The Reading Room

2:05 AM

USEFUL THREAD FOR JOURNALISTS WHO CONDUCT INTERVIEWS! https://twitter.com/nkjemisin/status/867909125459517440

Tweeted by GRAMMARHULK on May 26, 2017 at 1:34 AM

user15026

@BESW aaaaaaaa people why

@Ash Jemisin also talks quite eloquently about her love/hate relationship with the speculative fiction community.

5 hours later…

7:29 AM

Bravo @DCComics for collecting oddball Mignola one off's in a hardcover. You will get my money. https://t.co/7y9J7Blqsx

Tweeted by CoolComicArt on May 26, 2017 at 5:51 AM

2 hours later…

9:48 AM

Fascinating short essay on "the ritual of craft in folk horror", inc The Owl Service & MR James, by @AdamScovell.… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/867809295097675777

Tweeted by RobGMacfarlane on May 25, 2017 at 6:27 PM

7 hours later…

4:53 PM

Why the Harry Potter Books are Better

Q: Why do vultures unexpectidely start talking in Their Eyes Were Watching God?

5:27 PM

In Their Eyes Were Watching God (which is a fantastic book that is also [shameless plug] a proposed topic challenge), there's a strange scene on pages 61-62 where several vultures (a type of bird) start talking: He finally lit on the ground and walked around the body to see if it were really ...

zora-neale-hurston

Librarian

5:56 PM

Q: Can we increase the maximum tag length?

Is there any way we can increase the maximum tag length to something bigger than 25 characters? Right now, our site tags questions by book titles. Unfortunately, many book titles are longer than twenty-five characters. This has lead to some awkward abbreviations, such as zen-and-art-of-mc-maint...

feature-request tags

Napoleon Wilson

6:10 PM

@Librarian No, you can't. People have died trying. If you magically find a way, be sure to share it on Meta Stack Exchange.

Q: Raising the 25 chars limit for tags

I just tried to add a tag for "implementation-defined-behavior" on SO but I couldn't because of the 25 char limit. I had to resort to an abbreviation (implem.-defined-behavior), which is rather ugly and to some extent thwarts the purpose of tags, i.e. easy indexing. Although I acknowledge that ...

feature-request status-declined tags character-limit

Q: Increase limit on tag length

I recently asked a question on Stack Overflow which was primarily about UICollectionViewController, a frequently used class in UIKit on iOS 7. I wanted to tag the post with the tag uicollectionviewcontroller, but could not do this because it exceeded the limit of 25 characters. Please will you ...

feature-request tags character-limit

A: How many words can a tag contain?

And the words of (former) god:

tags are 25 chars max

Q: Why is Regulus Black a seeker?

In Chapter Ten of the Deathly Hallows, we're told the Regulus Black is a chaser for the Slytherin team. Is there any symbolism behind Regulus Black's Quidditch position?

j-k-rowling harry-potter

@Bookworm I confess I find every single piece of analysis of Harry Potter to be extremely boring (it doesn't seem to have a point other than finding symbolic connections for their own sake), but maybe someone else will find this stuff interesting

1 hour later…

user15026

7:47 PM

@Librarian I doubt it, we've asked for it on Arqade before

8:14 PM

I wonder if I can turn my picture theory into a new Lit.SE question. — Shokhet 57 secs ago

@Gallifreyan ...better or worse than feeding all of Gaiman's stuff through Flack Overstow?

@Shokhet Definitely some horrible stuff :) What do you mean by Flack Overstow?

It's come up in here before, I think...

quickmediasolutions.com/flack

Huh. I'll do that in a moment :)

8:45 PM

@Shokhet Asked

Not sure about the tagging after [author] and [work]. Any help is appreciated :) — Shokhet 43 secs ago

@Hamlet It also tends to be pretty simple. (Like your answer -- Seekers seek.) I suppose HP gets so much attention to analysis only because of its popularity; I doubt people would write papers and books about it if the books (and movies) had made a smaller splash.

Then again, I'm complaining about simplicity in a kids' book. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Q: Are photographs in Harry Potter a device for characterizing subjects?

In an answer that I recently wrote elsewhere on this site, I posited that photographs are used by J.K. Rowling in the Harry Potter books as a device to portray the subjects of the photograph in a specific light. I wrote that answer about Regulus Black, who was shown "smiling and waving" in a phot...

j-k-rowling harry-potter literary-device

@Shokhet there's some people who do stuff about the alchemy symbolism in HP. I've read some of it and I have to say it's overrated.

@Shokhet you've my recent answer here, right literature.stackexchange.com/questions/2584/…

The floriography is about the most complicated analysis of HP that I've seen, but even so.

@Hamlet No, I haven't seen it yet. Why?

9:00 PM

All this analysis is even more ridiculous and nitpicky than the overanalysing people do on SFF.

@Shokhet thought you might find it interesting

@Hamlet Thanks. Reading now.

...I was wondering if it was relevant to our discussion about HP

* All this Harry Potter analysis...

@Gallifreyan Ha. I assumed that was what you meant, but I wasn't sure...

All harry-potter questions must burn.

doppelgreener

9:15 PM

I don't really understand what theory it is we're being asked to respond to. Is the theory that photographs portray people as they were when the photograph was being taken..? Or the fact photographs are used in-universe and by the author to show things about people? If so, I don't understand in what way that counts as a theory, since I'd agree with Hamlet -- that's how photos work. — doppelgreener 5 mins ago

i've downvoted it, but alas I lack close voting privilege over here.

Patient waiting floof

doppelgreener

9:35 PM

Thank you for this floof.

10:10 PM

@AJ Thanks! :-D

Wow, the Icelandic sagas month is nearly over, and I haven't even finished Hard to Be a God :-(

user15026

10:30 PM

I've read a lot this month, but none of it was Icelandic sagas

Well, you're some kind of amazing super marathon reader :-) Is there any month when you don't read a lot?

user15026

@Randal'Thor Not so far this year

user15026

(But I read while I walk, I read on the bus, I read at lunch, I read at home a bunch....I just like books.)

I love books and reading.

user15026

Right now it's Tanya Huff's Confederation series.

10:33 PM

I just don't know where you find the time.

user15026

@Randal'Thor I read at about 1000 wpm which helps.

user15026

And I literally read while I walk places.

user15026

I don't often run into things.

Especially when you also mod an SE site and chat, which must eat into your spare time.

user15026

Not as much as it used to, the workload is pretty nicely shared, and the Bridge is decently calm so there's not often a lot of work to mod that part of things :)

Q: What does the narrator really mean by the following quote from the novel Cranford?

11:01 PM

Quote: "If a married couple come to settle in town, somehow the gentleman disappears." Options: A) The men are forced to leave town by the ladies of Cranford. B) The men have a tendency to mysteriously vanish from Cranford. C) The men choose to avoid Cranford as much as possible. D) Then men hav...

meaning

Publicist: Are you available for a book tour on these dates? Me: *hisses like Gollum, retreats to tiny cave*

Tweeted by UrsulaV on May 26, 2017 at 5:50 PM

11:28 PM

Is anyone available to answer my question?

@Hero Have patience :-) This site moves more slowly than some others; it may take a while before anyone comes along to post an answer. But rest assured that all new questions are looked at by at least some people here.

user15026

@Hero Considering you're asking for an in-depth analysis of something, it's going to take time.

user15026

(Is there some time sensitive reason you need the info?)

user15026

(Just from how you phrase it with the 4 options, instead of asking for a general interpretation, it almost feels like a school assignment or something.)

I was just asking if anyone is available

user15026

11:32 PM

It's not been even an hour yet, and we're a relatively small community, so it might take a bit for it to be seen, and people will want to familiarize themselves with the work in question if they're not already familiar, so that can take time as well :)

user15026

One thing I know for sure here is that we have a community who prides itself on well written, detailed answers. So it can take some time.

Cool beans

The good news is that Cranford is a reasonably popular "classic", so I expect there'll be a few active users here who already know the book.

Great to hear

BTW how do I edit the post so that the options show line by line rather than in a paragraphical format?