Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2022 April 22

= April 22 =

Swedish book covers
I was looking at the article for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and noticed the image in the infobox. I immediately thought that it was strange to use a magazine cover for the infobox of a book. I thought that maybe we were using a magazine cover where they were discussing the book or where it had been released as a serial or some such. Then I read the caption and such, and saw that it's the actual cover of the book. The next two books in the series are the same way. To my American eyes, it seems like a magazine cover. See Good Housekeeping for example. Even mass market paperbacks like those sold in our grocery stores in the States generally only have maybe one quote from a critic on the cover. And besides the title and author, that's about all the text you'll see on the cover.

So, long story short... Do books in Sweden normally have so much text on the cover?

Thanks, † dismas †|(talk) 15:56, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Spot checking various books at Category:Swedish novels confirms that, no, Swedish books do not normally look like those of the Millenium series. It appears that the publisher made a deliberate design choice when creating the articles to look like magazine covers; it was probably done for aesthetic reasons; since all of the books in the series (including those written after Larson's death) use the same design aesthetic, it appears to be something done for the series to provide it some cohesion and easy identifiability.  -- Jayron 32 16:41, 22 April 2022 (UTC)


 * The articles The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Millennium (novel series) note that the character Mikael Blomkvist is a journalist and co-owner of a magazine titled Millennium within the story. This is an autobiographical element since Stieg Larsson was a founder and editor of magazines such as Expo (magazine). The cover of the book has been designed as if it were an issue of the fictional magazine Millennium. --Amble (talk) 18:38, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

Gandhi (slang name)
What does it mean when someone calls you Gandhi or talks about him? For instance... In the film Hook, the grown-up Peter Pan said "Gandhi ate more than this" when he did not see food without his imagnation. In Mrs Doubtfire, when voice-actor Daniel Hillard protested cartoon smoking, his boss said if he wanted a pay cheque, he should stick to the script. If he wanted to play Gandhi, he should do it on somebody else's time. And he quit when he said in Gandhi's voice "Then I've got to do what I've got to do". In a MASH episode, Hawkeye asked if Radar was Mahatma Gandhi when he refused to go home after the death of his uncle. And in East is East, The obedient son Maneer was nicknamed Gandhi. 86.131.21.36 (talk) 19:24, 22 April 2022 (UTC)


 * In all but your last example, they're referring to the actual, one and only Gandhi. In the last, it's a nickname. So, no slang. However, Urban Dictionary lists a dubious slang meaning. Clarityfiend (talk) 21:04, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
 * "The one and only Gandhi"? For a long time, the person who would spring to mind at the mention of the word Gandhi was Indira Gandhi. Then her son Rajiv Gandhi. His widow Sonia Gandhi is still a significant person in Indian politics. --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  22:01, 22 April 2022 (UTC)


 * If a know-it-all makes a smart alecky remark, they may then find themselves addressed as "Professor Einstein". And just like someone can be called "a little Hitler" (and a group of people a "bunch of Hitlers"), someone may be referred to as "a Gandhi". Depending on the mindset of the speaker, this may be appreciative or derogatory. While informal, I wouldn't qualify such uses as slang. --Lambiam 09:37, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

So it means they refer to his non-violent actions, fight for civil rights and freedom and him being on hunger strikes? 86.131.21.36 (talk) 18:06, 23 April 2022 (UTC)


 * It can be any of these, as well as abstinence from sex, depending on the context. According to some authors, Gandhi's ascetic life style was also a part of his experiments with self restraint and healthy living. There was a period of his life during which he only ate sun-dried fruits, this being the ultimate non-violent meal poor people could afford. --Lambiam 18:55, 23 April 2022 (UTC)