The Reading Room

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verbose

6:38 AM

@Randal'Thor 🤞🏽

Bookworm

6:55 AM

Q: Which does this part refer to, a pencil or the words?

I’d like to ask about the sentence in The Red Circle by Conan Doyle. The words are written with a broad-pointed, violet-tinted pencil of a not unusual pattern. This is uttered by Holmes when he saw some pencil-written writings on pieces of paper. I’m not sure what the underlined part refers to,...

2 hours later…

verbose

9:19 AM

@Bookworm Can one of the mods please create astrophil-and-stella and synonymize astrophel-and-stella with it? The main tag should be the former. The Astrophil spelling is much more common among scholars these days, since about 1980.

You should trust me on this, I wrote a dissertation chapter on Sidney. But because y'all are such skeptics, here's the Google Ngram.

Sidney, btw, is the 🐐. Fight me.

@PrinceNorthLæraðr it's been ten hours. Hope all's well.

2 hours later…

Tsundoku

11:43 AM

@verbose Stellar suggestion! ;-) Done.

@verbose Sidney is what sort of quadruped? Those emojis don't work so well for me.

@verbose twitter.com/NewYorker/status/1351640089932259333

verbose

12:03 PM

@Tsundoku it’s a goat. GOAT is an acronym for “greatest of all time”

haha on the pun and on the NYer cartoon

FIVE HOURS BEFORE BIDEN IS SWORN IN, LADIES!

Rand al'Thor

-3

Q: meaning of "much less regard" in the sentence

This is from the book named Justice by Michael Sandel. I would like to know the meaning of "much less regard" and the meaning of the sentence (the second part of the sentence). How can we rewrite it simply? If some pleasures are worthy and others are low, why should society weigh all preferences...

meaning

^ do we want this?

verbose

@Randal'Thor Sure, why not? Not a very challenging q but it works for us

Rand al'Thor

12:22 PM

OK, flagged for migration.

@verbose I'm not sure if I really understand what an epithet is, and this is going to get too long for a comment ...

How are things like "The poor man’s wealth, the prisoner’s release" epithets for sleep? In context it's clear they refer to sleep, because, well, the poem says so, but they're not things like "the Bard of Avon" or "the Maid of Orleans" which unambiguously refer to sleep in any context. In another setting, the "poor man's wealth" could be e.g. dirt or family, and "the prisoner's release" could be e.g. a stone or money.

I know you've gone to a lot of trouble explaining different distinctions and criteria in your answer, so apologies for being dense enough to still not get it :-)

1 hour later…

Bookworm

1:39 PM

Q: How could the "chaperonage" be a right of girl?

In "In the Midst of Alarms" (1894) by Robert Barr, Miss Kitty was a rural Canadian carefree girl, Renmark was a professor, and Yates was that young man from New York: Miss Kitty Bartlett probably would not have denied that she had a sincere liking for the conceited young man from New York. Renma...

meaning robert-barr in-the-midst-of-alarms

2 hours later…

Prince North Læraðr

3:18 PM

@verbose Teehee

Less than 3 hours! Anyone watching the inauguration of Joe Biden?

1 hour later…

verbose

4:47 PM

@PrinceNorthLæraðr ✋🏽

bobble

econ is watching the inauguration, as of right now

instead of, y'know, econ

Prince North Læraðr

Lol

Eng Lit Learner

-1

Q: what does the author(mario pujo) mean by the following sentence?

there was no greater natural advantage in life than having an enemy overestimate your faults unless it was to have a friend underestimate your virtues.

sentence-meaning literature

b_jonas

5:48 PM

@PrinceNorthLæraðr Yes, but those authors are put together into the same volumes of DC comics, so if someone reads those volumes, they will likely be an expert on DC, not just an expert of certain authors.

@PrinceNorthLæraðr Wait, we have questions about Marvel here?

Ah, literature.stackexchange.com/q/17178/139 "Is Ant-Man a Myrmidon?"

b_jonas

6:02 PM

@Tsundoku It's a franchise, like Pokémon.

Prince North Læraðr

@b_jonas My point exactly on why I don't think we should have author tags for comic book stuff (like Marvel and DC)

b_jonas

I'm not really the authority on that, given that I don't read Marvel or DC comics, and there are a lot of more experienced folks on Sci Fi who can help with them.

Mithical

@PrinceNorthLæraðr He said a lot of things. Hopefully he'll follow through.

Prince North Læraðr

6:18 PM

Aye

A bit nervous because of all the promises

Napoleon Wilson

So I gather he didn't get shot? That's something already.

Prince North Læraðr

With 25,000 troops, I'm not sure anybody is dumb enough to try to storm the capital

Mithical

@NapoleonWilson I'll admit I was actually half expecting something like that

5 hours later…

Bookworm

11:44 PM

Q: Data regarding stories of books

I'm currently conducting research for my university and we would like to geographically pinpoint where stories in books take place. This will create a database which we will need for our further research. Would anybody here know if such a database already exists? We haven't really had any luck fi...