Motley Kamuka

I have to read 40 books on my currently reading and TBR piles. And another 10 on my e-reader. How long will it take? I'm going to get another book for my brown women writers book club, so even though 50 is a nice round number, so 51 books. Wabi sabi. I'm going to try to do less social media and TV watching. I'm going to make a concerted push. Lets see if I can list 51 books here and how long it takes. There's a subreddit 52 books that I'm on, and that's cool too, and I've counted my books on Goodreads challenges. I want to do it here though. I'm putting down my marker now. 1. 11/3/26 The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali ( link ). 2 11/5/26 The Blind Owl by Sadeq Hedayat . An existential hallucination, a claustrophobic dive into isolation, madness, and total alienation from society. “Life makes each person's masks manifest to himself with cold-blooded indifference. Apparently, each person has several faces. Some constantly wear only one of thes...

Results of the Thomas Pynchon subreddit poll:

I thoroughly enjoyed the book club of the brown women authors. One woman dominated the discussion and I didn't find her quite as insightful enough to do that, seem more of a need on her part. The women who attend regularly didn't seem too put out by it, and were polite. I felt quite fond of these women. Another man joined late, younger, perhaps somewhere from the Asia minor may, couldn't exactly place his accent, he snuck out before I could ask him.  The next book they chose was The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali. I don't really see Iran as brown colored people, but it's a brown women writer book club. I talked about it with my close Iranian friend, who I've talked to almost every day the past 3 years, except for the months when the Iranian government cut off internet access due to the war. He does see himself as brown. There's plenty of non-white women authored books and they deserve attention. The brilliant woman who leads the group is black, and I ...

Someone referenced  Eugène Ionesco  (1909-1994) in their review of Digger, an interesting film out this year, and I realized I needed to experience him.  So I watched a play of his and read it: The Bald Soprano. Then I saw it live, and it was wonderful. I watched the 1974 movie Rhinoceros.  The Bald Soprano has been running continuously since 1958 at Théâtre de la Huchette in Paris, and claims to hold the world record for the longest-running play in the same theatre. Links The Bald Soprano YouTube Rhinoceros YouTube Interview of Ionesco dubbed into English YouTube . It sounds a bit weird. 

Saara El-Arifi wrote Cleopatra (2026). Now I'm not one to chase Cleo, though I have quite enjoyed Shakespeare's Cleopatra and Antony . I have read some history on her, and I do like things set in Egypt.  I like  Hatshepsut after going to the Met Museum, and read the wonderful book by Kara Cooney . I loved her book on what we know from archaeology, and what we can speculate wisely about based on an expert, and what we don't know. I felt her book had epistemic character, and telling the truth and being epistemically transparent is important to me now. I even like Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie, looking at the old monuments along the river. I know I'm casting a wide net, too wide of a net, but it's become a category in my head.  I want to get that all out into the world so I don't force it on people in the book club. I'm blasting through this book because the book club is coming up soon, and I'm determined to go to a black and brown women's book...

Already fascinated, reading Luminous by Silvia Park, by an imaginary future Bodhisattva called the Buddha of the Miasma . I'm not even sure what miasma is, but it was pretty big in Hellenism, the idea that is kind of putrid fog would pass diseases on. Like things that smelled bad would cause sickness. We know it's germs or fleas or whatever now, but it's possible that the smelly vapor had germs or fleas sometimes. Today it's mostly used as a metaphor for despair. Korea has a strong Buddhist culture, they have the two best Buddhist movies ( Mandala (1981) and Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall ... Spring (2001)). It's just a detail in this sci-fi novel, that is also a police procedural, and a family novel, three in one.  Ms. Park teaches in Kansas and lives in Korea when she's not teaching.  Notes on things I've learned, had to look up: There is a shopping center in New Zealand called Silvia Park.  Joseon architecture (1392–1910) is defined by simplicity, balan...