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Does Stellan smoke cinnamon tobacco or chocolate tobacco?
In the first book of The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica, Here There Be Dragons, Stellan Sigurdsson is told to have smoked a special mix of cinnamon and tobacco.
"Yes, I can. It's a tobacco of some kind."
"A cinnamon tobacco," said…
user72
8
votes
2 answers
Why isn't Coleridge's line about trochees missing an unstressed syllable?
Samuel Coleridge wrote this really fun poem, Metrical Feet: Lesson for a Boy, that names and gives examples of the various types of metric feet. I've included a copy and scanned the poem to make the various feet clearer.
Trochee trips from long to…
user111
8
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3 answers
Is Strattenburg, Pennsylvania based on a real town?
The Theodore Boone book series by John Grisham takes place in the fictional town of Strattenburg, Pennsylvania. Is Strattenburg, Pennsylvania based on a real town?
Benjamin
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Are there any internal inconsistencies in Catch 22?
Because of Catch 22's twisted timeline, while reading it, several times I had the distinct impression that what seemed to have happened so far in the past was different from what apparently happened in the past of the current point:
(apparent…
muru
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Why did Jo consider Ned and Jack to be failures?
In Jo's Boys in chapter 5, it is stated,
Jack and Ned sent regrets and best wishes, and no one mourned their absence; for they were among what Mrs. Jo called her failures.
Why were these two in particular considered to be failures? From the…
Shaymin Gratitude
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Where is this quote about Man, Hero, Legend and Myth from?
This quote is scattered throughout the Web:
Through action, a Man becomes a Hero
Through death, a Hero becomes a Legend
Through time, a Legend becomes a Myth
And by learning from the Myth, a Man takes action
I've seen it attributed to Eiichiro…
BlueMoon93
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Why different editions of Rabelais' "Gargantua and Pantagruel" novels contain different texts?
While looking for the original text of Rabelais' novels in French, I found that different editions have significant differences. Let's compare the first sentence in the beginning of the first chapter.
Edition of circa 1530: Ce ne sera point chose…
Vitaly
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What evidence do scholars offer on both sides as to the authorship of "The Dark Tower"?
The Dark Tower is an incomplete manuscript posthumously attributed to C. S. Lewis. There has been widespread controversy about whether it was actually written by C. S. Lewis.
What evidence do scholars offer for and against it being written by C. S.…
EJoshuaS - Stand with Ukraine
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Could the War of the Worlds be considered a proto Cosmic Horror story?
After reading the War of the Worlds, I have noticed that H.G. Wells has presented several themes that would not be alien to something that Lovecraft would compose. There's a deep anti-anthropocentric feeling in that the Martians came down to…
TotallyN0tABot
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How significant is Schopenhauer's philosophy in Buddenbrooks?
In Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks, in part 10, Thomas Buddenbrook finds himself reading a treatise on philosophy, which elevates him above his day to day care to a level where he can see the pettiness of this life and how death should be welcomed as it…
andejons
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8
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How much of the sequel to the Princess Bride was written?
As mentioned on Wikipedia, in some later editions of The Princess Bride, the first chapter of Buttercup's Baby, which Goldman said was a sequel, appears at the end. A sequel was never realized, and one might argue that he was never serious about…
Kimball
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Vonnegut's writing style as time passed
I've been reading a lot of Vonnegut recently, and I've noticed some interesting stuff. Slaughterhouse-Five or the Children's Crusade, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater, and Cat's Cradle are similar to a novel in format, though Slaughterhouse Five is of…
auden
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Was this character's death symbolic in Bridge to Terabithia?
As a child, reading Bridge to Terabithia, I was horrified when
Leslie died
As an older reader now, I wonder whether her death was necessary to the development of Jessie. Was her death for a purpose, or was it just the author giving a sence of…
Matrim Cauthon
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8
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What was the alternate ending of Agatha Christie's 'Death comes as the end'?
I completed reading Agatha Christie's 'Death comes as the end' and while going through the wiki page of the novel I read that Author had changed the ending by suggestion of a friend and she later regretted the change, instead preferring the original…
srk_cb
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What is the Grishneshwar Temple Drop as mentioned in Brown's "Origin"?
In chapter 17 of Dan Brown's Origin, he mentions something called the Grishneshwar Temple Drop.
... the slideshow concluded with a deeply unsettling video of an Indian cleric dangling a tiny infant over the edge of a fifty-foot tower. Suddenly the…
Aravind Suresh Thakidayil
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