The Reading Room

Q: A novel of detection by Agatha Christie-Why didn't they ask Evans?

6:17 AM

Evans is a small boy in the novel. His associates neither consulted nor discussed with him many important matters. So there was no chance that he will be able to answer if interrogated after the crime. He will fail even if he has to experience Grilling like an interrogation by the police or army....

Q: Looking for an audio book similar to this song intro

7:06 AM

I love the intro to this song Skye Boat Song (Alastair McDonald) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cX9AYW7S09U&list=PLEa1M4LaL9cIQCJUDsJBWQkgy5tSN1AwO&index=10 Could you recommend an audiobook (either unabridged or dramatized) in a similar style to this? What I like about the intro: very charismat...

audiobook

Tsundoku

7:28 AM

@Knight I only have a cellphone (not a smartphone) that is almost 9 years old now but it has two SIM card slots: one for the country where I live and one for my native country. However, due to EU roaming regulations, one of these is probably redundant now.

Knight

8:14 AM

@Tsundoku Thats surprising! You, a lecturer on IT and AI, prefer a cellphone than a smartphone.

1 hour later…

9:24 AM

Tom Hosker has asked a variety of good and interesting questions. I remember liking all of them, but only realised now that they all have the same OP.

3 hours later…

Tsundoku

12:09 PM

@Bookworm I contacted History SE and they'd rather not take this "question" in its current condition.

No surprises there.

@Knight I am in IT, and I don't use smartphones either. It's sort of because I'm in IT that I know exactly why I don't want a smartphone. Currently I use dual SIM phones. I don't insist on dual SIM, but that's what I bought now. But even then it's worth to have two or three phones, both because I need a spare phone in case I lose the main one, or because I can run more than two SIMs.

perlmonks.com/?node_id=1225327 chronicles the story of my current phones. Though I should start looking for new phones too.

Q: A question about Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

12:31 PM

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea is a classic science fiction adventure by French writer Jules Verne (1828-1905). It was adapted into a 1954 American technicolor science fiction adventure film. The submarine Nautilus is a fictional submarine in which Captain Nemo, Arronax, and the company tr...

french-literature jules-verne 20000-leagues-under-the-sea

Ok... I'm the Verne guy, let me look at what we can do with that question post.

It looks as if OP already knows of the sequel L'Île mystérieuse, since they mention Cyrus Smith the engineer, but maybe that scene was shown in the film. Does someone know the film mentioned in that question?

I don't generally try to learn about the infinite film adaptations of Verne.

1:26 PM

Ok, so the questions are. 1. "what are the other books that Jules Verne wrote" this one is easy to answer definitively, I'll point to a list. 2. "were the books filmed? " there are a ton of films, I'll point to some lists. 3.

"What happened to Arronax, the company, and Cyrus Smith who administered the last rites after captain Nemo's death?" for this, I can give a spoiler summary of the relevant parts of L'Île mystérieuse. we don't know much about Arronax, I'll check if the two books even definitely claim that they survived, but as for Cirrus Smith we know what happened to him.

2 hours later…

user185131

3:03 PM

@Randal'Thor Your Bombadil-like poem here got a chuckle out of me :)

@Brahadeesh :-D I figured people would either chuckle or think I'm a complete lunatic.

Or think I'm related to another user whose name begins with rand.

user185131

I think the Meta SE folk are familiar with such creative comments, though :P I remember seeing random pseudo-philosophical exposition written in the edit summary of some tag wiki, but I don't remember which.

meaning close-reading reading

3:21 PM

Q: Lurking suspicion

I am reading short story "the notorious jumping frog of calaveras county" by Mark Twain. I was wondering if the author's context of using phrase "lurking suspicion" humour? Please forgive-english is my second language. Attaching an image

user185131

@Randal'Thor I think there's a word/phrase to describe your short poem? Something which is based on another work but modifies it a bit here and there to suit the situation? For some reason my brain has frozen, it's on the tip of my tongue and it's been bugging me for a while... :P

@Brahadeesh Parody? Or something more specific?

You could probably ask that as a terminology question here :-)

user185131

3:36 PM

Does a parody intend to mock the original work?

user185131

@Randal'Thor Are you serious? XD

user185131

I keep getting the word "rip-off" in my head but that's definitely not what I want.

@Brahadeesh I asked one like that which did well.

user185131

@Randal'Thor Okie, I'm on it then!

user185131

4:00 PM

On the topic of Tolkien, I first came across the riddles posed by Gollum and Bilbo in The Hobbit in the Childcraft series when I was very young.

user185131

So, I used to think that they were common riddles, just like nursery rhymes, etc. It was a bit of a shock when I read them in The Hobbit many years later.

Q: Who wrote Tolkien's riddles?

Some of them were already common riddles.

In The Hobbit chapter 5, Riddles in the Dark, were the riddles composed by Tolkien himself? I always assumed either that they were, since he seemed to have a knack for writing poetry, or that they were already well-known classics. I've just been told someone else wrote them, but couldn't find who...

the-hobbit j-r-r-tolkien tolkiens-legendarium

Q: Why was the title of Mark Twain's jumping frog short story changed so much?

I just learned from another question about a short story by Mark Twain entitled "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", which, when I looked it up online to find a copy-pastable version, turned out to be called "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County". Curious, I looked it up o...

short-stories title mark-twain

Q: Is there a technical term for a work that is based on another, and created by modifying a few words in critical places?

I came across @Randal'Thor's creative "edit summary" ring a ding dillo, hey Puzz, merry Puzz, Work a place illo on this question and it got a chuckle out of me, but also got me thinking whether there is any technical term for this kind of writing. The structure is clearly intended to point str...

terminology

2 hours later…

5:53 PM

@Rand do you suppose we should edit the title and tags of literature.stackexchange.com/q/15122/139 too, since it doesn't really ask anything specifically about Vingt Mille Lieues sous les mers, yet that's in the question title.

6:06 PM

@b_jonas Yes, go ahead and edit it to something more descriptive of the actual question being asked. (I think you have enough rep here to edit unchecked?)

user185131

I suppose that question could ideally be spit into two? What are the works of Jules Verne and which have been adapted into film and What happened to Arronax etc. seem to be unrelated, to me.

user185131

@Randal'Thor Interesting! I seem to have already upvoted that question 2 years ago but I don't recall reading it. :) The Childcraft book has the egg-riddle — which Tolkien says is his own reduction to a couplet of a longer known nursery rhyme — and also the fish-riddle.

user185131

However the fish-riddle is slightly different for some reason. The one in *The Hobbit* goes:

Alive without breath,
As cold as death;
Never thirsty, ever drinking,
All in mail never clinking.

user185131

-----
But the one in *Childcraft*, for some reason, makes the following change:

Alive **with** breath;
As cold as death.
Never thirsty, ever drinking;
All in mail never clinking.

user185131

@Brahadeesh Oh wait, Tsundoku already commented as much.