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A Master of Djinn by P Djèlí Clark

P Djèlí Clark is Dexter Gabriel (born 1971), known by his pen name Phenderson Djèlí Clark, is an American speculative fiction writer and historian, an assistant professor in the department of history at the University of Connecticut. He uses a pen name to differentiate his literary work from his academic work. This pen name, "Djèlí", makes reference to the griots – traditional Western African storytellers, historians and poets. In 2022, his fantasy novel A Master of Djinn won the Nebula in 2022 and Locus Awards for first novel. ( Wikipedia ) Vocabulary ( A Master of Djinn): Mamluk , Jellabiya (Which he spells "gallabiyah") and Bawab , Fatimids , Ottomans , ulama , Al-Jahiz , Ifrit , Qareen . Kabed is a kind of bread. Mish is traditional fermented cheese from Egypt and Sudan. Souk is an open air market. In ancient Egyptian religion, Hathor was a powerful and popular goddess associated with love, beauty, music, fertility, and joy. She was also a protec...

Gravity's Rainbow notes p. 457-468, 468-472, 473-482

Wiki 457-468 Max Weber's Charisma : Comes from political structure. Gesellschaft: generally translated as "community and society", are categories which were used by the German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies in order to categorize social relationships into two types. The Gesellschaft is associated with modern society and rational self-interest, which weakens the traditional bonds of family and local community that typify the Gemeinschaft. Max Weber, a founding figure in sociology, also wrote extensively about the relationship between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. Weber wrote in direct response to Tönnies. Good Ship Lollipop ( YouTube ) by Shirley Temple. There are so many articles about Pynchon, but I found this one: “A Suspension Forever at the Hinge of Doubt”: The Reader-trap Of Bianca In Gravity’s Rainbow by Bernard Duyfhuizen ( source ). "The reader must engage the play of differance encoded in GR‘s textual signs to avoid falling into traps of prematu...

Laura Makabresku

Laura Makabresku is someone you should follow on Instagram . Her real name is Kamila Kansy.

Suzanne Valadon

She painted nudes, but it's kind of fun to see this photo of a woman in the nude French painting position, and she's not nude, and she's smoking a cigarette, like who cares. Suzanne Valadon (1865-1938): In 1894, Valadon became the first woman painter admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. She was also the mother of painter Maurice Utrillo . I was reading about the small town she was born in, and there's a chamber orchestra from there, and I ended up listening to this brass band ( spotify ). She is the model in Dance at Bougival (1883), by Pierre-Auguste Renoir :

Alice Coltrane

Portrait of Devotion: The spiritual life of Alice Coltrane by Shankari C. Adams The introduction starts: “It was August 1975; a group of us had gone to a music hall in Northern California to hear Alice Coltrane perform in concert. Certain recreational activities, such as drinking and smoking, had been banned from the evening venue. This allowed for a higher vibrational energy to fill the room’s atmosphere. It felt clean and clear. Subsequently, the consciousness of those present felt elevated. The audience was seated and filled with joyful expectation.”

Stay True by Hua Hsu

Book club picked the book I voted for. I feel guilty winning, there were 3 other worthy memoirs by women: House of Sticks by Ly Tran, Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong, A Living Remedy by Nicole Chung. I'll try to get those out of my library maybe. I loved this book, and it made me think and write a lot of things. I was interested in why he was still friends with a dopey friend with bad taste. That's an exaggeration, but maybe not in terms of what pushed him away in their relationship, which was actually quite strong. Stay True won the Pulitzer Prize for memoirs in 2023. Hua Hsu is the son of Taiwanese immigrants. His friend Ken's family came from Japan many generations ago. He starts out talking about wanting friends in his car hearing his latest mixtape. I found a playlist of songs and artists mentioned in the book. I played the music while reading the book. I always think a lot about what music to play when I'm reading a book, and when there's a 77 ...