the principle that excerpts are for usage guidance? Why should the excerpt state explicitly that the tag is both about the author and their works?

And what has changed on SFF so that author tags have a different meaning?

Mithrandir

19:59

On SFF, author tags are only to be used on questions about the author themselves, not their works. So it looks like Rand is saying that since tags are used in different ways in different places - like, we use them for questions about their works as well - they should include explicit guidance that they're for both types of questions, especially as that's not immediately obvious if you're used to the tagging on a different site.

Gilles

@Mithrandir huh, I don't see how that could possibly work

how do you tag questions about short stories?

why did this change?

Mithrandir

@Gilles I don't know, but it's been like that for a while.

Gilles

@Mithrandir it certainly wasn't like that when I was around

and I don't even remember anyone proposing to change

Mithrandir

@Gilles with short-stories, sometimes, and... You know what, we're just all inconsistent :P

Catija

Interesting... I thought SFF was still using author tags for all works by an author. I know that M&TV only allows director tags on questions about the director, though.

Gilles

20:04

apparently comes from this thread:

Q: What is the correct usage of individual works tags vs. author tags vs. franchise tags?

As part of the cleanup effort to eliminate some of the more "meta" tags, there are a lot of questions that are about a specific work of fiction, and should be tagged as such, but for which no tag yet exists. It's already been pointed out that this can be an issue for lower-rep users, who can't cr...

discussion tags retagging

and apparently nobody is left on SFF who thinks about readers

user61230

Literature has been using author tags on authors' works since almost the beginning of the sure.

Gilles

@Zyera yes, and that's what SFF did for its first 5 years

Mithrandir

@Zyera yes, but a user coming from Science Fiction & Fantasy may not realize that.

Catija

@Zyera Yes, and I thought I remember a post specifically saying "don't make a tag for every single book"...

Gilles

@Catija but it was downvoted

Catija

20:18

Ah. Maybe I just saw it initially, not the final voting.

Gilles

the initial thread ended up with about even voting (after a period when the anti-single-work-tag was losing), the redux shows a ~2/3 majority in favor of one tag per work

Gallifreyan

20:52

@NapoleonWilson Retired.

Napoleon Wilson

@Gallifreyan Apparently indeed.

BESW

The Video Game That Asks You to Ponder the Meaning of Soup

2 hours later…

Rand al'Thor

23:15

@Gilles Questions about short stories are allowed to have author tags. But since almost all such questions are ID questions, in most cases it doesn't make a difference.

@Gilles Well, not enough of us anyway. user14111 is definitely in the "readers" category, but he's usually a minority voice on meta.

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