reviews

i finished two things this weekend .. the first was shaq's autobiography .. shaq uncut .. i bought it when i went to dubai last month .. i read most of it on the plane .. i only had a few chapters left but you know after i got back i just couldn't be bothered anymore .. but i finally finished it .. it's actually a decent book .. although it's written by shaq so it's not exactly deep or profound .. no disrespect but he's an athlete not a writer .. so you know .. but despite the lack of any real insight it's still interesting when shaq dishes about the drama that went on between him and kobe or later on between him and pat riley .. needless to say if you are not an nba fan then you should not read this book .. you might appreciate the earlier parts in the book when he talks about his upbringing and family and such .. but once he gets to the nba part you will be completely lost .. simply because you will not get any of the references .. but all in all it was a nice light read .. i think any true nba fan would appreciate it .. regardless whether they are a fan of shaq or not ..

the other thing i finished was assassin's creed revelations .. the fourth installment in the series .. and apparently not the last one .. enough already ubisoft .. make a final one already .. so you are ezio once again .. although every now and then you have a flashback as altair .. a very old altair .. who cannot run or jump .. in fact he can barely walk .. anyway .. they made a few minor changes as they always do .. took a few things out .. put a few things in .. but overall the game remains the same .. the setting is turkey this time by the way .. so you run around and jump and leap and kill and climb and purchase shops and all that stuff we have come to be familiar with .. once again the story makes zero sense with all its animus templar mumbo jumbo but the gameplay is wonderful .. looking forward to the next one ..

daydreaming

if i ever write an autobiography ... i think "i'm not from here" would be a very nice title ... you know what with being a palestinian who's never set foot there ...

life imitates art

i downloaded this collection of doctor seuss films the other day ... they're not really films they're more like short cartoons .. not more than 20 minutes each .. don't know what inspired me to search for it and download it but i've always been a fan of his work ... ANYWAY ... so i watched one ... it's called the sneetches ... now the sneetches are these weird looking yellow creatures ... as most seuss characters are ... and they are two kinds ... star bellied sneetches and bare bellied sneetches ... and the sneetches with stars on their bellies look down on the ones without ... and they enjoy more privileges as well ... then one day a guy comes into town with a contraption that can put stars on your belly ... so all the bare bellied sneetches pay him to use it ... but then the real star bellied sneetches get upset ... so the same guy tells them he has a machine that can remove the star ... so they all pay him to use it ... and then the ones without stars go back to looking down on their counterparts ... so the ones who got stars pay the guy again to have them removed ... and thus begins an endless cycle of getting a star and having it removed ... the guy becomes very rich in the process ... then finally the sneetches run out of money ... also they no longer know who is who or what was what ... who had a star and who didn't ... the guy seeing that there was no more money to be made packs up and leaves ... but it all ends happily ... the sneetches realize how silly they had been acting and live as one people from that point on ...

it kind of reminds me of the situation between jordanians and palestinians ... think about it ... one side has a star on their flag ... and the other side doesn't ... and that makes all the difference ...

the arab revolutions

makes you go hmmm

There was one man who gave twenty years of his life to a scatter-brained woman, sacrificing everything in his life for her - friends, work, even respectability - only to acknowledge one evening that he had never loved her. He was bored, that's all, bored, like most people; so he created from scratch a life of complications and drama for himself. Something's got to happen - that's the explanation for most human undertakings.

Albert Camus, The Fall

sleeping at the movies

i have a very good friend here in riyadh ... luay is his name ... we have been good friends since university ... we go out every wednesday and do the same thing ... we go to a nice restaurant ... have dinner ... then go back to my apartment and watch a movie ... it's always my apartment because he lives with his parents ... although next week we said we would go bowling ... just to change things up ... but i digress ... so since i started the new job i always fall asleep during the movie ... i am just too tired ... the last three movies we watched ... the blind side ... the crazies ... and how to train your dragon ... in that order ... i have fallen asleep ... i can't help it ... my eyes get heavy and i succumb ... anyway ... he said the blind side was good ... told me i had to watch it ... i still haven't ... the crazies he didn't like so much ... as for how to train your dragon he also fell asleep during the movie ... but i was able to watch enough to figure out the main idea ... i would recommend you read this book instead ...

hilarious

i don't know if he's right about the origins of the easter egg or not ... wouldn't be surprised if he was ... but the title of the book and the illustration cracked me up ... click here ...

no offense your majesty

but this is beyond lame ... is there even such a thing as a hummus sandwich?

that's deep

reading the road these days by cormac mccarthy ... no i did not get it because of the movie ... i've had this book for a year now ... but i will admit the fact that it's been made into a movie kind of encouraged me to finally read it ... anyway there was a nice quote in there ... when i read it i was like that is blog-worthy ... so here it is ...

You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.

girls of riyadh

the only reason i bought this book is because i live in riyadh ... i've known about it long before moving here but only after moving here did i feel an urge to read it ... it is as you might guess from the title a chick book ... this book is about four spoiled saudi girlfriends ... some might say they are just horny ... others might say they are looking for love ... either way ... the way it's written is that a friend of these four girls is telling their love stories through a series of emails ... i was not impressed at all with this book ... i thought it was very silly and superficial ... and poorly written ... and i think the only reason it was so successful is because of it's taboo-ness ... the only good thing about the book is that it's a light read ... i give it a 4/10 ...

Fantastic Mr. Fox

who has never heard of roald dahl ... we all read his books growing up ... charlie and the chocolate factory ... danny the champion of the world ... the bfg ... james and the giant peach ... matilda ... to name a few ... he also wrote a book called fantastic mr. fox ... well it's going to be made into a movie ... it's going to be sort of an animation ... like not cartoon but handmade stop motion as you can see in the trailer ... george clooney will do the voice of mr. fox ... and meryl streep will be doing the voice of mrs. fox ... other voices include bill murray and owen wilson ... so anyway i actually remember reading this book when i was in the first grade ... so i'm looking forward to this one ...
click here to watch the trailer ...

Book Review: Holes

holes is written by louis sachar ... sachar is a great author and i have read some of his work previously ... the only problem is his books are not that adult ... but they are always very funny and very clever ...

so the book is about a guy called stanley ... stanley is sent to a juvenile detention camp for a crime he did not commit ... at the camp he and the rest of the boys are forced to dig holes all day ... the warden says that she makes them do this to build their character ... but stanley thinks she is looking for some kind of treasure ... and that is all i can tell you without ruining the story ...

if you can get past the fact that it's not an adult book then you will definitely love it ... or you could just watch the movie ...

for my next book i will be reading something a little more adult ... the road by cormac mccarthy ...

the art of war

i finished reading it recently ... well i read an interpretation of it ... by some american martial arts expert ... it is interesting ... reads like machiavelli ... a lot of what and what not to do going on ... if i could sum it up in three words i guess it would be "show no mercy" ... i didn't really enjoy the book ... didn't exactly hate it either ... it's just too non-fiction for me ... but yeah he was a wise one that sun tzu ...

True Or False

hope is just another word for wishful thinking ...

Book Review: Slam

i finished reading the book slam by nick hornby ... the reason i bought this book is because i read a book by the same author before and thought it was brilliant ... a book by the name of high fidelity ... but this book ... not so brilliant ... i mean it's good and all but let's put it this way ... if i had read slam first i probably wouldn't have been so tempted to read something else by hornby ... so yeah this book is told by a teenage boy named sam ... the story is set in england by the way ... so sam likes to skate ... and he likes girls ... typical teenage boy ... something not so typical about him is that his parents had him when they were teenagers ... he sees his dad from time to time but he's not exactly fond of him ... instead he lives with his mother whose biggest fear is that one day sam will make the same mistake she did with his dad ... so one day his mother tells him to come along with her to a party ... because her friend has a hot daughter she'd like to set him up with ... the hot daughter is called alicia ... sam reluctantly comes along but doesn't regret it ... alicia is indeed hot and the two hit it off and soon become inseparable ... until one day alicia finds out she's pregnant ... dramatic music ... so now sam finds himself in the same situation his parents were in when they had him ... and that's really all you need to know ... oh yeah and sam is in love with tony hawk ... that's a famous skater for those who don't know ... he has a poster of him that he talks to when he's troubled ... that might seem like a trivial piece of information but it actually isn't ... so anyway if it sounds interesting to you check it out ... it's a decent book ... but if you haven't read high fidelity i suggest you start with that ...

for my next book i'll be reading the art of war ... some non-fiction for a change ...

one down ... ten to go

i finished reading the first of the eleven books that i bought the other day ...

the book being alice's adventures in wonderland ... i think everyone here has at least heard of that book seeing as how it is a classic ... perhaps even familiar with most of the characters thanks to the disney movie ...

i had barely started the book ... but thanks to the five hour bus ride to dammam i took today i was able to easily finish it ... it's not a very long book so that wasn't really an accomplishment ...

anyway ... there's really no story to the book ... at least none that i could tell ... it's exactly what the title says it is ... alice's adventures in wonderland ... which are just a series of seemingly unconnected events ... basically alice is a little girl who falls down a rabbit-hole at the beginning of the book ... and that is where the adventures start ... from that point on in the story ... alice is constantly shrinking and growing in size whenever she eats or drinks something ... meeting all kinds of nutty characters along the way and having - or at least trying to have - conversations with them ... i think my favorite was the hookah-smoking caterpillar ... but this wonderland as it turns out in the end is all a dream ... which i thought was kind of anti-climactic ...

still despite the somewhat lame ending ... it's a very clever and funny book ... although i'm pretty sure the author must have been on something when he wrote it ... he had to be ...

if you have already read alice in wonderland and like this type of nonsensical slash witty humor ... you should read this book ...

Liar Liar

A man whose memoir about his experience during the Holocaust was to have been published in February has admitted that his story was embellished, and on Saturday evening his publisher canceled the release of the book.
And once again a New York publisher and Oprah Winfrey were among those fooled by a too-good-to-be-true story.

source

The Man Who Was Thursday

i finished reading the book the man who was thursday ... it's by g.k. chesterton ...
if you haven't heard of the book or the author don't worry ... i had never heard of them either ... but i read in GQ magazine that this is the funniest book ever written ... so that was my motivation for getting the book ... i actually ordered it online ... anyway i was not disappointed at all ... it's a brilliant book ... i'd like to tell you about the book but i can't do that without giving too much away simply because there so many twists in the plot ... all i can tell you is that the main character in the book is called gabriel syme ... he is recruited by the scotland yard to infiltrate the council of anarchists ... this council is composed of seven members ... each member is named for a day of the week ... for example the president of the council goes by the name of sunday ... as for how syme infiltrates the council ... and what happens once he does infiltrate it ... you will have to read the book to know all that ... but i guarantee you that it it is an awesome, fascinating, incredible, marvelous, shocking, stunning, surprising, wonderful, thrilling adventure ... and by the way it's not a thick book ... you can easily finish it in less than a week ...

now is it the funniest book ever written as GQ proclaimed it to be ... well ... it's written by a british guy ... so it's more witty than funny ... in the sense that it's more clever than humorous ... like it won't make you laugh out loud ... at most it'll make you chuckle ... so i would say it's definitely one of the wittiest books i've ever read ... but it didn't strike me as funny per se ...

in closing ... i will share what i thought was one of the funniest passages contained in the book ...

Whenever he said something that nobody but he could understand, I replied with something which I could not even understand myself. "I don't fancy," he said, "that you could have worked out the principle that evolution is only negation, since there inheres in it the introduction of lacunae, which are an essential of differentiation." I replied quite scornfully, "You read all that up in Pinckwerts; the notion that involution functioned eugenically was exposed long ago by Glumpe." It is unnecessary for me to say that there were never such people as Pinckwerts and Glumpe. But the people all round (rather to my surprise) seemed to remember them quite well, and the Professor, finding that the learned and mysterious method left him rather at the mercy of an enemy slightly deficient in scruples, fell back upon a more popular form of it. "I see," he sneered, "you prevail like the false pig in Aesop." "And you fail," I answered, smiling, "like the hedgehog in Montaigne. Need I say that there is no hedgehog in Montaigne? "Your clap-trap comes off," he said, "so would like your beard." I had no intelligent answer to this, which was quite true and rather witty. But I laughed heartily, answered, "Like the Pantheist's boots," at random, and turned on my heel with the honours of victory.

FYI

i started reading this book called the man who was thursday ... it's been a while since i read anything ... the book is by a guy called g.k. chesterton ...
i never heard of the book or the author ... but according to GQ magazine ... this book is the funniest book ever written ... so that's why i got it ...
i only read like six pages so far ...