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Some Desperate Glory

This is a readers response (ongoing, while I read it), not a summary or a professional review for Emily Tesh's book Some Desperate Glory. It's a rough draft that I keep updating as I read the book.  Emily Tesh Mostly Off Topic Introduction: It's pride month, and a book club I've never gone to, I finally took the leap to join it, and they picked this book. Whether I even join, we will see, but this book has won awards, and seems to be of quality. On page 18, I had the feeling that this is a direct response to Ender's Game . A wonderful novel until you read about the author's horrible views. One way to respond to a rancid artist's viewpoint is write a better novel than they wrote, and include the element that would irk them. Oh, you like that novel, well, here's a better one, with a better human being author. Better on both accounts. I don't know Emily Tesh , but she doesn't expose her rancid views.  A note on canceling. There are so many options i...
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Gravity's Rainbow pp. 482-505

p. 483 Juden heraus in english means Jews out.  p. 484 Croix mystique means mystical cross.  p. 486  Urheimat (German: ur- original, ancient; Heimat home, homeland) is a linguistic term meaning the original homeland of the speakers of a proto-language. Since many peoples tend to wander and spread, there is no exact Urheimat, but there is an Indo-European Urheimat different from the Germanic or Romance Urheimat. Recent studies say the original home of Indo-Europeans was near the Armenian Highlands. p. 494 Moire means silk fabric that has been subjected to heat and pressure rollers after weaving to give it a rippled appearance. Links: 482-488 Wiki notes 488--491 Wiki notes Past posts about GR Gravity's Rainbow  notes p. 457-468, 468-472, 473-482 Gravity's Rainbow  Notes Franz Pokler P390 quote of  Gravity's Rainbow The Deliverer holy aardvark In The Zone Squalidozzi Wired Article About GR Un Perm' au Casino Herman Goering Recent thoughts on Gravity's ...
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Adventures in reading the pile

6/11/25 When I finish a book I'm focusing for a book club, I fall back onto my pile. Today it was Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism: According to the Esoteric Teachings of the Great Mantra, Oṁ Mani Padme Hūm by Anagarika Govinda, and I've been reading this book for years, but I really liked chapter 9. He brings in Rilke.  I was reading This Is What It Sounds Like by Susan Rogers, and Ogi Ogas. And I learned about Shaggs , outsider music. A father made 3 daughters practice music all day, and never gave them a lesson, and then recorded an album in 1969, which is the weirdest thing in the world. The engineers would ask why they stopped, and it was because they made a mistake. The engineers thought it was all a mistake. But it was rediscovered in 1980, reprinted, and went through several reprintings. It's really bad, but authentic. Lots of famous musicians liked it. I read some more of Rumi's Masnavi book 1, and he's telling a story about clergy who teach the wrong th...
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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...
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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...
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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 :
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