Annie Kapur
Bio
200K+ Reads on Vocal.
English Lecturer
🎓Literature & Writing (B.A)
🎓Film & Writing (M.A)
🎓Secondary English Education (PgDipEd) (QTS)
📍Birmingham, UK
Stories (1989/0)
Book Review: "The World and All That It Holds" by Aleksandar Hemon
The Holy One kept creating worlds and destroying them, creating worlds and destroying them, and then, just before giving up, He finally came up with this one. And it could be much worse, this world and all that it holds. - The World and All That It Holds by Aleksander Hemon
By Annie Kapurabout a month ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Martyr!" by Kaveh Akbar
“For our species, the idea of art as ornament is a relatively new one. Our ape brains got too big, too big for our heads, too big for our mothers to birth them. So we started keeping all our extra knowing in language, in art, in stories and books and songs. Art was a way of storing our brains in each other’s. It wasn’t until fairly recently in human history, when rich landowners wanted something pretty to look at in winter, that the idea of art-as-mere-ornament came around. A painting of a blooming rose to hang on the mantel when the flowers outside the window had gone to ice. And still in the twenty-first century, it’s hard for folks to move past that. This idea that beauty is the horizon toward which all great art must march. I’ve never been interested in that. “As heaven spins, I fall into bedlam.” - Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar
By Annie Kapurabout a month ago in Geeks
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Satirical. Allegorical. Unbelievable. How ‘Animal Farm’ by George Orwell escaped the hammer of British censorship in 1945 is seriously beyond me. Orwell first penned the book between 1943 and 1944, the novel taking about three or four months to write and the fact that the UK was in an alliance with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany at the time did not help. The British holding Stalin in high regard frankly made George Orwell want to vomit and though the book was initially rejected by absolutely every publisher you can think of, it was eventually published. It was then a huge success and transformed the British opinion of the state of the Soviet Union.
By Annie Kapurabout a month ago in Geeks
Book Review: "The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store" by James McBride
“Moshe watched spellbound from the wings as Webb, a tiny man with a curved spine clad in a white suit, roared with laughter and enthusiasm as he played, egging his band on from the rear with his masterful drumming, the thunderous band shaking the floor with rip-roaring waves of gorgeous sound. That man, Moshe decided, was a joymaker. And Moshe could not help but notice that Webb, like his lovely Chona, had a physical disability. Though he was a hunchback of some kind, he moved with a certain feeling of joy, a lightness, as if every moment were precious.” - The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
By Annie Kapurabout a month ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Dopamine Nation" by Dr Anna Lembke
I found this book whilst reading a book called ‘Bad Therapy’ by Abigail Shrier (which I loved, thank you for asking) and I thought it sounded pretty interesting to begin with. No, it is not a perfect book and in some ways I can actually see how this book is probably not as great as advertised. There were not many reviews I could read and a lot of it is based on personal experience rather than actual data. Be that as it may, it is still an interesting read in the day and age of dopamine chasing and constant requirement for stimuli. Even though some of the reading might be almost obvious and some of the comments about ‘mindfulness’ actually working seem patronising to the reader, this is still a book with slightly more positives than negatives.
By Annie Kapurabout a month ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Why We Die" by Venki Ramakrishnan
To be perfectly honest with you the reason I decided to read this book is because Stephen Fry said it was good. A lot of what Stephen Fry says is good is very rarely bad and so, I trust his judgement of what constitutes as a 'good' book. I had only momentarily heard of the author of this book as obviously, being a Nobel Prize Winner but if I were to tell you that I knew why he won it or even for which science, I would be lying - I had no idea. All I knew is that he did win it and that's where my knowledge ended.
By Annie Kapurabout a month ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Bad Therapy" by Abigail Shrier
I have to be honest with you. I was actually just doom-scrolling through Kindle books when I came across this. I have never actually heard of it nor have I heard of the author but the premise of the book sounded pretty exciting. I guess you could count this as my ‘random book of the week’. It is about how Generation Z and to many extents, Generation Alpha are the most coddled, protected, loved generations, how they have had unlimited access to therapy and (more than any generation in human history) and have thus become the most mentally unstable generations ever seen. The question that the author poses is not ‘how do we blame this on the kids?’ But it is instead a more nuanced problem of parents putting their hopes in the psychologists who don’t always have the answers and, as I have come to understand, don’t always have the best intentions of the child in mind. So why has the most coddled generation in human history become the most mentally unwell? The reasons are actually pretty shocking in themselves and some, I could not believe were actually true.
By Annie Kapurabout a month ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Vulture Capitalism" by Grace Blakeley
Full Title: Vulture Capitalism: Corporate Crimes, Backdoor Bailouts, and the Death of Freedom Now, I am not saying that I am an academic in the field of economics, but I really awe-struck about how popular the book Vulture Capitalism has become amongst the nonfiction reading communities. Especially amongst those of us who's most nonfiction read for the past three or four years has been Shantaram and nobody even knows how much of that is true or not. When it comes to Vulture Capitalism though, I think the reason that it became famous was because of the disdain for capitalism that is constantly seen lurking within the clubs and subsections of each and every crevice of the reading societies of the internet. When I started reading it myself I noticed I knew what nothing really meant in the economic world. That's where the dictionary and Google come in.
By Annie Kapurabout a month ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Shy" by Max Porter
“He smells of pond. Everything smells of pond. He feels like he could sniff his way into individual microbes, earthy worming growgreen liquid stink, newts and shoots, silty, fruity, and as he walks he gathers in the smell of dry leaves, crinkly things, brown oily smells, good rot, herby hydro deep woodlousey sticky mushroom smells, things turning, things that go on smelling this way whether or not a wet teenager is here to smell them. He is all sense. He isn't having any thoughts, he's all smell and shadows and ruined trainers, a frighteningly awake sleep creature sloshing along.” - Shy by Max Porter
By Annie Kapur2 months ago in Geeks
- Top Story - March 2024
The Pearl by John SteinbeckTop Story - March 2024
‘The Pearl’ is a well-known by under-read classic and, as a teacher, many of my students have absolutely loved it. Not just because it is short, but because it presents a storyline that is interesting and corrupting. Easy to read and easier to analyse, ‘The Pearl’ is one of Steinbeck’s hardest hitting classics with an underlying message about protecting what is actually important. By the end of the book, the reader is left defeated and believing in the wrong thing. The idealism around this book is incredible and it is so dark too. For a long while you are supporting the wrong people, thinking in the wrong way and the whole story becomes one long act of misdirection by Steinbeck to show in a ‘Monkey’s Paw’ fashion why we should never chase wealth and status.
By Annie Kapur2 months ago in Geeks
Book Review: "It Waits in the Woods" by Josh Malerman
“There was a truth she was trying to deny, listening again for that pleading: no matter how much a family has grieved, if their missing loved one had not been found, alive or dead, there was always hope.” - It Waits in the Woods by Josh Malerman
By Annie Kapur2 months ago in Geeks
Book Review: "A Book of American Martyrs" by Joyce Carol Oates
I truly love reading the works of Joyce Carol Oates. Whether they are simply collated by her or whether they are actually written by her, I seem to not mind since I have put my complete and utter trust in her. I read my first Joyce Carol Oates book about ten to fifteen years' ago and ever since, it has been sort of sporadic until this year. As I have done with previous authors such as John Boyne and Ann Patchett and even Anne Tyler - I have committed myself to read everything that Joyce Carol Oates has written.
By Annie Kapur2 months ago in Geeks