The Reading Room

Tsundoku

09:33

R. C. Waldun makes a case against (over)analysing literature while you're reading it, or against too much "thinky thinky": The Mistake People Make When Reading Literature.

Rand al'Thor

13:22

@Bookworm Even after @Tsundoku's edits, I still feel like this question doesn't make sense. As well as being too broad (asking two completely different questions about two completely unrelated works), both of the questions seem to be answerable by "just read the story" and/or are based on fundamental misunderstandings of the works in question (there were no "tribals" in And Then There Were None).

Reminiscent of the same OP's previous question which is predicated on the character Evans (a grown woman and not part of any criminal conspiracy) being a small boy who wasn't consulted by his criminal associates. Although in that one there isn't any clear question being asked at all, not even one that's answerable by "just read the story".

On a separate note, seeing the mystery-novels tag used on that question reminded me of this meta question about genre tags:

4

A: Should we get rid of specific genre tags for good?

OK, you've won me around. I propose the following plan to be voted on: Let's use genres as a single tag for questions relating to any genre. We don't have that many questions about genre, so it makes sense to group all of them together rather than curating a tag for comedy, a tag for tragedy, a t...

After being featured for a month, maybe +4 / -0 and no counter-arguments is enough to count as a consensus?

Bookworm

0

Q: Meanings of sentences in A Photograph (written by Shirley Toulson)

In the poem A Photograph (written by Shirley Toulson), I didn't understand some sentences. In the second stanza, the poet says Some twenty — thirty — years later She’d laugh at the snapshot. “See Betty And Dolly,” she’d say, “and look how they Dressed us for the beach.” The sea holiday Was her p...

Rand al'Thor

14:37

Tags which would need to be checked, if we go ahead with the genre tagging proposal: comedy, tragedy, historical-romance, mystery-novels, gothic-literature, and probably biography, ergodicity, diary. Any more? (Are those last three truly genres?)

I say "checked" because it's not as simple as a quick merge: we should first comb through the tag to make sure it's not used on any questions which are not really about genres.

Also: should perspective be merged with narrator? And does realism fall under the things like historical-accuracy / historical-context, or does the term "realism" mean something else in formal studies of literature?

Knight

@Randal'Thor How to search for Community Moderators?

Rand al'Thor

Also I found a few tags whose wikis need improving, like it and their-eyes-were-watching-god.

Knight

If I want to search for moderators on a particular site, I go to help- moderators

Napoleon Wilson

@Knight literature.stackexchange.com/users?tab=moderators

Rand al'Thor

@Knight Each site's moderators are listed in the "Moderators" tab on the users list, e.g. literature.stackexchange.com/users?tab=moderators

Or do you mean Community Managers (CMs)?

Knight

14:43

@Randal'Thor Yes

Rand al'Thor

40

Q: The Community Teams @ Stack Exchange and how we work together

I wanted to share with you about who the people that work on our Community are, and how we are organized. For context, I am the head of Product, Community, Design and Engineering, a combined Chief Product and Technology Officer. I joined the company in mid January and report directly to Prashanth...

discussion community announcements stack-exchange-team company

Knight

Community memebers

Rand al'Thor

@Knight All users are community members.

Bookworm

0

Q: Short Story About a Man Slowly Dying From Internal Injury

First time posting! I remember reading an interesting short story (fairly sure it was in an early level college lit class) where a man falls off a ladder while hanging a picture or performing maintenance inside his home. He shakes off the initial pain, but doesn't realize he has caused an interna...

short-stories

Mithical

Are memebers members who are also memes?

Knight

14:48

Thanks Rand

Rand al'Thor

15:02

@Mithical I nominate Jack B Nimble as SFF's official memeber. Not sure if we have one here on Lit.

Knight

Do CMs get paid? And do they always work from remote access?

Because SE is a USA based company.

Rand al'Thor

@Knight CMs (Community Managers, not moderators or members) are employees of the company, so yes, they get paid. I know the situation used to be that some of them worked remotely and some not, but not sure if that's still the case - they may all be remote now.

North Læraðr

15:30

@Randal'Thor I would think so

@Randal'Thor Thank you. I will be improving those.

@Bookworm VTC to close for needing focus

Rand al'Thor

@NorthLæraðr Yep, I thought someone like you or Brahadeesh would jump on that, if I was lazy and just mentioned it in chat instead of editing ;-)

North Læraðr

@Randal'Thor Is Brahadeesh the new Tag Dooku?

@CowperKettle Like the new profile pic

CowperKettle

15:49

@NorthLæraðr Thank you! It's the Belorussian state symbol

A little modified

North Læraðr

@CowperKettle Interesting....

That's cool

Rand al'Thor

@NorthLæraðr Brahadeesh has gone a step further and become the Tag Dooku of the meta site.

North Læraðr

@Randal'Thor Oh damn they beat me to that

CowperKettle

It's the symbol of the protesters in Belarus, who protest against the rigged elections and the dictator Lukashenko

The sign says Long live Belarus!

North Læraðr

@CowperKettle I was gonna ask about that

@Randal'Thor I AM THE ONE AND ONLY TRUE TAG DOOKU

Damn 90 edits on Meta site

Bookworm

16:25

0

Q: Crime novel with gay main character

Ages ago I read a detective novel which I remember very little about, and the few things I do remember are not very helpful for googling it. Maybe somebody here can help me with it. One thing I distinctly remember is that one of the police officers was a gay man, and I think he was pretty much th...

story-identification sexuality

Bookworm

18:30

0

Q: Meaning of this quote

What does it mean to say that "Ambition should be made of sterner stuff". I am talking about the general import of this famous quote, rather than any reference to the play or characters it comes from. Any help would be appreciated.

meaning

Tsundoku

19:57

@Randal'Thor I know there are still issues with that question. I edited it in order to provoke the asker into clarifying what they meant. Vain hope?

@NorthLæraðr I think you forgot a contender who's been around for a bit longer :-P

North Læraðr

@Tsundoku You're like a rank above

Darth Tagoo

Tsundoku

Tag Mauldooku

user185131

20:25

Having never watched Star Wars, I'm not quite sure what to make of the "Meta Tag Dooku" title XD Nor do I know which of his quotes are memorable, but here goes... "This is just the beginning!"

Bookworm

0

Q: Where did Joseph Conrad praise Anatole France as an analyst of illusions?

The French Wikipedia article about Les dieux ont soif (The Gods Are Athirst), a novel by Anatole France, contains the following quote attributed to Joseph Conrad: « C’est un grand analyste d’illusions. Il en pénètre et en sonde les plus secrets replis comme s’il s’agissait de réalités faites de ...

french-literature quote-identification joseph-conrad anatole-france

user185131

@Tsundoku I haven't really read a lot of literature, certainly haven't taken any courses in literature in college. But I'm able to relate what he says about reading literature with how I have learnt to listen and understand music. Good stuff, thanks for sharing.

user185131

20:41

Maybe this answer and the comments underneath it could be moved to the comments under the question?

user185131

1

A: What is meant by "saints of forties and sevens" in this traditional Turkish hymn?

For further information on the forties and sevens in both Sunni and Shiˀi Islam, look at the Abdal, for example at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdal

Tsundoku

@Brahadeesh Done.

@Brahadeesh Although I really wonder how many people make that mistake when reading an entire novel (as opposed to just a quote taken out of context).

user185131

It sounds plausible to me. If they have got the impression that that's what one is "supposed" to do with any amount of literature, or if it's become a habit, then they might read whole books like that. Analogously, I know people who sit through entire music concerts analyzing every phrase, and I wonder if they actually derived any enjoyment out of it.

Tsundoku

20:58

You can take notes while reading (which is something I often do) but that's different from analysis. But analysing before you've finished reading the book seems a bit premature to me.

user185131

Now I'm curious what your notes look like :) Do you write in the margins or keep a separate notebook?

Rand al'Thor

@Brahadeesh Note that that answer was posted by the person who wrote the paper that inspired my question. That (plus the fact that I inadvertently offended him in another question inspired by the same paper) is why I never flagged or downvoted that answer.

Tsundoku

I don't like writing in books (I do it only occasionally) and notebooks are difficult to keep together with the books. So what I use instead are sheets of paper that I fold (and sometimes cut) to fit the size of the book, so the notes stay in the book after I have read it.

user185131

@Randal'Thor Yeah, I happened upon the original question first and saw the answer there (ouch!) and then I saw this follow up question. That slight hiccup aside, I think it's pretty cool to get responses from the authors directly! :) Have we been visited by other authors regarding their own works?

user185131

@Tsundoku That's a neat idea! I also don't like writing in books; I might adopt this method from now on.

Tsundoku

21:11

I mostly use discarded print-outs (assuming they were single-sided print-outs). So I write on only one side of the page and the ink doesn't bleed through from the other side.

Rand al'Thor

@Brahadeesh I don't remember any other cases of authors actually coming here to post answers, but we've had a couple of authors responding to StackLiterature on Twitter. (As might be expected from a larger/older site with a bigger proportion of questions about recent works, SFF has had more professionals participating.)

user185131

Oh, I see! I have plenty of those to use... discarded print-outs are a mathematician's favorite. :P

user185131

@Randal'Thor Wow!!

Tsundoku

@Randal'Thor I find the distinction between "medium" and "genre" that has been discussed in this context rather unconvincing :-(

Rand al'Thor

@Tsundoku This discussion is proving that the line between "medium" and "genre" is blurrier than I'd thought.

The purpose of the poetry and short-stories tags is to catch all questions about works in those "mediums" that are too short to merit their own tags. Does the same apply to comics and song-lyrics? I've never followed or taken interest in those tags, so don't really know how they're used, but the number of questions in those tags indicates the answer might be yes.

Tsundoku

21:32

As far as I know, song-lyrics is used in much the same way as poetry. comics is a bit special, because we don't tag individual comic titles; just the artists and the series.

There is no notion of "series" in song lyrics or poetry.

Rand al'Thor

Just practically, in terms of how we should proceed and what tags we should get rid of, is your answer proposing anything different from mine? Are there some extra "medium" tags which you reckon we should abolish along with "genre" tags?

It seems like there are good reasons to keep (at least most of) the "medium" tags even ignoring the messy medium/genre divide. Either they really are storytelling in a different medium from written text, or they're serving a purpose in avoiding hundreds of single-use short-work tags.

Tsundoku

21:51

The situation is so messy that I have absolutely no idea which tags would and which would stay. In addition to romance, biography and comedy, would you also get rid of opera, manga, manhua and gothic-literature?

Rand al'Thor

Gothic literature yes, opera no (to me that's a medium tag), manga/manhua ... I've actually no idea what those things are.

Biography I became less sure about in today's attempt at a wrap-up list. I put it with diary and ergodicity in a "not sure?" category, hoping to get feedback from others.

North Læraðr

22:22

@Tsundoku I would get rid of all of them except maybe opera? Manga and manhua are just variant comic styles

In terms of opera, I don't know. On one hand I want to say yes because Operas are much longer pieces and would rid the need of having to make a tag for every single opera, but I feel like it could just constitute the song-lyrics tag

On further I think opera is a keep. Just putting say wolfgang-amadeus-mozart and song-lyrics seems confusing without specifying anything

@Randal'Thor But then now we get into musical genres with lyrics as well. Where does it end? Do we also write one for arias and doxology and whatnot?

Maybe we can expand song-lyrics to encapsulate all lyrical elements of a song?

But operas can be more than just the lyrics of a song. Maybe we can just have the music be used for any non-lyrical thing, so say if you're asking about the plot of the Magic Flute, you would put wolfgang-amadeus-mozart, music, plot

Eddie Kal

23:38

@NorthLæraðr I disagree. Manhua may have its own claim to uniqueness but I doubt it. Manga is a different beast and shouldn't be subsumed under comic. It is only from a Western-centric view that manga is lumped together with comics.

You go to San Diego Comic Con, sure you see manga, anime, and comic fans. But if you go to Comiket in Tokyo you'd see something very different

North Læraðr

@EddieKal I'm using comic in a very broad sense to describe any work of literature utilizing a combination of art and written speech

graphic novels too fall under this umbrella. I understand they are very different in terms of style, but that's not our discussion here

Eddie Kal

@NorthLæraðr Even in that sense I'd be careful not to elevate a word of Western origin to a status high enough to encompass a global cultural phenomenon that started in Japan

North Læraðr

@EddieKal ...

Eddie Kal

Don't think that's a legitimate concern? Happy to hear your counter argument.

North Læraðr

If manga gets its own special treatment, the same argument could be made for virtually every single other type of format this falls under

Perhaps a change of the actual word I do agree

But I don't think manga deserves its own tag. Under these presumptions, [sunday-comics], and [graphic-novels] deserve their own tag

I would argue though, that manga series should be their own works

like their own tags, because of how large they tend to be

Eddie Kal

23:45

I hear ya and I agree those are things we need to consider.

North Læraðr

I think we should change the word [comic] to something bit broader

Eddie Kal

Hmm could work, I think.

I understand there have only been four manga-tagged questions on Lit SE. Hypothetical: if we get more questions about literary tropes, gender/sexuality, devices in manga, would they boost the tag's claim to legitimacy? I am simply surprised there haven't been such questions.

Most people don't seem to see manga/comics/anime/cinematic works as literary texts

North Læraðr

@EddieKal Some other people might say yes, but I'd say no. For example, the-raven had a pretty substantial number of usage, despite the consensus that works of poetry shouldn't have their own sub-tag

Oh I thought we removed those tags...?

@EddieKal Perhaps that's because there are SE's already dedicated to them :)

May 11 at 17:40, by Gareth Rees

the-raven is fine according to the rule of thumb "if it has been published on its own in book form, then you can tag it with the title of the book"

Ig manga could fall under the same concept, though I would personally list it under the manga series rather than each individual volume

Eddie Kal

@NorthLæraðr Lol interesting

I can't wait to see questions about Luffy's sexuality then

North Læraðr

@EddieKal Oh dear

Yeah definitely DON'T make a tag for every single volume of One Piece

Transcript for