“Dead Djinn” and “Crying in H Mart”

This weekend, I finished reading “A Dead Djinn in Cairo,” by P. Djeli Clark. It’s a story written to a certain standard of competence, but it didn’t strike me as all that great, so I may or may not someday read the other books set in that world, a version of the nineteenth century where someone let magic, and beings like Djinn, into the world. The story takes place in Cairo, with local color; I wonder what Edward Said (who excoriated Western Orientalism) would have said about it.

I have also downloaded Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H Mart, the current selection for the No Strings Attached Book Club, to my Kindle, and have begun reading that.