The Reading Room

« first day (3550 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (1396 days later) »

bobble

00:20

For this question I have a general idea of the answer - "it was a proper, higher-class place" as evidenced by waiters and politeness - but I don't feel comfortable posting an answer without understanding what the listed songs are trying to convey. I uh don't know a whit about music culture.

3 hours later…

Bookworm

02:53

Q: Did "Gargantua and Pantagruel" originally have illustrations?

The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel is a series of novels by François Rabelais, originally published in the 16th century. The Wikipedia article notes this about illustrations: The most famous and reproduced illustrations for Gargantua and Pantagruel were done by French artist Gustave Doré an...

3 hours later…

Bookworm

06:02

Q: Why did Mem/Tajdin and Zin/Siti disguise themselves for Nowruz?

I'm reading online Salah Saadalla's translation of the Kurdish classic Mem and Zin, and I've reached the part where the eponymous lovers, along with their respective siblings, meet each other at Nowruz (Newroz) festivities. In chapter 13, Mem and Tajdin disguise themselves as girls for Newroz: E...

ahmad-khani kurmanji-kurdish-literature mem-and-zin

Bookworm

06:51

Q: Lokking for a book. pre-2010. "Jaws" in a library

I read a book a while back (probably just before 2010) that I'm trying to find again. It's set in a somewhat surreal library, and I recall that the story line was very strongly based on Jaws (with similar characters and a shark-like creature roaming the library. One distinguishing feature was a ...

identification-request

2 hours later…

Rand al'Thor

09:00

Any more proposed edits to the audience-specific texts for our custom close reason? I've already made a number of edits incorporating excellent suggestions from @verbose and @bobble. The meta's been up for nearly a month, so I'm thinking to kick it to CMs next week if there are no more suggestions. (cc @Tsundoku @Gallifreyan)

Then we can begin the probably-more-tricky process of drafting and proposing a new custom close reason for basic language questions.

Mithical

That "privileged user guidance" reads a bit weirdly.

Something about the commas and the "in disguise".

I'd knock off both of the first two commas and leave it at that.

Rand al'Thor

> If this question is really an identification request or a history-of-literature question rather than an open-ended list question, then please edit and vote to reopen.

Better?

@Mithical Oh, that works I guess.

Apparently I'm a commaophile.

(commaphile?)

Mithical

Not as bad as this guy :P

Rand al'Thor

Edited.

Mithical

(thumbsup)

1 hour later…

Tsundoku

10:07

@Randal'Thor Congratulations on the Constable badge, co-constable Thor.

@Randal'Thor I'll have another look tonight. I need to recheck what I wrote in the chat.

Tsundoku

11:05

What’s the single author you own the most books by? (道 | Tao Leigh Goffe on Twitter)

In my collection: Shakespeare (between one and four annotated editions of each play). German fiction: Kafka. Non-fiction: René Girard.

If you had to teach an entire class, one semester, one author, who would it be? (道 | Tao Leigh Goffe on Twitter)

Spagirl

11:28

@bobble But the night time waiters have tattoos and slop the coffee, and there is 'graffiti in the lavatories. Linda Love-lace's mother went down on the Titanic. Lisa is a slut. Renato is a spunk and you molls will never have him signed Lucy and Maria. People in the Paradise Bar read the daily graffiti as if it was the news of the world.'' Perhaps not super classy?

@Tsundoku Nothis so classy as you. Terry Pratchett almost certainly, followed by Michael Connelly and Joe R Lansdale, probably. Quite a lot of Janet Evanovich, Chris Brookmyre, Colin Bateman Ian Rankin and Douglas Lindsay

Napoleon Wilson

@Tsundoku Colour me unsurprised. ;-)

@Tsundoku I think I could guess the answer to that, too.

Tsundoku

@NapoleonWilson I know. This is all because of the authors I studied at university.

Tsundoku

12:09

@Randal'Thor Virgulophile? (That's actually the name of a company.)

I could turn around my last question: If you could attend a semester-long class about one author or work, what author or work would that be?

I can think of Dante's Divine Comedy, Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel series, Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu. George Orwell.

I once attended a semester-long course about Thomas Mann's Lotte in Weimar. I can't remember anything from it...

An entire semester about Hermann Hesse. In Chinese literature: Lu Xun; The Dream of Red Chamber. Off the beaten track: Nalo Hopkinson.

Gallifreyan

12:29

@Randal'Thor Looks great to me

1 hour later…

bobble

13:53

:( I lost one of my Necromancer badges, someone downvoted my "like a streak" answer

@Spagirl gah, important context that wasn't in the question. The long description of the restaurant in the question did make it seem pretty proper

Spagirl

14:16

@bobble The pitch of the description changes after the person he is telling it to seems to have fallen asleep. If you might feel tempted to answering more of the Children't Bach questions, and I'm sure there are more to come, the text is here: 100vampirenovels.net/pdf-novels/… though the formatting isn't great

bobble

Hmm, but does what happens after changed the meaning of the current description?

If before-description is of a more upper-class place and after-description is of a lower-class one, then it would still be valid to analyze the meaning of the before-description as being higher-class

Rand al'Thor

@bobble You don't lose badges (except tag badges) when you stop meeting the requirements for them. Your Necromancer badge won't go away.

bobble

oh, didn't know that

I assumed the job just hadn't run yet

Rand al'Thor

I do believe @Spagirl's latest answer (and the upvote on it) have pushed us to 77% answered, for the first time at least since private beta days. (That's an unstable figure as the unanswered percentage is hovering around 23.5%, but it's been more-or-less steadily going the right way for months now.)

Rand al'Thor

15:18

@Bookworm HNQ.

1 hour later…

b_jonas

16:34

@Randal'Thor Yeah. But I heard contradictory statements on whether you lose tag badges when you stop meeting the requirements.

You certainly don't lose the non-tag badges.

Bookworm

17:19

Q: Analysing a poem

I was just futzing around with words and decided to write a poem about the Covid crisis. I would be immensely grateful to anyone who points out as to why this is a bad poem. I of course won't mind any criticism because I basically want to know what distinguishes good poetry from bad poetry. Mainl...

poetry

4 hours later…

Bookworm

20:53

Q: In Ready Player one, How does Halliday die?

I was looking back at Ready player one by Ernest cline and I wondering the following: How did James Halliday Die? Was it related to his creations?

character-analysis

verbose

21:36

@Tsundoku Easily Tom Stoppard. Depending on whether the three plays that make up The Coast of Utopia are counted individually or as a set, I own 29 or 31 books by him.

@Tsundoku Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, or John Donne, I think.

@Gallifreyan lgtm as well

Though I guess that would've made more sense as a reply to Randolph than to you. Oh well.

Rand al'Thor

No worries, I saw it ;-)

bobble

he's watching you

verbose

uh-oh

I thought he'd be asleep by now

Rand al'Thor

@Randal'Thor feel free to edit! — verbose 23 mins ago

Done.

verbose

Great, thanks! My computer is being very slow and I didn't want to download an image and re-upload it. I need to close out some applications, windows, and tabs.

Rand al'Thor

21:49

Ah gotcha, fair enough.

But I think if you use the "paste an image or link" option instead of "Browse, drag & drop", you can put a link into a post directly from an existing image URL, rather than downloading and re-uploading.

verbose

@Randal'Thor TIL

Alex

22:45

@b_jonas You most certainly do lose tag badges.

I've lost the same badge multiple times.

in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Jan 9 '20 at 4:05, by Alex

Just got the bronze hogwarts badge for the third time.

b_jonas

@Alex Does that apply to all three colors?

Alex

I imagine so, but it's only ever happened to me with Bronze so I can't say with certainty.

verbose

23:43

@Alex Have you considered pinning it to your tunic?

Alex

@verbose Lost my tunic as well.

verbose

@Alex 'sunfortunate. Unless you had fun doing it.

Alex

I always have fun.

verbose

Alex

Except for now. You just ruined it.

verbose

23:51

eh, you'll get over it

Alex

Don't know if I will.

I feel like this is going to be one of the life-altering moments.

verbose

Time will tell.

Alex

Where I come from Time doesn't do much talking.

verbose

Well, you see, time flies when you're having fun. Now that you're not having any fun any more, time will cease its flight, take a seat next to you, and pour out its woes in your ears.

Alex

So if I want to escape from time all I have to do is start having fun again?

verbose

23:57

right

Alex

But that would be no fun.

Now I'm stuck in a paradox.

Should've just pinned the badge to my tunic and saved all this trouble.

« first day (3550 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (1396 days later) »

all rooms