The Reading Room

1:35 PM

@BESW so I have some ideas for reader response.

1. It is possible to do a close reading + here's what this passage meant personally to me type of answer, where the personal details add to the insights from the close reading.

But I'm not sure how useful this is. First of all, close reading is already hard enough to teach. Second, part of my interest in reader response is to find alternatives to close reading so people who aren't interested in that can write meaningful answers. So I'm not sure how helpful this is.

2. I think we could also have questions along the lines of "why is [book x] popular/interpreted a specific way in [group y]. Which would encouradge experienced based answers.

3. I think we could also have questions along the lines of "what does [character x] look like. Imagine an answer from an artist who drew a picture of that character.

@Hamlet most Characters are described in the book (unless we're talking about like poems and stuff). That would attract downvotes like mad.

(stupid. Autocucumber!)

4. On a similar note, book/movie or script/performance questions could also open themselves up to experienced based answers. For example, a question about shakesphere with an answer drawing on one's own performance of one of his plays.

5. What about an answer that drew on experience writing fanfiction? For example, "what happens to [character x]". One answer is "the story doesn't say." Another answer: I wrote a story about that; here's why I make the choices I make.

1:52 PM

Like Joshua Engel? ;)

2-5 rely more on asking good questions. For example, if I asked a properly worded shakesphere question I think I could get an experienced-based answer from people already on the site.

(wow this is lagging)

Q: discussion question from the book The American Tradition in Literature, Volume 2

But 1 requires an answer to set an example. Maybe I could make it worthwhile if I didn't do close reading and used what rand has called "careful reading" (i.e. finding quotes from a story but not really breaking them down)? Let me think.

Bookworm

2:09 PM

0

I want you to consider the characters John Marcher and May Bartram in "The Beast in the Jungle." Construct a character analysis of each of them in light of the conflict in the story. Then, decided which one of them, in your opinion, is more at fault for what happens to their relationship in the...

american-literature

@Bookworm burn burn burn

2:26 PM

@Bookworm :/

Erm, @gall, I think you meant character-analysis not character-identification

@Mithrandir Oh boy....

I can just edit it

Cheers ;)

There we go, fixed the ot/to typo while I was at it

2:45 PM

@Mithrandir depends on how it's phrased. "I'm having a hard time visualising this, anyone have any pictures might work. Or "the quotes describing this character's appearance are scattered throughout the book, can someone help me find them all."

@Hamlet Meh.

Also, I can think of a billion stupider questions that got upvotes, so...

If we actually had a billion questions I'd say go for it :P

Q: Is "Listen Nations" referring to any incident in particular?

3:35 PM

Grrr, stupid mobile reloading the page every time I switch tabs.

Bookworm

0

"Listen Nations" is one of the songs on the album Miami Meets Toronto, in which the Miami Boys Choir and the Toronto Boys Choir (both started by Yerachmiel Begun) sing together. The song is about the suffering of people, and the nations of the world not caring. The chorus is: And when I saw i...

song-lyrics

4:11 PM

@Bookworm @Shok I'm guessing that Jewish songs are probably out of scope for that Meta.MiYodeya post but figured I'd ping you anyway

Ooh, this is a good book for our title tags discussion:

@Mithrandir ooh. You can add hebrew-literature.

Shokhet

6:26 PM

@Mithrandir Why should they be? It's of interest to Jews, is it not?

But it shouldn't be added separately to that post if it's already included in the listed tags.

@Mithrandir Really? That song is not in Hebrew, nor is it a translation from Hebrew. Maybe jewish-music or jewish-literature?

@Shokhet that was entirely a separate idea

I just didn't want to ping you twice

Shokhet

@Mithrandir Oh, I see. I thought you were thinking about adding the tag to your MBC question. I didn't realize you meant it for the MY meta post.

That's been done already :)

There are probably a lot of good song-lyrics questions to be found if you have several weeks to go through all the YouTube links here :P

I might stick the lyrics to Listen Nations on some lyrics site, but I don't know when I'll get around to it.

Also, wrzlumpht.

Shokhet

@Mithrandir Okay, thanks. Please link to that in the question if you get the chance.

@Mithrandir He's not in the room right now.

:P Not Wrzlprmft