7 Underrated Books by Asian Authors

@Tsundoku I don't think it's "don't understand", just a difference in opinion. On that site, they're less interested in literary analysis and more in trying to elucidate what the author actually meant it to be. I suppose when there can often be doubts over what the author even meant the laws of nature to be in a certain story, with serious effects on the plot, you get into the habit of attaching rather more importance to that. Speculative fiction is a very practical genre.

Not that I've read your posting there yet, so maybe the details were different in this instance.

@Randal'Thor The Night of Wishes is brilliant fun. The translation probably makes a huge difference, as the story revolves around a very long magic spell in many different kinds of nonsense rhyme. The one I read was translated by Helga Aichinger.

Mind you, I actually didn't like The Neverending Story very much, thought it was too weird and confusing and in places too depressing, so my opinion may not be representative.

Hmm, I completely fail to see how this answer deserves TWO downvotes. I can ignore one but not two.

I mean, it might be not as good as the other answer (debatable), but that's not a reason to downvote...

Haven't the faintest. Maybe just two separate people who were in a bad mood.

In entirely unrelated news, this second Moderna dose is kicking my @$$

Either that or I’m coincidentally dying of entirely unrelated causes

tell my bunnies Malachi and Fergus that I loved them

It’s been nice knowing you.

@Alex Wish I could say the same

j/k likewise

@verbose I בםוךג ןמאקרפרקא אישא ןמ א'ם 'שטדץ

Argh, keyboard defaulting to the wrong language again.

That should have said: I can interpret that in two ways.

Ah

Either that it's actually not nice knowing me and you wish that was, or that you wish that I was dying as well so that you could say it about me.

Well, in either case, I was joking.

I mean, I’d not seriously wish for either of those

so it doesn’t matter which I meant

As was I.

ha

@A.B. It's not merely a difference of opinion. Most people on that site don't seem to understand what fiction means and engage with it like the average teenager.

@A.B. I have undeleted it so you can check.

@verbose That Fauci ouchie is more ouchie than expected, then :-/

Research has shown that some knives are shit.

are the stories depicted in an epic all imaginary?

@Sudipto Which epic is that?

@bobble Only 8 hours to go before my account of SFF SE gets deleted \o/

@Tsundoku or maybe they understand the user base and what types of answers are generally preferred. If you are "disgusted" with that, maybe you should not answer there.

Maybe some of the askers are teenagers. No reason teenagers shouldn't get answers too.

to the questions they want to know the answers to.

@Skooba Rest assured that I won't waste any more time on that site.

@Spagirl would it be better if I removed the section of my answer trying to explain why the idiom is the way it is? I wasn't really considering how relevant the examples were to the book because I was trying to put intuition behind the idiom.

Lost in Translation: An Illustrated Catalog of Beautiful Untranslatable Words from Around the World (on Brain Pickings). The list does not include "catharsis", which is Greek for "catharsis" :-P

@GarethRees Mahabharat

@Sudipto There's a book, Historicity of the Mahabharata: Evidence of Literature, Art and Archaeology by B. B.Lal

@bobble In my view, probably yes. On the whole I think, was it Verbose? who commented that the question was a poor fit for the site, perhaps we should both have left it alone and punted it at ELL or EL&U! :)

@Tsundoku could you provide a link?

@verbose I have deleted it again.

@verbose No mayonaise is not only an issue in Ireland:

I can't find any reliable source on it though.

(wrong room, I know, but you weren't pingable in the Restaurant)

@Tsundoku ah

@Tsundoku I didn't even know there was an expatriates SE. I'm just a lowly immigrant, since I'm the wrong skin color and income bracket to be called an expat.

On third re-read, I'm leaning towards "another question", but would like others' opinions before I flag

Oh haha I just flagged (flug?) it before I hopped in here

This question caused me to wonder: do we have separate tags for little-women, good-wives, little-men, and jos-boys or just lump them all together under little-women? good-wives is particularly interesting because I understand that in the US at least, it's rarely published as a stand-alone, even though that's how it circulates in India

I also think it's a terrible question, all those upvotes notwithstanding.

Hopefully you approve of my tag edits on it at least :)

We do have a question tagged little-men but I don't see why we should, under the principle that we tag books by series if they're part of a series

@bobble I thought you had enough rep now that you didn't need your tag edits approved?

I meant "approve" as in "agree, think it was useful", not the specific SE term

mmm, I have an identification-request now... do homework, bobble, homework, don't think of questions to ask

@bobble I know, I was pretending to misunderstand you in order to make a joke

Well now I feel bad for ruining it

@bobble no, no, if a joke needs explanation it's a bad joke to begin with

@verbose personally I think we should retag the two questions currently tagged little-women and the one tagged little-men little-women-series and make little-women, good-wives, little-men, and jos-boys tag synonyms for that one.

Should I ask a question in Meta about that?

Meta is fine. Chat might be fine, since it's so little, but if in doubt meta's larger audience is probably better.

@bobble I'm lazy so I'm tempted to just wait until Randolph, the 'doku, and Gallimaufreyan are awake all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

Of course they don't usually hang out here on weekends either so maybe I should post in Meta