https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawmqxlDk4KbAF5mjqERDXlc9TzOCrn3Xp64

Comment Threads

• brucecohenpdx commented on "It doesn't have a major theme or anything"
  Look here for even more info and bigger pictures on cylindrical (aka helical) slide rules. You say you wanted a slipstick with a 5 foot scale?...
• roxysteve commented on "It doesn't have a major theme or anything"
  No, a review by my 15 year old self that has informed my reading policy thenceforward. The point being that although I'm sure my 15 year-old self missed the thrust of the ingenious ACD, my (possibly faulty) memory of that experience and let-down has induced an aversion to re-examining the premise upon which the policy was formulated. It was sort of intended as irony and self-deprecation. Clearly I'm not very good at them....
• hypnosifl commented on "It doesn't have a major theme or anything"
  On the subject of Melville and whether all that whaling info was really necessary, there's an interesting bit of this article which says: By some accounts, the first draft of Moby-Dick was a conventional sea story. Hawthorne encouraged him to develop such transcendent themes as obsession, anger, revenge, and lust. “Ah, God!” Melville writes in Moby-Dick, “What trances of torments does that man endure who is consumed with one unachieved revengeful desire. He sleeps with clenched hands; and wakes with his own bloody nails in his palms.” Presumably such passages were missing from the first draft, which was heavy with...
• bellinghman commented on "It doesn't have a major theme or anything"
  Oh joy. My first wife did her thesis on the character of Natty Bumppo - I wonder if she ever read Twain's comments....
• bellinghman commented on "It doesn't have a major theme or anything"
  And talking of literature, this article on the Grauniad website ponders why works such as Accelerando don't get considered for the Booker. (Thanks to Jo Walton for noticing the article, which mentions her latest in glowing terms.)...