I am reading The Great Gatsby, and would very much like to know what "an affront to the common store of life" means in the following sentences: He set down the receiver and came toward us, glistening slightly, to take our stiff straw hats. "Madame expects you in the salon!" he cried, nee...

I am reading The Great Gatsby, and finding it difficult to grasp what "The master's body" means in the following sentences: ...Through the hall of Buchanans' house blew a faint wind, carrying the sound of the telephone bell out to Gatsby and me as we waited at the door. "The master's bod...

I am reading The Great Gatsby, and encountered these sentences: "Shall we all go in my car?" suggested Gatsby. He felt the hot, green leather of the seat. "I ought to have left it in the shade." "Is it standard shift?" demanded Tom. "Yes." "Well, you take my coupe and let me drive yo...

The first half of The Neverending Story is about Bastian reading a fantasy story about Atreyu's adventures in Fantastica. The second half is about Bastian's own adventures in Fantastica, a world which he basically recreates from nothing, becoming a completely different person himself in the proce...

In a postscript to the English translation of Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem, Ken Liu drew attention to his approach to the translation work. Ken Liu writes that "differences in linguistic structure and cultural references, are actually easy to resolve". In some cases, he used footnotes for t...

Book challenge: The Kalevala Finnish mythology, in particular the Kalevala, compiled from oral tradition by Elias Lonnrot. Wikipedia's article has links to a selection of free translations as well, including to Project Gutenberg. It is epic poetry. There seems to be only one (rather obscured) re...