Shamim E. Haque > Recent Status Updates

Enjoying every line! Some may find the writing gross, and a little too candid in expressing sexual encounters in the most coarse terms possible. It is certainly not pornographic. Gold nuggets of philosophy can be mined from his ruminations after hangovers, and ejaculations! Good stuff! A page turner!

The suffering of a sensitive, and diffident man in a totalitarian regime. The musical talent of Dmitri Shostakovich could not find full play under Stalin's regime for one reason, and for quite another reason it was stunted under the freer regime of Nikita Krushchev. This novel is about the sad unraveling of a musical genius who was not allowed to be himself, or left alone against all his desire to be left alone!

There are some magical lines on page 210, lines that talk of how to achieve lasting friendship- in this case through the experience of camping, witnessing the magics of nature in company of fellow campers. Very interesting ..

Wonderful! Never heard of Robert Anatole, comte de Montesquiou-Fézensac, the French nobleman on who could, allegedly, have provided Wilde with a model for Dorian Gray. The dandies of the Belle Epoque Paris were not empty dummies on whom fashionable clothes were displayed only; they were also good authors and arbiters of taste who could defend their positions eloquently in critical works. Julian Barnes is a genius!

Amazing writing!