The Reading Room

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Bookworm

11:30 AM

Q: I am looking for a book from a spanish academic researcher on the history of paper (or of books)

I cannot remember the title nor the the author of said book. But I remember it had some plant on the cover.

philology

Clara Diaz Sanchez

11:46 AM

@Bookworm I always find it a bit strange when people quickly self-answer their question, but answering this quickly must surely be a record - within one second!

CDR

12:40 PM

@ClaraDiazSanchez - I think the person did a self-answer-posting, wherein one checks the box "Answer your own question – share your knowledge, Q&A-style" as they create the question.

b_jonas

1:28 PM

@ClaraDiazSanchez literature.stackexchange.com/a/26796/139 that doesn't look like one second, it looks like the answer is 40 minute after the question

@CDR I believe if you use the "answer your own question" checkbox when you post the question then the question and answer timestamps are the same, at least there's a lot of such self-answers with exactly the same timestamps at data.stackexchange.com/scifi/query/541284/quick-answers . This does also list two self-answers that are within a second of the question, which is impressive.

You can also ask Rand about fast answers because of scifi.stackexchange.com/a/122311/4918

Clara Diaz Sanchez

@CDR Ah right, that makes more sense.

@b_jonas The original answer (now deleted for some reason) had the same timestamp as the question.

b_jonas

literature.stackexchange.com/a/659/139 by Mithical is apparently the fastest non-self answer on Lit, within a minute from the question.

1 hour later…

verbose

2:51 PM

@Bookworm This is off-topic anyway. It’s about the history of paper as a medium, not about imaginative literature.

Clara Diaz Sanchez

3:07 PM

@verbose and indeed Shakspere's birthday ;)

Bookworm

3:19 PM

Q: What does bigot mean in this context of the Naked and the Dead and what was really happening?

Could anyone explain to me what is really happening in the following passage from The Naked and The Dead by Norman Mailer? The first part of the quote is from a newspaper about a guy called Jimmy Andrew. I guess CIO is a trade union, which is understandable. If Gallagher hates communism, why does...

norman-mailer the-naked-and-the-dead

Rand al'Thor

3:38 PM

"Do you speak a ‘big’ global language? Here’s what my tiny language can teach you" - Ana Schnabl, the Guardian

Topic challenge? ana-schnabl slovenian-literature

Tsundoku

4:32 PM

> I wanted to ask this woman if she knew that Slovene is one of the very few Indo-European languages that still uses the dual form. We are actually able to refer to “us two” – midva – or “you two” – vidva – or “those two” – onadva – directly, without ever confusing the listener or the reader.

Reminds of a specific distinction in Chinese: The Differences Between “我们” And “咱们”.

3 hours later…

Bookworm

7:29 PM

Q: Why does Sir Walter comment that Colonel Wallis is "not an ill-looking man" in "Persuasion"?

In Jane Austen's Persuasion, when explaining the backstory of the estranged cousin Mr. Elliot , who is seeking a reconcilliation, we are given this description of a friend of Mr. Elliot: The circumstances of his marriage, too, were found to admit of much extenuation. This was an article not to b...

jane-austen persuasion

4 hours later…

DLosc

11:37 PM

@Tsundoku That's cool--I didn't know that!

Bookworm

Q: The Ballygullion stories

The Ballygullion stories are a series of short stories in several volumes by author Lynn C. Doyle. Anyone here familiar with them? I've never read them. The following anecdote was published in a law journal, as a true story. The fact that Ballygullion seems to be entirely fictional makes me dou...