The Reading Room

12:01 AM

Authors don't necessarily document why they dedicate a work to a certain person.

If graduation is on 16 December, I should start posting my questions on 5 December.

Ah,the local library has a biography of Allen Ginsberg. Might check that.

12:18 AM

@Tsundoku Puzzling is running an "advent calendar" event during December - maybe we could try to do something similar.

But 100+ new questions in such a short timespan could push our Unanswered stats so high that we're not eligible for graduation any more. Talk about shooting oneself in the foot ;-)

12:44 AM

@Randal'Thor After allowing us to announce the graduation, rescinding that decision seems rather unlikely.

12:59 AM

@Randal'Thor I have 72 unanswered questions. If I temporarily delete them, that should compensate for the new unanswered questions ;-) #GamingTheSystem

bobble

@Tsundoku is your latest Q [genre]?

No, it's not genre. Modernism is a style or period.

Q: In what way is Jorge Amado's The Discovery of America by the Turks a modernist novel?

The Wikipedia article about Jorge Amado's The Discovery of America by the Turks / A Descoberta da América pelos Turcos describes this work as "a Brazilian Modernist novel", even though it was written in 1994, long after the heyday of literary modernism. When exactly modernism ended has been debat...

1:16 AM

@Tsundoku 73 including one with an unupvoted answer so it's still on the Unanswered list.

Ah, that one.

1:34 AM

Deleting those might get our percentage of answered questions up to 79%. (I haven't done any calculations, this is just a guess.)

When I started tracking site statistics in May 2019, the percentage of answered question was 73%. Our answers-per-question ratio has remained at 1.4. That's our most constant statistic.

6 hours later…

russian-literature anna-karenina

7:47 AM

Q: Anna karenina analysis

After reading Karenina couple of times i am still intrigued by the question that whether Levin was the Beta Male and Vronsky was Alpha or the other way around, maybe Tolstoy missed that point

4 hours later…

11:40 AM

There's also the Question Repository for Literature chatroom, which was used for a few days in March 2017. And most questions were about Nineteen Eighty-Four.

2 hours later…

russian-literature anna-karenina

1:15 PM

Q: change in anna's actions

its weird but i have posted one more question before this, but has anyone noticed the detail and the way Tolstoy has described the pangs of manwho sees her wife is about to cheat on her and the way he observes her change in behavior "what she used to do and now all strange and changed" that cuts ...

@Tsundoku I'd forgotten about that room. My repository used to be in a text file on my computer, now just in my head.

1:39 PM

I'm generally not fond of the "SE is not a forum" maxim, but sometimes it does feel really appropriate.

1:59 PM

There are types of questions that are fine on a forum but that don't work at all on SE. For example any type of question that tries to spark a discussion instead of analysis.

2:09 PM

> This site is all about getting answers. It's not a discussion forum. There's no chit-chat.

Quoted from the tour.

2:42 PM

My dislike of the "SE is not a forum" maxim probably stems from main meta where it's sometimes used as a pedantic way to shut people down. You can make a wonderful argument for a new feature, but if you use the word "forum" in your post, then your argument is invalid.

3 hours later…

5:15 PM

@bobble snap, edit jinx :-)

Q: Meaning of 'white mask on my otherwise tan face'

5:26 PM

I nearly always saw them at the beach, where it’s difficult to get a good look at anyone. Particularly so in my case, because I’m nearsighted and would rather see everything through a haze than return to Madrid with a kind of white mask on my otherwise tan face, and I never wear my contact lense...

meaning short-stories spanish-literature javier-marias

Namaskaram

5:45 PM

@Tsundoku let’s not tempt the SE overlords? ;) we can go wild after December 16th :P

6:17 PM

@Bookworm @Randal'Thor Two answers, both upvoted. Shooting for HNQ? ;-)

Mine isn't upvoted yet.

Edit jinx with bobble, answer jinx with you. Perhaps I should step away from the computer before any more coincidences happen.

Well, if you want to keep the number of unanswered questions down, that doesn't seem very effective ;-)

6:55 PM

@Tsundoku I've answered your two navels question, but you can probably self-answer it better than my effort.

7:22 PM

Now I need a third navel.

1 hour later…

Q: What Nationality do rabbits represent in MAUS?

8:48 PM

In page 37 panel 1, there is 2 rabbits sitting down and talking. what nationality do they represent?

comics maus

Q: In what way is Jorge Amado's Home Is the Sailor a modernist novel?

9:13 PM

The Wikipedia article about Jorge Amado's Home Is the Sailor / Os velhos marinheiros ou o capitão de longo curso describes this work as a "Brazilian modernist novel". The corresponding Portugese and Italian Wikipedia articles contain no similar claims. The novel was written in 1961, long after wh...

history-of-literature portuguese-literature jorge-amado home-is-the-sailor