The Reading Room

Q: How do these lines in Shakespeare's Sonnet 151 mean what they're supposed to?

5:59 AM

How do these lines in Shakespeare's Sonnet 151 mean what they're supposed to? Here's the sonnet: Love is too young to know what conscience is, Yet who knows not conscience is born of love? Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss, Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove: For, thou betraying ...

CowperKettle

6:33 AM

2 hours later…

8:06 AM

@Randal'Thor Cold water with which to douse us ...

2 hours later…

verbose

9:37 AM

@CowperKettle Theodore Roethke, "Double Feature". What a great poem.

1 hour later…

Rand al'Thor

10:54 AM

@Bookworm What a great pair of answers. Go go HNQ gadget.

4 hours later…

3:10 PM

@Bookworm @verbose is there a reason you've used code blocks instead of quote formatting for some of the quotes here, in your answer? I'm very tempted to convert to quote formatting for accessibility, but if there's some good reason that it should be code I will leave it.

Q: Is there a term for when two people fight instead of their respective armies fighting, in order to settle a war?

3:22 PM

I am wondering if there is a term or expression for when two warring parties send their best warriors to battle each other (to decide a war) instead of an actual war between their armies. Thanks for any input!

poetry

Literary agent Jonny Geller on Twitter: "Books that are moved to the bookshelf before reading will never be read. Keep them by the bed, on tables, on the floor, but never slip them on the shelf with the others looking beautifully symmetrical and colour coded."

One of the responses: "the first sentence is true. I have a mini bookcase next to my bed for my inbox and Tsundoku needs. The piles were getting messy. However the last clause, re colour coding, is pure crazypants, right up there with hoarding thumbs in the freezer."

Q: Markdown in chat fails for multi-line messages

(Markdown doesn't work in multi-line chat messages)

We've come to rename Markdown to Letdown in the C++ chat room because it lets you down so often. I've now just found a pattern. It seems markdown fails for multi-line messages. That is, this Letdown can't cope with multi-line comments. Let's see code? fails to display code marked as code, while...

bug status-bydesign markdown chat

> It is basically assumed that if you have something that is multi-line, you're either pasting a block of text and submitting it, or you're posting a block of code and the whole thing is going to be fixed-font/code.

multi-line quotes and multi-line code blocks appear to be the only exceptions

Yes, but ... shelving books by colour?? Isn't that like racism for books?

books in my house are shelved a) by who bought them (sister is hoarding a bunch of Riodan novels), b) by series, c) by author if no series, and mostly d) wherever there was space when someone finished them last

Rule d becomes more important as space becomes rare.

3:35 PM

we're at the point where most bookshelves are double-lined, with a back layer of less-often read books

Mine have been double-lined for at least two decades, and sometimes triple-lined. Of course, there are other books on top of those that are standing. I posted pictures of my Shakespeare-and-friends shelves last year...

Oh, and there are people who shelve books by size:

May 7 '20 at 20:52, by Tsundoku

How do you arrange your book shelves: Coronavirus: Library books rearranged in size order by cleaner (BBC News, 24 April 2020).

Q: Are there different formats of haikus?

4:14 PM

This is similar to This question but not exactly the same. I have seen haikus in the following formats: The traditional / which is in five-seven-five / and is most common But I have also read that some American writers / encourage using formats / such as three-five-three Also seen / two-three...

poetry haiku

1 hour later…

Q: Does Mueiel Barbery's title "The Elegance of The Hedgehog" reflect knowledge of Archilochus' aphorism?

5:31 PM

Does Mueiel Barbery's title The Elegance of The Hedgehog reflect knowledge of Archilochus' aphorism? Is there information or proof that Barbery had Archilocus' aphorism in mind?

title mueiel-barbery the-elegance-of-the-hedgehog

2 hours later…

Napoleon Wilson

7:58 PM

@Bookworm If you're not Japanese, as many as you want actually.

8:53 PM

> My poems disappoint Mr. Bose.
He thinks them as bad as my prose.
But I think, "What gives?
As long as he lives,
I can keep increasing the dose."

verbose

9:35 PM

@bobble I couldn’t manage to get the quotes formatted properly within the list. If you know how to manage that, please toss me a clue and I’ll happily reformat