The Reading Room

Seems I did the tagging for this question halfway - I saw a quote from a book and added it as a title tag, but didn't notice that it's not exactly about the book per se. Should I remove the title tag, or add in an author tag? The book isn't exactly literature, more self-help.

bobble

6:08 AM

Well I did all the other tags

I really should be off now

zzz

verbose

8:57 AM

@bobble I don't think so? It's about why she acts the way she does in that specific situation, and not a general question about the type of person she is. An answer could get into an analysis of her character and relate her decision not to jump to that, but the question itself doesn't ask about her character, just about her actions. I'm not super sure about this though.

@bobble I think so?

@bobble I wonder why @sciborg doesn't visit here any more ...

@Randal'Thor wait I thought he was an oak. He's a dogwood?

@PrinceNorthLæraðr Even Richard III couldn't

> A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse! (V.iv.7)

@Tsundoku What does that mean?

@bobble I agree that the question isn't about The Well-Educated Mind. The quotation is from Pope's "Essay on Man." It's the last line of Epistle 1.

@bobble just a note on date ranges. There usually isn't a space on either side of the en dash, e.g., "William Shakespeare (1564–1616). Also, for living writers, the en dash is still used after the year of birth, e.g. "Christopher Strobe (1979–)."

*Strobbe dammit.

And I just made up the 1979 date.

Tsundoku

10:14 AM

@verbose Answering all the questions about a work for which we had a topic challenge. I did that with Gilgamesh long after the topic challenge ended.

@bobble Look like a quote-source question that does not need a tag for The Well-Educated Mind since the question is not about that book.

@verbose Christopher Strope, Christopher Strobel or Christopher Strode? Year-of-birth information is not available :-P

Tsundoku

10:58 AM

Congratulations to @GarethRees for earning the site's first short-stories tag badge.

verbose

@Tsundoku Congratulations, @GarethRees!

Tsundoku

@verbose And not much later, he needed a hearse.

verbose

@Tsundoku I managed to misspell both your names didn't I, oh well, that's deep

Tsundoku

@verbose A strobe by any other name would shine as bright ;-)

verbose

also, before Randolph points it out: EJoshuaS and I apparently have exactly the same score now. Which is odd, coz I downvoted an answer earlier today so I should be down by 1. I guess the answer got deleted.

@Tsundoku as someone who teaches people about disability issues, you probably know that strobe lights cause seizures in some people ...

@Tsundoku that's mighty impressive

Tsundoku

11:06 AM

Area51 does not get updated continuously. There can be a lag of several hours sometimes.

verbose

Points to note: (1) He's clobbering me on the badges (b) he has far more questions than answers, with me it's the other way 'round

Rand al'Thor

@verbose And sometimes we need to update those tag wikis.

:-(

@Tsundoku And verbose did it for the Tagore topic challenge.

@Tsundoku It's not the first (your link included the suffix for his user ID).

Anyway congratulations!

Tsundoku

@Randal'Thor Ah, the first of 2021 :-P

verbose

11:21 AM

@Randal'Thor no, there were a handful of questions in the Tagore challenge that I didn't answer. You answered that question from @Mithical, for example. My own question lacks an answer, as does Tsundoku's

there are other examples. Tsundoku answered a question from that Knight guy, for example

@Randal'Thor hahahaha

@Randal'Thor 😢 Zephyr (that's my husband) liked The Phantom Tollbooth a lot

I'm surprised @bobble doesn't have an Archeologist badge yet

Though I'd prefer to see it spelled (or spelt) Archaeologist

Rand al'Thor

@verbose It is.

What's the difference between spelled and spelt? You can't make a loaf out of spelled.

@verbose That's a cool name! I've never met a Zephyr.

verbose

11:39 AM

@Randal'Thor ha. Zephyr's mother once suggested we try spelt bread. Zephyr asked, "What's spelt bread?" And I chimed in with "B-R-E-A-D."

@Randal'Thor Oops

@Randal'Thor Yeah when we first met (online) and were chatting, I said, "oh, that's a cool name, is that a mononym like Cher or Madonna?" And he said, "It's actually Zephyr Starwater Grayston Williams."

Rand al'Thor

@verbose :-D that's exactly the kind of thing I would say.

Or Norton Juster, probably.

Starwater?

verbose

@Randal'Thor Indeed.

Rand al'Thor

Sounds like a name out of fantasy literature.

(No offence! I think I remember you're not much into fantasy.)

verbose

Apparently it refers to the way the sun glints off ripples or waves in a lake. Like in this picture:

Sun glitter

Sun glitter is a bright, sparkling light formed when sunlight reflects from water waves. The waves may be caused by natural movement of the water, or by the movement of birds or animals in the water. Even a ripple from a thrown rock will create a momentary glitter. Light reflects from smooth surfaces by specular reflection. A rippled but locally smooth surface such as water with waves will reflect the sun at different angles at each point on the surface of the waves. As a result, a viewer in the right position will see many small images of the sun, formed by portions of waves that are oriented...

@Randal'Thor Zephyr liked fantasy and science fiction a lot. I just have not gotten into it as much, 'sall

I mean, I like Gulliver's Travels and Alice in Wonderland and The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr Hoffman and "The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas" and The Invisible Man and The Day of the Triffids and such but it doesn't occur to me to read SFF generally.

Rand al'Thor

12:00 PM

"The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas" ... is that le Guin? Sounds familiar, though I haven't read it.

Have you read The Phantom Tollbooth? It's kind of like Alice in Wonderland but better (and with more wordplay).

verbose

@Randal'Thor yes, it's quite short and quite lovely.

@Randal'Thor I have read it, yes. I'm not sure I'd agree that it's better than the Alice books, but I think I would be more inclined to your opinion had I read it as a child, the way I read Alice.

Someone (I forget who) said that you had to have read Jane Eyre as a child or a teenager to think it's better than Wuthering Heights. People who read both for the first time as adults think WH is better. Certainly I thought WH was ridiculous when I first read it. I now think it's a great novel and don't like JE as much.

The point is just that when you read a book has a huge impact on how fond you are of it. I read The Phantom Tollbooth so late ... I was in my late 30s, I think ... and never quite got into the right mindset to enjoy it. Whereas I read the Alice books when I was young enough to love them.

I also don't think I'd love A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man quite as much as I do if I hadn't read it right when I was the same age as Stephen Dedalus and plotting my own escape from India to the US.

Rand al'Thor

12:39 PM

@verbose Sometimes people overstate that effect. I've had people assume that I must have read Wheel of Time before Lord of the Rings, because they think Jordan's a crap writer.

(All respect to Tolkien as an incredible worldbuilder and writer, but I think I'd still rate WoT higher than LotR overall.)

I read Alice as a child and Phantom Tollbooth as an ... older child, I guess? I also read The Annotated Alice, which magnified my appreciation a lot.

Through the Looking Glass is better than Alice in Wonderland. Fight me. :-P

Actually I wonder if I'm suffering from the opposite effect. Because I read Alice in Wonderland so young, much of it feels familiar and even cliched, while Through the Looking Glass was still fresh and magical, and a little less well known in the popular eye, when I read the annotated versions of both. (I also prefer chess to cards, FWIW.)

verbose

1:20 PM

@Randal'Thor it's different. But to buttress your point: I didn't play chess when I first read Through the Looking Glass and much of the effect was lost on me. When I re-read it later, I got more out of it. I had played cards before reading Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, though.

Rand al'Thor

1:32 PM

The late Diana Wynne Jones called The Phantom Tollbooth "a little like The Wizard of Oz, only better". High praise, considering what a classic the latter is. — Rand al'Thor ♦ 2 days ago

Bookworm

2:49 PM

0

Q: Whom did English writers regard as the true hero/central figure of the Iliad?

From his farewell to his wife Andromache in Book VI to the splendid description of his funeral with the which the epic concludes, Hector exhibits many of the hallmarks of the archetypal protagonist of a modern novel or comedy: he has a legitimate, productive relationship with Andromache, in contr...

Bookworm

3:15 PM

0

Q: Which version of William Blake's "Jerusalem" did John Reith, BBC managing director, recite on 12 May 1926 to celebrate the end of the General Strike?

In his 1pm radio broadcast on 12 May 1926, John Reith, managing director of the BBC, recited William Blake's "Jerusalem" to celebrate the end of the General Strike which had lasted for nine days and which the BBC had opposed throughout. Which version did he use - the one with Blake's original words

william-blake

bobble

@verbose 28/100 of the way there. It doesn't count tag-only edits

19

A: Why have I not received the archaeologist badge?

I think this badge needs a lot more clarification from the devs. The description from the list of all badges simply says: Archaeologist silver; awarded once; same family as Excavator (bronze) Edited 100 posts that were inactive for at least 6 months Edits to your own posts do not count Source: ...

'ello, Soyuz!

Soyuz42

'ello!

Sorry about the confusion, now even I'm not sure what I had in mind.

bobble

Referring to your latest question?

Soyuz42

Yes

bobble

3:30 PM

It seems that instead of asking "Who is the true hero/central figure of the Iliad?", which invites responses of an analytical nature, you instead were curious about whom other people, of a "respected" group (hence limiting to "famous English writers"), thought of the question. Which would invite (likely broad) answers based purely on references, perhaps ones that would argue both sides.

Soyuz42

It was largely because, going into the epic, I had heard of Achilles and had read about the Judgement of Paris and such, so I expected the poem to be centered around those two. Hector turning out to play the important role that he did was surprising.

@bobble Hmm. I thought the former question would have been more subjective than the one I did ask.

bobble

It's subjective in a way that allows for long, in-depth literary analysis answers. At least maybe? The line of where "Good Subjective" divides "Bad Subjective" is, of course, subjective.

It's also broad, though

The relevant blog post

Soyuz42

I found this on Google Books

I haven't a clue what "Homer in Chios" is, but it matches the type of work I'm looking for.

bobble

4:00 PM

@Randal'Thor I'm considering doing a manual search through Wikipedia's (or the fandom wiki's) plot summaries for every single Redwall book now.

Okay, I am. Darn brain. Darn Rand. Why'd you have to post another question about one of my favorite series?

Bookworm

1

Q: Do ALL of the Redwall books include the death of a major character?

I read most of Brian Jacques's Redwall books in the 2000s, and one of the things I always noticed was how seemingly every book has at least one major character die: for example, Am I right in saying that every single Redwall book includes the death of a major character? Specifically I mean, not ...

brian-jacques redwall-series

bobble

4:26 PM

@verbose They've been having lots of Stressful Life Events, such as losing a job and interviewing for another

Rand al'Thor

@bobble If it's one of your favourite series, do you even need wikis?

At least familiarity with the series will help you extract the information quickly without having to figure out who's a major character or not.

bobble

I do, considering I haven't read most of the books in a while, and there are a few I never managed to track down

Rand al'Thor

Ah, OK.

bobble

I never managed to actually collect all the books - I think I own 3. The others were borrowed from libraries

Plus I can never remember what happens in each book. They all get mixed up in my head

Rand al'Thor

I just realised The Legend of Luke is going to be a pretty odd case, given that the story's split into two plotlines, one from years after the other, and in the older one rot13(gurl NYY qvr va gur raq).

@bobble Similar here: I owned a few and borrowed a lot from libraries.

bobble

4:31 PM

For The Legend of Luke I have this character listed as the death - not sure if she's important enough? I nearly got my hands on that book no less than 3 times, only to have someone else whisk it away.

Rand al'Thor

Are you OK with spoilers?

bobble

Yes

Rand al'Thor

I guess you kinda have to be if you want to answer this question :-P

bobble

I have the incredibly sophisticated strategy of control-F-ing "die", "dea[th]", "kill", and "murder" all over the plot summaries. Then I cross-check with the wiki to see if this character was actually important

Rand al'Thor

At the end of The Legend of Luke, nearly all of the major characters die when the ship gets destroyed, including Luke himself and the crazy black squirrel whose name I forget.

I think there were just two survivors that Martin and co found living on the Halfship.

bobble

4:34 PM

Huh. Not sure why my control-F strategy failed there

Rand al'Thor

> The ship's stern sinks instantly and Luke, Ranguvar, Daskar, and much of the vermin crew upon it were drowned. The bow becomes stuck between the two rocks and the surviving vermin are massacred by the liberated slaves.

^ from Wikipedia

"drowned" is a different keyword :-)

Ranguvar, that was her name.

Btw, if you like Redwall, I can't resist a shameless plug for this answer:

17

A: Do I need to read the Redwall books in any specific order?

I've already posted about this on another SE site. Let me try to go into even more detail here. There are two obvious possibilities for the ordering: publication order and in-universe chronological order. These do not agree, but in most cases where they do agree, they should probably not be cont...

bobble

I used that to get to SciFi.SE to get my list of books

unfortunately I must stop to concentrate on school now

Rand al'Thor

I think I read all of them except the last few, which were published after some changes in my life, and some of them even published posthumously.

Not sure which was the last one I read, actually. I think I read Eulalia, not sure about Doomwyte.

Soyuz42

@Randal'Thor What do you think of Spivak's Calculus?

Rand al'Thor

@Soyuz42 Hmm, you just reminded me that I meant (and forgot) to send a message to a student recommending that book and some others.

bobble

4:41 PM

Looking at that list, I read Redwall -> Outcast, The Long Patrol, Triss, Rakkety Tam, and Eulalia!. I own Outcast, Mariel of Redwall, and The Long Patrol

Soyuz42

@Randal'Thor Happy to be of service.

Rand al'Thor

@Soyuz42 I have a copy of that book in my office, although ironically I think I never studied it in detail myself since I learned all that calculus/analysis material from classes and courses. Nevertheless, I think (perhaps largely based on second-hand reports) that it's a well-deserved classic and a good way to start studying undergraduate calculus.

@bobble Awww, no Pearls of Lutra?

That was the first Redwall book I read.

Always had a special place in my heart among Redwall books.

bobble

I think I read the first bit or so in a library while travelling, but didn't get into it proper

Unfortunately I can't borrow if the library is in, e.g., New York

Soyuz42

@Randal'Thor I shalt then attack it with renewed vigour. Adieu

Rand al'Thor

Marlfox and Taggerung were also favourites. I like when there's a clearly defined group of people (good or bad) who all have names and whom one can rigorously keep track of, especially when they're one by one dying or otherwise being removed from the story.

The cunning of the Marlfoxes and the mythos of the Taggerung also appealed to me.

@Soyuz42 Good luck!

bobble

4:45 PM

I loved the poetry in Redwall novels

For a year or so I had the opening poem of Mariel of Redwall memorized...

Must memorize it again, it was wonderful

Rand al'Thor

Oh, you just reminded me of another question I meant to ask about Redwall!

I still have "Seven Seasons Gone" from the end of Marlfox memorised.

bobble

I think I made some kids in my PE class think I was crazy, chanting Redwall poetry while doing warm-ups

Rand al'Thor

Must be more than 10 years since I last reread any Redwall books.

The songs in that series were brilliant, I quite agree.

Hmm, now I wonder if any enterprising Youtuber has set them to music ...

bobble

I wonder if there are any official music-renderings of the poems or songs. Probably not.

Rand al'Thor

Seems the answer is no to both.

But searching for "Seven Seasons Gone" did lead me to an online text of Marlfox and a few relived memories.

Log a Log of the Guosim ... seems funny now :-D

bobble

4:56 PM

My local library has one shelf area for "children's book series", and I would check there every time to see if any Animorphs or Redwall books were newly available

Rand al'Thor

Oh, Animorphs too?

I feel like our shared Watership Down Q&A experience may recur again.

> wot wot!

bobble

My first Animorphs was #29, the one where Cassie morphs into a Yeerk. My first Redwall was either Martin the Warrior or Mariel of Redwall

As with most of my book discoveries as a kid, the impetus was "I'm bored, hey look someone left a book out"

I own two Animorphs, the one where they get zapped into Z-space and the one where they rescue Marco's mom

Rand al'Thor

I've read both of those.

Don't remember Cassie morphing into a Yeerk.

I mostly read Animorphs books in libraries - just owned very few of them, fewer than Redwall books.

bobble

The Sickness (novel)

The Sickness is the 29th book in the Animorphs series, authored by K. A. Applegate. It is known to have been ghostwritten by Melinda Metz. It is narrated by a character named Cassie. == Plot summary == Cassie and Jake are dragged along by Rachel and the others to the school dance. They have a few good laughs when Ax's unfamiliarity with human culture scares away some of the crowd. The laughter stops, however, when he demorphs involuntarily. It soon becomes apparent that Ax is suffering from an inflamed Tria gland (as well as a fever)—much like the lymphatic tonsils in the human mouth. Unlike humans...

Rand al'Thor

5:12 PM

My first Animorphs was where they morph into flies to take a plane to stalk out some millionnaire they found in an internet chatroom, and he turns out to be Visser Three's brother.

I still remember the name Govikes from that fictional chatroom.

bobble

ooh, I loved that one

Rand al'Thor

#26 maybe?

bobble

Oh, I think I also own the one where they investigate the supposedly mind-controlling hamburger meat

Rand al'Thor

> If you've never seen a computer chat room before, it's kind of confusing. It's like a conversation between people who aren't really listening to each other.

bobble

My favorite is the one where Tobias lets himself get captured to make them think the de-morpher doesn't work.

Rand al'Thor

5:17 PM

@bobble I don't remember that, but I remember the one where oatmeal turns out to be Yeerk poison.

"Now do you care, Visser Three? Now do you care?"

bobble

That one had a bat-morph on the cover I think

Rand al'Thor

> You just never hear about oatmeal being involved in any of the great battles of history.

bobble

5:35 PM

We're back to 1090 Unanswered

Tsundoku

6:24 PM

The question What did Pope intend to say by “Whatever is, is right”? has attracted some bad answers in the last two days. Completely barking up the wrong tree.

bobble

I have both on my Follow list and plan to flag one or both in a week or so, giving them time to come back and fix the answer up

Tsundoku

Both answerers are probably unfamiliar with Pope. But perhaps there is hope.

@Randal'Thor Porridge.

bobble

6:47 PM

The comments under this answer seem pretty chatty - am I missing any important information buried under there? After the first two comments I especially can't see any value added.

I would flag except I'm not familiar enough with whatever they're talking about to know if it pertains to the answer or not, or if it's just irrelevant chatter.

Tsundoku

I have just poked the two commenters.

Bookworm

7:06 PM

0

Q: Meaning of "the boy who is turned towards the drama of his parents’ faces."

This passage is from The children's bach by Helen Garner Dexter found, in a magazine, a photograph of the poet Tennyson, his wife and their two sons walking in the garden of their house on the Isle of Wight. To the modern eye it is a shocking picture: they are all, with the exception of the grea...

meaning the-childrens-bach helen-garner

bobble

@Bookworm will they ever learn the proper title capitalization?

Sciborg

7:23 PM

@verbose hello :p

Tsundoku

11:59 PM

@Bookworm Can this question be answered without reading an entire library?

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