The Reading Room

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Bookworm

03:54

Q: In Peril At End House by Agatha Chistie, who shot the bullet that Hercule Poirot finds near the table in the hotel garden?

While Hercule Poirot, Nick and Captain Hastings are sitting at a table outside the hotel, supposedly a bullet passes through Nick's hat and ends up on the ground near the table, which Hercule finds. Who shot the bullet? Did Nick make the hole in the hat earlier and then drop a bullet on the ground?

peril-at-end-house

Bookworm

04:19

Q: What was Kafka's point in, The Metamorphasis'?

When Gregor Salsa awakens to find himself transformed into some type of beetle or roach-like creature, he gives little thought to whys and wherefores but just seems to attempt to deal with his obviously extremely distressing situation with a fairly straight forward acceptance. What clues are ther...

symbolism german-literature interpretation

4 hours later…

Bookworm

08:04

Q: How does the change in syllables change the reading in Maya Angelou's "Still I Rise"?

In the opening stanza of Maya Angelou's "Still I Rise", the syllables go 9 / 7 / 9 / 6. The second verse goes 8 / 7 / 9 / 7. All of these are within two or three syllables of each other, and relatively long. The third verse, however, goes 6 / 7 / 6 / 3: Just like moons and like suns, With the ce...

poetry maya-angelou

Rand al'Thor

@Bookworm We already had a Die Verwardlung tag, but I synonymised it with the-metamorphosis. I don't remember if we had a meta consensus on this, but the language of the site is English, and we have e.g. the-stranger rather than l-etranger (although that tag should probably have a couple of synonyms added).

1 hour later…

Rand al'Thor

09:16

@NorthLæraðr Finally got round to it :-)

Mithical

09:28

@Bookworm Wow, been a long time since I had a question hit the negatives

Bookworm

10:09

Q: Why is Szymborska's "Tarsier" sometimes written (in translation) with simplistic grammar?

Szymborska's poem "Tarsier" ("Tarsjusz" in the original Polish) has been translated, in a version that says "Translations and Comments by Magnus J. Krynski and Robert A. Maguire", as follows: I tarsier, son of tarsier, grandson of tarsier and great-grandson, [...] I tarsier, know how important i...

poetry translation style polish-literature wislawa-szymborska

3 hours later…

Rand al'Thor

13:20

@GarethRees has sixty Revival badges, nearly 20% of all Revivals awarded on our site and about as many as me and Tsundoku put together. On a site with so many old unanswered questions, where answering them is often a community service with no chance of checkmarks or HNQ rep, that Revival count is arguably one of Gareth's biggest achievements here.

2 hours later…

North Læraðr

15:28

@Randal'Thor yaya

Nice answer

Rand al'Thor

@NorthLæraðr Let me know if you want me to expand on exactly how it's foreshadowed in the revised edition. I realised later that I didn't actually include any quotes from the book showing the foreshadowing, only quotes to show why Tolkien wanted to revise the text.

Tsundoku

16:08

The roomba has deleted Deeper meaning of Richard Siken's quote, which had a negative score.

The question What are all fantastic creatures on The Nile mosaic of Palestrina? is not related to literature. Why was it migrated here?

b_jonas

16:56

@Randal'Thor On Sci Fi I have more necromancer badges (silver) than revival badges (bronze).

I think scifi.stackexchange.com/a/203799/4918 is the Necromancer badge that I like the most, an old story-id question that I found when browsing old questions, and I've re-read the book a few months before that.

Bookworm

17:13

Q: What did Dante mean in this quote from the Inferno?

So, I was recently re-reading the Inferno, and I have come across this quote which I can't make sense of. "Papè Satan, papè Satan aleppe," (VII.1) It seemed rather weird that it wouldn't be translated (I am reading the Dorothy Sayers translation), so I tried to translate it. Unfortunately, what...

meaning dante-alighieri

1 hour later…

North Læraðr

18:35

@Randal'Thor Yeah, that'd be nice

Shucks, if you posted it earlier, it might've hit HNQ

@Randal'Thor This question became far more interesting than what I had thought it would turn out to be

Bookworm

18:53

Q: Identify a fiction novel about atlantis and digital or analog "discs"

I'm trying to remember a children's fiction book I read as a child. I only remember vague key words and ideas. Do you know what this story is? Language: English Date read: mid 2000s Where I would've found it: Midwest USA public library or school library Keywords: Atlantis. Something about an ...

story-identification

Gareth Rees

If you downvoted this answer, let me know what I got wrong and I'll try to fix it.

Eddie Kal

19:28

@Bookworm +2

I don't think I am seeing a downvote

North Læraðr

@EddieKal No it's this

Eddie Kal

I see

b_jonas

@Randal'Thor There's a synonym and a tag description. I don't really care which language the tag is named in that case.

@NorthLæraðr So has the creature identification question once Gareth gave more details than I assumed would exist in the research.

Gareth Rees

20:24

@b_jonas My answer just summarizes the surface ... there's a lot more going on in the mosaic, especially in the lower (Egypt) scenes. Is the well (B5) a nilometer? Are they celebrating the arrival of the flood in the temple at C5–D6? Why does the pergola (E8) span a stream? What is the mysterious object on the litter (L6)?

1 hour later…

Rand al'Thor

21:37

@Tsundoku I migrated it after some discussion with b_jonas in here, knowing it would be scope-stretching but hoping that illustrations would be considered on-topic here. Gareth mentioned there's a lot of text in the mosaic, strengthening its connection with literature.

I remember a few years ago someone (Hamlet?) made the case that cave paintings should be on-topic, as that was a way that some cultures recorded stories, before the existence of "writing" as we would understand it.

@GarethRees The explanation might be that people think the question is off-topic and therefore shouldn't have been answered here at all. It's not fair IMHO to downvote a well-researched answer for that reason, but some people downvote answers to off-topic questions on principle.