The Reading Room

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North Læraðr

12:50 AM

Min Jin Lee topic suggestion has been posted!

New Topic Challenge Suggestion

A: New Literature SE Topic Challenge Suggestions Thread

The works of Min Jin Lee Min Jin Lee is a Korean-American author who typically writes about Korean-American topics. She was born in Seoul, South Korea, but emigrated to the U.S. when she was seven. Many of her works explore what it means for one to be "Korean". Pachinko is her second and most fa...

9 hours later…

Bookworm

9:50 AM

Q: Why does the narrator in Tagore's story call the Cabuliwallah's daughter "Parbati"?

In Rabindranath Tagore's "The Cabuliwallah", Rahmun, the eponymous Cabuliwallah, has come to Calcutta to make a living selling fruits and nuts from his native Afghanistan. In lieu of a photograph, he carries with him a handprint in ink of the daughter he has left behind in Kabul. Toward the end o...

Bookworm

10:15 AM

Q: Who is Tagore's "Cruel Kindness" addressed to?

Rabindranath Tagore's "Cruel Kindness" is written in the second person, addressing a "you": I seek so many things with all my heart But you have saved me denying. All through my life This your cruel kindness Has filled my being. [...] This is but your kindness, I know Now you shove me away to ta...

poetry bengali-literature rabindranath-tagore

1 hour later…

Mithical

11:38 AM

@Bookworm yay, a verbose answer

1 hour later…

Bookworm

12:47 PM

Q: "Sonar Tari " a poem by Tagore

The poem" sonar Tari" written in Bengali, in English Translation "the golden boat" Why the Boatman took all golden paddy in his boat, keeping him alone on the shore? I would like to know about the beginning of the poem why he forlornly surrendered to fate on a rainy day after the sailor filled th...

meaning inspiration moral bengali-literature rabindranath-tagore

Tsundoku

Three rabindranath-tagore on a single day. Is this going to be the start of the most successful reading challenge so far?

Rand al'Thor

1:18 PM

And from three different OPs too. If you and I take part in this topic challenge (as we normally do), it'll already be the most successful since the very first one in the "number of question posters" metric at least.

Bookworm

2:04 PM

Q: How to re-organize and re-arrange a sentence from Edgar Allan Poe's Eureka?

I am reading Adgar Allan Poe's extraordinary essay about 'material and spiritual Universe' called Eureka. I have come accross a sentence but I can't get what the great author trying to say. It seems impossible for me to sort out the syntax. Here is the full paragraph and the context (the sentence...

interpretation edgar-allan-poe essays eureka universe

Tsundoku

2:57 PM

Recently published: An Event, Perhaps: A Biography of Jacques Derrida by Peter Salmon. See Julian Baggini's review in Prospect Magazine.

Baggini writes that Salmon's Derrida biography "also serves as one of the clearest introductions to 20th-century continental philosophy available."

The complexity or obscurity of Derrida's language "is the result of meticulously trying to avoid being more precise than is possible."

Bookworm

3:20 PM

Q: Identify book about a guy in his late teens/early twenties who goes to live with a family to tutor their teenage son

I can't remember the name of a book about a guy in his late teens/early twenties who goes to live with a family to tutor their teenage son. Subsequently, the guy/tutor has an affair with the mother, while the teen son develops a crush on his tutor. I've only read the synopsis on Goodreads and the...

story-identification

CowperKettle

4:02 PM

Librarian

4:43 PM

Q: Few lines from the beginning of "shyama" dance drama

"you go back, why you go back with your suppressed desire? you go back, why you go back? I fail to understand you." This is referred to from the dance drama"SHYAMA" in Bengali, written by Rabindra Nath Tagore. The theater presentation of the ...

discussion support bug scope question-quality

Eddie Kal

@Tsundoku Peter Salmon?

Peter Salmon (producer)

Peter Salmon (born 15 May 1956) is a British television producer and executive. He is Chief Creative Officer of global content creator, producer and distributor Endemol Shine Group, leading the company’s creative direction globally and overseeing the Group’s UK business. Prior to taking his current role in April 2016, Salmon was Director of BBC Studios, the corporation's production arm, and before that held a number of senior BBC roles including Chief Creative Officer of BBC Vision, effectively overseeing all of BBC television's in-house programme production, and Director of BBC North. == Early... ==

Peter Salmon (filmmaker)

Peter Salmon (born 9 February 1976) is a New Zealand based film and television writer/director. Salmon has directed many successful short films since graduating from film school in 1996. == Career == Salmon's first 35 mm short film Playing Possum was made in association with Creative New Zealand in 1998. It screened in competition at Clermont Ferrand, Edinburgh Film Festival and Valladolid International Film Festival. It also screened at Telluride Film Festival, Rotterdam, New York Children's Festival, Mill Valley, Hof, Brisbane and L'Étrange Festival (where it won the Grand Prix and audience...

@Tsundoku Interesting review, because Baggini seems to be dumping on analytic people but his own publications are analytic enough to see him in the Anglo camp

Rand al'Thor

5:02 PM

@CowperKettle Rofl. Very apt.

North Læraðr

@CowperKettle Hahaha

2 hours later…

Tsundoku

6:43 PM

@Bookworm Question based on a vaguely remembered synopsis on Goodreads. Will it even be possible to identify the correct book when someone provides an answer?

2 hours later…

Eddie Kal

9:03 PM

1 hour later…

Rand al'Thor

10:14 PM

Another question about literature translation on a language site:

Q: Why is Tolkien’s “pipe-weed” translated as “трубочное зелье”?

In his translation of The Lord of the Rings Vladimir Muravyov (В. Муравьёв) translates Tolkien’s expression “pipe-weed” as “трубочное зелье”. While “трубочное” evidently means “related to a pipe” and seems reasonable, Wiktionary (English and Russian) and DeepL agree that “зелье” means “potion”, i...