Halik > Recent Status Updates

Giving the audio book a go this time around. The narrator really brings it. Insha Allah will put up a proper review of this excellent biography of te Prophet Muhammed (peace be upon him) this time

Hmmm.. this book is hard to describe. If i hadn't read the blurb, or heard all the ype about the impeding movie, i don't know what i would have thought of it if i'd read it straight up from the beginning. What are ostensibly different stories from different times told by different people are connected by an uncanny strand of truth. I'm pretty much absorbed.

This is a funny murder mystery, if you look at it like that. At the beginning of the book we know who dies, and who kills them and by the middle we know the motive. But i have a feeling there is something yet to come in this story that transcends ancient Greek mythology with an idyllic modern Vermont.

...First the goats and sheep, then the children, then the women, until only the men and camels are left wandering the desert in search of a source of water. The man drinks the camel's milk until the animal's udder is cracked and dry. And there is no more milk. Until finally the man and the camel retire into a spot of shade to die. And that's how a clan comprising of hundreds of animals and humans can be eliminated.

In Somalia a lot of the population in the Northern areas are nomads. They circle the endless deserts in pre defined paths that help them avoid confrontations with other clans. In the frequent droughts however all this civility breaks down and the clans just go all out and don't bother about impeaching each other's resources. Violence can result. And whole clans can otherwise die of thirst.

Hmmm.. for a story around a murder you already know the perpetrators of, and features college kids who only waste their substantial wealth faster than they waste their substantial intelligence in mythic intellectual pursuits this is pretty gripping. What am i saying, this book is so gripping that its trembling with the effort. Its white around the edges, and i'm being squeezed

So.. project mayhem is coming to a head. And Tyler Durden's mission of destruction, both of the self and of the consumerist world order is moments away from being complete. CP has written something more than just a clever book with edgy and well turned out prose. This might well be s frontrunner to be the '1984' of our generation. There i said it.

"Man, I see in Fight Club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War.No Great Depression"

"And how can we lose this maddening self, lose it entirely? Love? Yes, but..the least of us know that love is a cruel and terrible master. One loses oneself for the sake of the other but in doing so becomes enslaved and miserable to the most capricious of all the gods. War? One can lose oneself in the joy of battle, in fighting for a glorious cause, but there are not a great many glorious causes for which to fight.."

The violence in Sudan was spawned by greed on the part of its Arab elite which essentially pitted its poor Arab counterparts in the North with the native tribesmen the country’s south in a struggle for livelihood. This in turn was supported by Belgium's approval of their power which was based along lines drawn on a map in Europe which had no bearing whatsoever on ground conditions. So are the Janjaweed alone to blame

Life is a rollercoaster and not a Ronan keating kind of way either. Tyler and X are catapulting towards an imaginary state of 'rock bottom'. because it is only after you hit rock bottom that you can come up again, apparently. Loving Pahlahniuk's writing

One way or the other it all boils down to soap. X and Tyler have progressed in their rebellion. And are just completing a phase of 'guerilla waitering'. Take my advice and just order the onion soup that has the layer of cheese on top. It cannot be messed with

This is cool. Irving is transporting me through a different world. From Selvilla to Granada in the early 19th century. Bandits roam the mountain passes and the peasants are poetic. The landscape has a hard beauty and the people a rugged grace. In Granada, and the next chapter, the Alhambra awaits. That last bastion of Islamic Spain, the stronghold of exiled Ummayyad princes; Andalusia.

**SPOILER**Knowing that Tyler is figment of X's imagination already gives me all sorts of insights into what Pahlahniuk is doing. Tyler is X's 'little act of rebellion in the darkness' a result of a long simmering dissatisfaction with the consumerist/capitalist/materialist world order. Tyler has been fermenting like so much water pressure building up in your pipes, and now burst forth like an exploding shower head

The first rule of Fight Club is that no one talks about fight club, but here i'm gonna have to flout that. First time trying out the medium of Audiobooks and i figured why not start with a story i already knew?

The genesis of an African slum city: It builds itself on wasteland, using material procured out of thin air, and hooding itself up purely because its constituent parts lean against each other, with no cement. Just like the people. Who are as insignificant as scrap, and cannot survive in abject poverty unless they are in such close proximity to be able to lean on each other. The scale economies of the desperate.

The genesis of an African slum city: It builds itself on wasteland, using material procured out of thin air, and hooding itself up purely because its constituent parts lean against each other, with no cement. Just like the people. Who are as insignificant as scrap, and cannot survive in abject poverty unless they are in such close proximity to be able to lean on each other. The scale economies of the desperate.

Engrossing. I feel like i'm right in there with Kapuscinski. Getting attacked by angry cobras, wheedling my way into new military regimes, and slumming it with the locals.

Engrossing. I feel like i'm right in there with Kapuscinski. Getting attacked by angry cobras, wheedling my way into new military regimes, and slumming it with the locals.

After a rather droll beginning, he progresses to detail some ostensible irrelevant details about the lives of ancient bankers and then progresses to a scorching financial history of the first world war and you suddenly realize that Big Banks, Central Banking and International Finance all had beginnings among a very few elites.

The book provides an interesting theory to explain the reasons behind the ever-problematic wealth gap that the world is seeing. Quite plausible to assume that it is the institutions of a country and not its culture, geographical placement or knowledge levels that figure in its earnings. But this too maybe too narrow a theory, lets wait and see.

Hussein is a good writer and the tale he tells is compelling. At times a little sensationalist. But i'm absorbed in it. Await a review inshaallah

Wow after simply cracking along for SEVEN HUNDRED PAGES, this book just put the brakes on out of nowhere. I now find the plot sluggish and the speed at near stagnant levels. Hope the phase passes soon or i'm shelve this tome

Wow after simply cracking along for SEVEN HUNDRED PAGES, this book just put the brakes on out of nowhere. I now find the plot sluggish and the speed at near stagnant levels. Hope the phase passes soon or i'm shelve this tome

Wow after simply cracking along for SEVEN HUNDRED PAGES, this book just put the brakes on out of nowhere. I now find the plot sluggish and the speed at near stagnant levels. Hope the phase passes soon or i'm shelve this tome

Wow after simply cracking along for SEVEN HUNDRED PAGES, this book just put the brakes on out of nowhere. I now find the plot sluggish and the speed at near stagnant levels. Hope the phase passes soon or i'm shelve this tome