The Reading Room

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verbose

00:21

@MattThrower Good point

Bookworm

00:39

Q: I'm looking for a book about a boy in New York city who knows all about animals

I read a book in I think middle school (around the mid 2000s) about a boy who moves into a new apartment with his single mother(I specifically remember her saying that the trick to getting a good apartment in the city is to stay put, unless your landlord is a snake) and his pet mouse (I remember ...

identification-request

5 hours later…

Bookworm

05:25

Q: I'm looking for a lesbian webcomic set in Spain

I don't remember much because it's been long time i stumble this in manga site (it not manga it just manga site post comics sometimes) it set in century Spain (I think?) the main girl is from rich family who owns a slave or a servent i don't remember the main girl have long blond hair and pale sk...

identification-request comics

2 hours later…

Napoleon Wilson

07:52

@Randal'Thor Rarely.

3 hours later…

Tsundoku

11:02

12 of the Best Books of Literary Criticism Everyone Should Read on Interesting Literature (2020). This article confuses literature professor A. C. Bradley with his brother, the philosopher F. H Bradley.

(I have read only the first two books on that list.)

Five Fascinating Facts about Sir Philip Sidney. I wonder whether this would get @verbose's seal of approval. (Or are those facts just too trivial?)

10 hours later…

verbose

20:39

@Tsundoku I think I used to know that he invented the name Pamela, but I had forgotten it. The rest of the facts are interesting enough too.

Though technically, he did write the first Petrarchan sonnet sequence in English, which is better than saying "one of the first sonnet sequences." The only sonnet sequence that predates Astroph[ie]l and Stella is an utterly intriguing one by Anne Locke (both names spelled, or spelt, variously: Luk, Lock, Lok, etc) that's all about Psalm 19, IIRC

@Tsundoku I have read (or at least thumbed through, reading some sections carefully, skimming over the majority) the first nine. I'ven't even heard of the last three. I shall keep an eye out.

b_jonas

@verbose Let me link to your relevant answer literature.stackexchange.com/a/14762/139

verbose

I've never actually found a couple of those all that fascinating. Seven Types of Ambiguity and Anatomy of Criticism are not my cuppa.

@b_jonas oh thanks! I was too lazy to track it down. Also, Psalm 51, it turns out.

b_jonas

it was the first hit for ‘sonnet english’ on Lit. I only searched because I recalled there was such a question, but you probably remembered that too.

apparently there's also literature.stackexchange.com/q/17149/139 “What kind of sonnet is Sonnet 24 of Sidney's ‘Astrophel and Stella’?”

verbose

yeah, I just couldn't be arsed. I'm bone idle af.

b_jonas

I didn't remember what the answer was, only that there was multiple writers composing sonnets in english earlier than Shakespeare

verbose

20:53

So I'm grateful that you looked it up and saved me the trouble, @b_jonas!

b_jonas

I didn't find that surprising even back then because I knew Petrarca was both famous and lived long enough ago, and back then educated people in Europe studied classical latin authors like him, so it's no surprise that many writers tried to imitate them

verbose

@b_jonas I think they imitated him largely because he wrote his sonnets in Italian, though, no? The fact that vernacular languages could be used for serious poetry was one of the earth-shattering discoveries of the Renaissance, I thought

b_jonas

@verbose ah right

it might have been, I don't know

I was born into the modern age when we find that natural

I still don't think much about english poetry, but they had to give it a try

verbose

@b_jonas I think in the postmodern world, you and I are passé. Only angsty teenagers find writing poetry, in any language at all, natural. But even most of them make TikToks instead

@b_jonas LOL!

Took me a moment before it twigged

b_jonas

@verbose of course! I don't write good poetry and I know it. but I expect that the old guard wrote more poetry than enough to read, and hopefully some people will continue the tradition. the old guard is now down tovery few people, definitely Kányádi Sándor, perhaps Nádasdy Ádám and a few more.

verbose

21:04

h'm you should propose a topic challenge on hungarian-poetry

b_jonas

Makkai Ádám apparently died in 2020, I didn't even know that

verbose

of COVID?

b_jonas

@verbose I haven't even answered that one question that someone, I think Rand, posted about it, even though I should

@verbose unlikely

verbose

@b_jonas it's not too late

b_jonas

@verbose I know

verbose

21:14

... to whip it, whip it good

Tsundoku

21:48

@verbose I have owned copies of Seven Types of Ambiguity and Anatomy of Criticism (and Wellek & Warren's Theory of Literature) for more than 25 years without reading them. I hope to change that by the end of this year.

verbose

22:42

Wellek and Warren, I like. The other two seem wrong-headed to me

verbose

23:01

Though I mean all of them are rather out of date.

Hey @mods, what is our topic challenge for March/April?

or anybody I guess, one doesn't need to be a mod to answer that q

bobble

Q: Announcing the March–April 2023 topic challenge: Hayy ibn Yaqdhan / Philosophus Autodidactus

In accordance with our meta agreement to have topic challenges and a later meta agreement to have topic challenges lasting for two months and overlapping by one month, it is time to announce the March–April 2023 topic challenge. Based on the number of votes (+6, -0), our 66th topic challenge will...