Basic Questions Thread

[TigerTally]

If you want a translation from a creditable military historian, Ralph D. Sawyer 's The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China may be what you need.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0813312280

I have that at home and I can recommend it with no qualms. It was a very special 18th birthday present from my best friend .

Oh, he must have wanted you to be a general

[ROTK-addict]

Oh thanks so much for the replies.

BTW, the 3k period parts should be in vol.3 instead.

Oh, actually I'm generally interested in anything ancient Chinese but of course 3k still tops everything Thank you so much for the information on the book. It would saved me more $$ I'm almost broke now that I'm gonna preorder Ralph D Sawyer's books and ROTK hardcover versions.

[Tigger of Kai]

My copy of The Art of War is a Sawyer work and I gotta say I'm not that happy with it. I bought it for the extensive introduction, but that turned out to be kind of plodding and did not leave me with a very vivid picture of the Warring States period.

[TigerTally]

My copy of The Art of War is a Sawyer work and I gotta say I'm not that happy with it. I bought it for the extensive introduction, but that turned out to be kind of plodding and did not leave me with a very vivid picture of the Warring States period.

I must admit most of Sawyer's works are a bit too long, but if you are to gain a whole image of the Warring States period, reading Art of War itself may not be the best choice at the first place (especially when Sun was from Spring and Autumn period instead of Warring States period). More appropriate options may be The Cambridge History of Ancient China or Eastern Zhou and Qin Civilizations. For sources one could approach Legends of the Warring States or Records of the Grand Historian (aka The Grand Scribe's Records). Also recently there is a book called The Emergence of China: From Confucius to the Empire from University of Massachusetts Amherst 's "Warring States Project".

[Semiazas]

Could anyone recommend a starting point for getting into reading philosophy?
I suppose if I had to choose a preference of style, it would be something that's also like prose in nature (Nausea is like that, if I have the title right, unfortunately I don't know the author. And Nietzsche's (sp?) Thus Spake Zasathura (sp?) )
I'm yet to read either of the two books I mentioned above, but I to the best of my knowledge, that's the style they're written in, please correct me if I'm wrong

[Tigger of Kai]

Since you're just starting, I would recommend a survey text rather than trying to tackle primary works right away. Look for books with titles like "An Introduction to Political Philosophy," or maybe "The First Philosphers: the Presocratics and the Sophists," from Oxford Press. There have even been novels that might be suitable, for instance in high school we read "Sophie's World" by Jostein Gaarder, which is basically a History of Philosophy textbook with a very skimpy narrative running through it. Dating myself a bit by mentioning that one.

[Cloud Strife]

I have some minor grammar questions.

Read the following sentence:

Have you read "David Copperfield" (or any other noun).

Now, my question is, would the question mark go INSIDE the quotations or outside of it?

Now, let's say I was writing a novel, read the following sentence:

Michael asked, "Have you read 'David Copperfield'"

The same question, where would the question mark go? Thanks in advance!

[Lord Yang Jiahua]

Im pretty sure it goes outside, because the whole sentence is a question, if it say was like a quote of someone asking the question, so, "Have you read ',David Copperfield' ?"the question mark would go in quotations.

So if the whole question is a quote or like a speaking line(im not sure on the second part) you put the ? within the quotations.
If the question is a sentence with something in quotes like a novel or movie title the question mark goes outside the mark.
An exception i believe is if you are quoting a question as a speaking line, so for example.
"Did The teacher just asked "did you all read 'David Copperfield' for your reading assignment?"", asked Jerry.
this depending on what word you use to determine how the line is being spoken will end in a period or a question mark, im not entirely sure so lets see what other people have to answer.

[epaminondas146871]

Punctuation mark is always inside.

For the "Michael asked..." it would be outside.

Use logic for some of these.

[Kotaro]

I was wondering if anyone knew of any:

- History books on the Three Kingdoms period.
- Novels, perhaps a little akin to RotK, but based around the Sengoku period of Feudal Japan.

Since I'm an unemployed student, free Kindle version would naturally be my first choice, but if none are available, then I'll just have to wait until I have some money and get some then.

Thanks.