The Reading Room

Bookworm

00:58

0

Q: How was the context of "Old Ironsides" clear at its first publication?

Following links from another SE site, I ended up on the Wikipedia page for the poem "Old Ironsides" about the eponymous ship of the US Navy. Wikipedia tells us (with sources) about how this poem came to be written: In September 1830, [the author] read an article in the Boston Daily Advertiser ab...

bobble

01:49

spotted on a bike ride:
- one lady with a shirt that said "Wake me up in 2021"
- two women holding hands and walking together slowly
- three wild bunnies
- two motorized bikes (on an exercise trail, seriously people?)
- one teenager strutting around in a Stanford sweatshirt

Rand al'Thor

02:17

@bobble Poor lady hasn't slept for 39 days, people keep waking her up.

Napoleon Wilson

02:46

Is there supposed to be a common motif to these observations or is that a neutral account to derive one's own meaning from?

bobble

03:27

It's pretty neutral in that it's everything that I found interesting and different during the bike ride

verbose

@Tsundoku Nice!

@Randal'Thor haha

bobble

There's a bunch of stuff that I'm used to by now that a first-timer on the path might remark on - the half-scratched off sticker that now says "F--K TR--P", the gorgeous field of high grasses that you circle around at one point, the ducks that seem to always be somewhere, etc.

bobble

03:40

Rand, I've begun drafting a Watership Down timeline answer. Would a list of events be enough, or should I include quotes that definitively demonstrate the precise passing of time?

bobble

03:50

This is what it currently looks like, with each important event or set of events marked with a bolded time indication

I have worked my way through four chapters so far - it's much quicker to read when I'm just skimming for quotes about time

This is actually quite fun!

what have you Literature people done to me, I am finding joy in close-reading a book

verbose

@bobble Solving puzzles takes close reading too, so I imagine you have the habit

bobble

I don't tend to solve the puzzles that require close reading. Grid deduction puzzles are my type

Bookworm

04:22

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Q: What's the first "reverse" poem?

I recently discovered an interesting type of poetry. When read one way, it says one thing and when read a different way, the opposite, all with the same words. A sub-type of these is known as the punctuation poem. Apparently "reverse poem" is the term used for another sub-type (read top line to b...

poetry history-of-literature

bobble

05:58

I've worked my way through to Page 136. They've started planning the new great burrow and it is Day 7 on my count.

'night, all

Mithical

\o

Eng Lit Learner

06:24

0

Q: "And shadowed on a screen, I saw hooded forms..." - does "hooded" belong to the "forms"?

Reading Nyarlathotep by H.P. Lovecraft, I would like to ask if my understanding is correct: And shadowed on a screen, I saw hooded forms amidst ruins, and yellow evil faces peering from behind fallen monuments. As this "fronting" (I do not know how exactly this is called) is not really a concep...

meaning-in-context phrase-meaning literature

Rand al'Thor

06:51

@bobble In terms of quotes, I think the way you've done it is fine (no need for more detailed quotes with whole sentences or paragraphs), but it would also be fine without quotes, if that's a lot of work. In terms of the number of events described, you might be slightly on the overkill side, judging from your picture, since later on things get much more intense and a lot more things happen in a day. I'd be happy with something like:

Day 1: At "half an hour to twilight", Fiver gets a premonition of doom.
Day 2: Hazel and Fiver visit the Threarah "a little after ni-Frith, or noon". Hazel's band of rabbits meet and leave the warren "an hour after moonrise and a good while before midnight".
Day 3: [river, crow/beanfield, common?]

Rand al'Thor

07:08

"He's but an asse / Who shuns the masse" - 17th-century religious creed or 21st-century doggerel? :-D — Rand al'Thor ♦ 1 min ago

b_jonas

10:03

The good news is, it is now possible to acquire books from the libraries. I will do so.

@bobble That depends on the context. When I transcribe old memorial plaques, I usually change the punctuation, and feel very little guilt doing so.

Rand al'Thor

New user indigochild has provided three nice answers recently, including two to old unanswered questions.

b_jonas

Sometimes you compromise by modifying the punctuation but mentioning that you modified them, with brackets or notes.

@Randal'Thor Ah yes, you're trying to lead us by showing a good example.

Rand al'Thor

Dunno about "lead", I just like to highlight valuable new users, people who join and immediately start contributing quality stuff.

Who knows, one of them could become the next Gareth Rees.

b_jonas

10:45

1

Q: Story about boy riding with a caravan and inventing a story which turns out to be true

In the 80s, I have read a children's book about a boy riding in a caravan which is joint by a traveler who is a story-teller and invents a story together with the boy. At the end, this story turns out to be essentially true and the story-teller is the hero of this invented story who rejoins his l...

identification-request

^ This seems interesting, not for the particular book, but because OP apparently visited a library in the 80s that had a section with lots of children's books translated from English. Sure, I read Charlie and the Chocolate factory in a library as a child, but I don't recall a section with lots of children's books translated from English. Admittedly OP may have been on the other side of the iron curtain, or have special information about this book why they think it's in Engilsh.

Bookworm

11:57

0

Q: Should Wizard Hit Mommy by John Updike

Is Jack's wife Claire a white woman? Are there any clues in the lesson that suggests that?

identification-request character-analysis

bobble

14:45

@Randal'Thor I'm completely sure that what I'm doing is overkill, my plan is to go through the whole book once, collect all the timeline quotes I need, then pare down to only the important events. Recording all the smaller in-between timing quotes helps me be more sure about the timing of the more important events

Rand al'Thor

Got it. Good luck, and thanks! I'm sure the final product will be a great resource, given your customary diligence :-)

bobble

15:17

I'll link this answer once more because I think it got buried above. I don't think it's a full answer (for reasons explained in the comments) and I'm torn about what to do. Downvote? Flag? Leave it alone? I'd love to hear thoughts.

Bookworm

0

Q: Understanding and interpreting Yeats phases of the moon

I recently came across this lovely poem whilst watching the (excellent) TV show Rake The song will have it That those that we have loved got their long fingers From death, and wounds, or on Sinai's top, Or from some bloody whip in their own hands. They ran from cradle to cradle till at last Thei...

poetry symbolism william-butler-yeats

bobble

16:38

Rand, I have run into the part where Holly tells the story of what happens after the main group left. Would you like this parallel timeline included somehow?

Rand al'Thor

17:36

@bobble Yes please! :-D That's one of the big things I was hoping to learn from an answer to this question - exactly how things went when there were two parallel plotlines (Holly in Efrafa and Hazel at Nuthanger is another case later on).

bobble

I'll set up a separate section under my "Day X" headings for each day that has multiple plotlines, and title the sub-section with which plotline it is.

My goal is to get all the quotes I need (and most likely more than I need) by at least the end of the week, and then it'll probably take a day or so of organizing and paring down the answer before posting.

Rand al'Thor

@bobble I've considered that answer a few times, and never went as far as either upvoting or downvoting it. It's a bit meh as an answer, but maybe useful to the OP.

@bobble If you need layout/formatting inspiration, the appendices of Lord of the Rings may be useful. (If you haven't read LotR or don't have it to hand, see this answer for how Tolkien did it.)

The same day's (or year's, for the less eventful times) entry can include events happening simultaneously in different places.

bobble

I believe my dad has a copy of LotR somewhere (he is a nerd) but I've never gotten very far into it.

We definitely have The Hobbit because it was a bedtime story at one point

Rand al'Thor

The Hobbit is a much less thoroughly imagined work. Doesn't even have appendices, let alone an appendix with a day-by-day breakdown of events.

And another appendix with some detailed history from hundreds of years before the main storyline. And another appendix with pages and pages of information on all the languages and alphabets that Tolkien invented for his legendarium.

bobble

17:55

My dad only stopped bedtime stories when it because clear he had run through all of the sci-fi/fantasy books that would be interesting to me and sister

He was quite effective at indoctrinating us into the nerd cult

Bookworm

0

Q: Why is Clem Weatherby described as a "technical expert on railroads" in Atlas Shrugged?

At one point in Atlas Shrugged, Dagny Taggart is in a meeting with various government officials. At one point during the meeting, the book remarks that [Dagny Taggart] noticed that Clem Weatherby, their technical expert on railroads, was the man of least influence among them, and Cuffy Meigs - o...

character-analysis ayn-rand atlas-shrugged

Rand al'Thor

@bobble <insert "NEEEEERD" gif here> :-P

bobble

In the PSE D&D room we held a trial and convicted Mith of being a nerd (starting here)

bobble

18:48

D: I have a missing day somewhere, both Holly and the main group have counts that are off by a single day somewhere in my Day 1-6 range

Rand al'Thor

@bobble Maybe Cowslip's warren is the rabbit version of Lothlorien.

Sorry, you haven't read LotR so that joke was probably ill-aimed.

bobble

googles Lothlorien

Rand al'Thor

15

Q: Does time move slower inside Lothlorien?

I know I have read this somewhere and I wonder if it is correct. When the fellowship comes out of Lothlorien it is implied that, during the time it has taken for them to be in Lothlorien, a lot more time has passed in the world outside. The fellowship don't realize this themselves, it is supposed...

tolkiens-legendarium the-lord-of-the-rings timeline

verbose

@bobble That reminds me of the time I accused a friend of being a dork. He said, "Of course! I embrace my dorkiness." I thought that was good policy. So the next time I saw the guy I was (then) dating, I threw my arms around him and said, "Hello, your dorkiness."

Tsundoku

20:25

@Bookworm I suddenly noticed that this Mark Twain question has an answer with 17 upvotes. It turns out that the question went HNQ yesterday.

Bookworm

22:13

0

Q: What does “men in us” refer to in “Aurora Leigh”?

In book VI of Aurora Leigh (1856) by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the heroine collides with a man in the streets of Paris: A gentleman abstracted as myself Came full against me, then resolved the clash In voluble excuses,—obviously Some learned member of the Institute† Upon his way there, walking...

meaning poetry elizabeth-barrett-browning aurora-leigh

Bookworm

23:04

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Q: How does “the socket drop them through” in “Aurora Leigh”?

In book V of Aurora Leigh (1856) by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sir Blaise claims that in former days men chose their wives for their virtue and not for their décolletage: “My dear young friend, if we could bear our eyes Like blessedest St. Lucy,† on a plate, They would not trick us into choosin...

meaning poetry elizabeth-barrett-browning aurora-leigh

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