I know there are always a ton of posts about e-readers, and I may be totally overthinking this but... I have almost exclusively purchased refurbished/second hand tech for a few years now. My phone is ancient, my laptop and headphones are all refurbished tech etc. So I really want an e-reader and am considering the Kobo. But does anyone know how frequently the refurbished options become available?? I've been waiting for a while but nothing is coming up, and I feel hesitant about ebay sellers because all I've seen so far are sellers who clearly regularly sell brand new in box tech, which doesn't feel second hand to me... it feels like buying new from an extra middleman.

So I got some money from watching my dad's dog recently and I don't know if I should be trying so hard to avoid just buying the Kobo, or like, how much longer should I wait for their refurbished options to show up?? (I wanted one for my birthday so we've had notifications on for over a month now) Maybe I am just being impatient but my other problem too is if I am being too picky about ebay sellers or not LOL am I being overly ridiculous on that or idk. I just don't know if saving $20 is worth it if it's supposedly brand new in box or if I should just buy it new. Or if I am being too morally rigid on being hesitant to buy new. Someone help!!!

How do people organize their holds? Until lateish last year I was living in a city (Cardiff) for a while with an amazing library just a 15 min walk from my house. I would go once every two weeks to pick up a hold or two along with a few books from the stacks and never had an issue.

Now that my current city (Oxford) charges for library holds on physical books, I've been juggling (spare) physical holds with digital holds from 5 online libs (Cardiff, Oxford, my hometown, my boyfriend's hometown, and the Queer Liberation Library). Every few days I'll just get a notification from Libby that a book I barely remember placing on hold is available.

How do people in similar circumstances organize their holds? Looking for some inspo

"[…] Besides, I thought all that business about djinn locked away in lamps was some bad Frenchman’s writing."

This comment Khalid made towards the end of the ahwa scene in chapter two referenced one of my literary special interests, so here we go😭😭

The comment immediately made me want to write a bit about what he’s clearly referencing: Aladdin and the Magic Lamp from Tales from 1,001 Nights (Arabian Nights).

At its most imprecise, it could probably be reduced to some bad Frenchman’s writing.

Because it is true that some of the most loved and well-known tales in The Nights were never a part of the original Arabic manuscript which was translated to French by Antoine Galland (the bad Frenchman in question) in 1717.

Aladdin, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and Sinbad the Sailor were all written down and added to the collection by Galland himself. However, that’s only part of the truth.

Galland wrote in his diaries (discovered and published in the late 1800s) that he was in fact told these stories (including Aladdin) by Hanna from Aleppo. However, no such credit was ever given by Galland in print.

Additionally, when this was discovered, it was not good and exotic enough for the Orientalist* who discovered it.

The scholars of the time wanted Aladdin to "complete the nights" and make it more "Orientalist" than it actually was; they proceeded to fake two Arabic manuscripts containing Aladdin which were literally just back translated from the French……

I think that Hanna’s name disappeared into obscurity in this entire hoax, Galland continued to be credited, and the stories came to represent a European fantasy of the "exotic orient".

The question of the stories’ origin wasn’t really revisited until 1993.

That’s when a linguist discovered the autobiography of "Hanna from Aleppo" aka Hanna Diyab—a writer from Syria—accidentally stashed away and catalogued as having an anonymous writer in a dusty corner of the Vatican library.

With that, it was more or less confirmed precisely who the original source of Galland’s additions to The Nights was. Some literary scholars also argue that Diyab should be credited as the author of Aladdin and the other stories. The story of Aladdin is clearly inspired by his own life stories.

Even though I know A Master of Djinn plays a lot with history, I thought this was a tiny historical detail that sounded a bit unintentionally inaccurate (might not be the case ofc, bc i haven’t read more than these two chapters)

In the words of Yasmine Seale (translator of what seems like an amazing and underrated version of The Nights):

The question of who wrote Aladdin is often posed in a binary way: Is it an orientalist fantasy invented by Galland, or is it in fact an Arab story with an Arab author? The discovery of this memoir helps us think of it more as a Franco-Arab collaboration.

* = how they referred to European (and ofc extremely Eurocentric) scholars of the "Near East" and "Far East"

This is going to be pedantic, sorry in advance.

It bothers me that the mushrooms are shrouded in magic but the plants are (inaccurately) based on real life.

A mushroom described as "spongey" would suggest bolete, but there's not a true blue bolete - although boleted bruise easily and develop a blue color in the interior, like when cut or roughly handled, they are not naturally blue in the exterior as far as I know.

Purple deadnettle, although a real plant and described accurately as far as the coloration and fuzzy hairs, would never be described as looking similar to its stinging nettle cousin. Purple deadnettle grows up to a foot at its tallest. Stinging nettle is much taller, usually 2-5 ft (but can be taller!). Purple deadnettle's leaves are also very small - from the size of the nail on your fingertips to slightly larger than a quarter at their largest. Stinging nettle leaves are, by comparison, enormous - from a quarter the size of your hand to the entire size of your hand.

MY POINT BEING - if you're already going to create fictional mushrooms, why not just making fictional plants to go along with your story? Why base it in IRL plants but then only get some characteristics right and others so deeply wrong? /endrant

OK, I was going to save my thoughts for the end of the sura (al-Baqarah) but I have too many. 😂 I think the dialogue with Judaism is probably the elephant in the room, so I'll start with what stands out to me there as a pork-eating goy. Beyond even the text itself, of course individuals can interpret things different ways, and the war between Israel and her Arabic cousins I could see leading to more extreme interpretations of Muhammad's rebukes to the Jews. That said, it is important to keep that individual/cultural element in mind—you could read the Torah and go "aha! Look at those disobedient Jews, doubting God's Word! They are the worst and most unbelieving people!" if you really wanted to. That is not the text, but if you're determined to read the text a certain way, it can't reach out and smack you. • I can tell there is background here. Muhammed seems very frustrated and even betrayed by the community he's rebuking. I can imagine some of what may have happened: if you are God's chosen people, why don't you act like it (a rebuke still sharp against people of faith today)? Why don't you obey the very laws you rebuke me with? I come to you with the revelations you have jealously guarded all along, about the oneness of God and serving the poor and doing justice, why don't you welcome me? Why do you prefer to collaborate with the polytheists that we both should be united against, instead of helping me spread monotheism among them? I can see why these questions might have come up even if the Jewish community felt they treated Muhammed well. And for their part, some random guy showing up to comb through their religion and call out hypocrisy in their members, I don't think anyone ever enjoys that. Consider the old saw about how we can treat our siblings vs. how others can. 😂 • Calling out hypocritical people for being hypocritical is so much of this text. That is applicable to people of era group and era, and not applicable to every Jew. The text is clear that it addresses spiritual failings versus racial realities. • The noting of Jewish traditions is very interesting. On one hand, it's fun to see what stood out to him or was the common belief of the Jewish community he dealt with. Not all of these references are familiar to me from the Old Testament. I see it as also respectful? He notes and honors how God has helped and saved them, and keeps his complaints on their violations of their own Law, rather than complaining about their practice of Ramadan or qiblah, since those are not part of their religion. The reference to the ape legend was also fun because a Jewish friend had mentioned that one before. 😂 • He's also not specifically targeting Jews... this copy mentions the next sura addresses Christians, and even here he mentions Christians in rebuking religious superiority and calling for religious liberty. But most of all the references are to "hypocrites," which may be of any religion, are part of all religions, act the same in all religions, even if a specific event originally inspired a specific rebuke. Kind of like where Jesus in the Gospel calls out the scribes and Pharisees as whitewashed tombs and broods of vipers... sure, you could decide that this is a rebuke of scholars as a class, or on the other hand that only those present individuals were the problem and no one else ever has to worry about their conscience. But both of those interpretations are wrong, we should all examine ourselves to ensure that we are honest and exercise power with integrity. 😂 • Mostly I just wish that we could dialogue more and get past some of the defensive interpretations we may have: whether anti-Semitism or Islamophobia, either way we look at others and take the darkest view of their beliefs and humanity. This surah contains encouraging references to freedom of conscience, to humanity living in harmony with one common faith before people rebelled against God, and I really like that.