The Reading Room

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CowperKettle

01:24

1 hour later…

b_jonas

02:24

@CowperKettle What is the source of that scan? And how would we even know about what he said to his confessor, when that's supposed to be secret?

5 hours later…

Gareth Rees

07:04

@b_jonas This is a much-reprinted joke. The earliest appearance that I could find in a quick search is in the Evangelical Intelligencer (March 1805), page 152.

b_jonas

07:48

I see

Tsundoku

08:45

@CowperKettle I read that as a dig at extremism. It reminds me of all those muslims demanding Salman Rushdie's death after the publication of The Satanic Verses. Need I add that most of those people never read the novel?

@MikhailBatcer Have you ever done a search for history of technology? There is even a Society for the History of Technology.

CowperKettle

08:57

@Tsundoku I read that as a dig at internet trolls, but there were no trolls on the Internet in March 1805 :)

Tsundoku

@CowperKettle Telegraphy trolls, perhaps? ;-)

The Cheese challenge ended with eight questions, six of which received an answer. Not bad for a short novel in Dutch.

We have 22 questions about Dante and none about Ariosto. Looks like the Neapolitan nobleman had better taste than his confessor ;-)

3 hours later…

Bookworm

12:36

Q: Are these two novels referred to in The Overstory real, and if so, can anyone identify them?

The Overstory is a 2018 novel by Richard Powers, in which the lives of nine characters are intertwined with each other and with those of trees. At one point, two of the characters are tree-sitting in a giant redwood as a form of protest to stop loggers from cutting it down. Bored up there, they s...

2 hours later…

Bookworm

14:39

Q: Postapokalyptic sci-fi book with robot "Angels" suppressing human knowledge

I'm looking for a book title about a post apocalyptic world where the survivors live in isolated villages and knowledge and technological progress is suppressed by "Angels" that are actually robots. There are some other remnants of the former high tech civilization like a device that provides foo...

identification-request

6 hours later…

Tsundoku

21:05

Could one of our mods create events for the Maryse Condé topic challenge, which started today, and for the August–September topic challenge?

Ongoing topic challenges: Thomas Middleton (until the end of July) and Maryse Condé (until the end of August).

Feeds

21:21

Q: Announcing the August–September 2024 topic challenge: August Wilson

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 August –September 2024 topic challenge. Based on the number of votes (+5, -1), our next topic challeng...