The Reading Room

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3:31 AM

In the gospels Matthew and Mark in the bible, Jesus says My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? Is this a sign that Jesus is upset with God?

the-bible

9 hours later…

Rand al'Thor

12:07 PM

@Bookworm HNQ. (Naturally, with two good and quick answers.)

And congrats to @GarethRees on 9k reputation.

Also, happy moddiversary @Gallifreyan!

Napoleon Wilson

@Bookworm 'd rather wanna see that hit the HNQ. ;-)

Bookworm

12:36 PM

Q: What was the unspeakable act that V.S. Naipaul committed while at Oxford University?

On 28 Sep. 1952, V.S. Naipaul wrote the following to his father: "The very fact that I can write about future plans ought to hearten you. You see, I have really been suffering from an abnormal mental condition. I was depressive. I have seen the psychologist twice and there is now no further need...

v-s-naipaul

3 hours later…

Christophe Strobbe

3:15 PM

We have a tie of four proposed reading challenges for July (Munshi Premchand, Lin Yutang, August Wilson, Journey to the West). In the last few months, such ties have often been decided by downvotes rather than upvotes. I would appreciate it if people could cast more upvotes ...

Napoleon Wilson

I thought the Chinese ones already happened.

Christophe Strobbe

@NapoleonWilson That looks like a theological question instead of a literary one, which makes it off topic here. For a theological answer, one can read hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/q/31515

@NapoleonWilson What do you mean?

Napoleon Wilson

@ChristopheStrobbe I'd be inclined to think that, too.

@ChristopheStrobbe That I thought the Chinese topic challenges already happened. But apparently they didn't.

Christophe Strobbe

@NapoleonWilson We've only had Lu Xun so far. And Munshi Premshand is Indian, not Chinese :-)

Anyway, I had expected August Wilson to get more upvotes.

Napoleon Wilson

Oh, I know, I wasn't implying all four of them were about Chinese literature. ;-)

Christophe Strobbe

3:40 PM

@Bookworm This question about V. S. Naipaul quotes Diana Athill, who died earlier this year at the age of 101. She also edited some of Jean Rhys's later publications.

Bookworm

4:37 PM

Q: Capitalization & Figure of Speech

In Rudyard Kipling's 'The Secret of Machines', in the last stanza 5, why is first letter of the word 'Heavens' start with the capital 'H'? What does the word stand for? Is it personified? Explain, please.

poetry literary-device

Christophe Strobbe

5:34 PM

The new reading challenge is now online: Journey to the West or 西游记!

Librarian

5:48 PM

Q: Announcing the July 2019 topic challenge: Journey to the West (西游记)

In accordance with our meta agreement to have topic challenges, and since the list of suggestions has a single highest-voted entry at the start of this month (+8, -3), it is time to announce the next topic challenge! Throughout July 2019, our topic challenge, proposed by Christophe Strobbe, will ...

discussion topic-challenge

Christophe Strobbe

@NapoleonWilson Thanks to an anonymous upvoter, we have another Chinese reading challenge this month :-)

Napoleon Wilson

I upvoted it. It sounds interesting. ;-)

Christophe Strobbe

It's also a lot to read; see for example Anthony C. Yu's four volume translation. I don't think there is an online translation anywhere. At least not in English or German.

Of course, there are two abbreviated versions. I read Arthur Waley's version, Monkey almost ten years ago. Must have been 300-400 pages.

Napoleon Wilson

That...could mean even people genuinely interested in the challenge might not finish it before it's over.

Though, there's also people you can apparently read 300 pages in about 17 minutes, so who knows.

2 hours later…

Napoleon Wilson

7:36 PM

It's about 65 hours on Audible. But...in Mandarin.

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