Annie Kapur
Film and Writing (M.A)
British Born Punjabi Girl.
Focus in Film: Adaptation from Literature, Horror Filmmaking Styles and Auteur Cinema
Twitter: @AnnieApprox
IG: @AnnieApproximately
Book Review: "Pilgrims" by Matthew Kneale
I have read many books influenced by other works and most of them have been via classic literature and folklore. Christina Henry’s books influenced by “Alice in Wonderland” and “Peter Pan”, Gregory Maguire’s books influenced by L.Frank Baum’s “The Wizard of Oz” as well as others influenced by Baum’s novels including “Dorothy Must Die” by Danielle Page and the next in that series, “The Witch Must Burn”. From other classic literature, there has been many including the series inspired by “The Iliad” by Mary Renault or the series inspired by “The Iliad’ by Madeline Miller. From this, I have gotten used to reading things inspired by other things, poetry and books alike and really, reading something that was inspired by Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales” is really refreshing as I have never encountered something like it before.
Annie KapurPublished 7 days ago in Geeks10 Great Books I Read in April '21
I read a lot of great books in April 2021 and honestly, this list was incredibly difficult to make. I was going to do twenty books in the list but I did not want to keep you waiting around. So instead, what I have done is I have done a list of ten and then, at the end I will give more suggestions of what else I have read this month that has been amazing.
Annie KapurPublished 7 days ago in Geeks
Book Review: "The Familiars by Stacey Halls
When I was younger and in my school days, one of my favourite books was Philippa Gregory's "The Wise Woman" which is basically the exact same concept as this book and the 'wise woman' even has the same name - Alice. (In "The Wise Woman" it is spelt in the older way, 'Alys'). However, I was still excited to read this particular book in order to see what it borrowed, what it stole and what it changed and the first thing I noticed is that it is told from the point of view of the woman who is going to have the child, which was interesting. Another thing I noticed is that there is far more dialogue than what I am used to but it never felt like the dialogue was put there for no reason - every conversation, every word said had some sort of purpose to push the story forwards.
Annie KapurPublished 8 days ago in Geeks
Book Review: "The Zhivago Affair" by Peter Finn and Petra Couvée
“The roof over the whole of Russia has been torn off.” The quotation at the beginning of chapter one, just after a powerful prologue, is something of pure beauty as it puts the reader within the time from of Boris Pasternak as a young man growing up in the midst of the Russian Revolution. The writer of great books would go on to bear witness to some of the most challenging times in Russian History including the regimes of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin. This book covers his persecution at the hands of the Soviets due to the book that most consider to be the most dangerous book ever written in 20th century Russia - “Dr. Zhivago”.
Annie KapurPublished 9 days ago in Geeks
Book Review: "It Ends With Us" by Colleen Hoover
I am not normally someone who will read a romance novel and enjoy it. With this coming under that umbrella term as an anti-romance novel, it immediately made me interested in whether I could read it and get really stuck in. However, the only romance novel I have ever enjoyed to the point that I read it a second time was Hannah Rothschild’s “The Impossibility of Love” as it was just beautifully written. With “It Ends With Us” I think there was the potential for it to do brilliantly with the concept it had. But, in a lot of places, it let me down through the almost fantasist language to do with the modern day relationship. I was initially very much on the fence about this book and went back and forth changing my mind how I felt about it. I think I have decided upon half marks now, but this does not mean that you should not read it. I would actually say that you read it for yourself and see whether you agree or disagree with my views. It may be a completely different experience for you.
Annie KapurPublished 10 days ago in Geeks
Book Review: "The Lamplighters" by Emma Stonex
I love stories set upon the seas. One of my favourite books is Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick" and another is Homer's "Odyssey". Even though I do not really live near an ocean and nor do I go out on the sea a lot - my hometown has more canals than Venice (yep, fun fact there!). There's always water around and well, I can honestly say that I have travelled up and down these more than once even if it is mostly just walking by them and appreciating the little boats that go up and down throughout the city. When nautical literature meets the gothic it is something to be appreciated. There are many things that could become cliché, misunderstood or even just plain boring - but Emma Stonex seems to get around all of these and navigate us into a winding story about three men who go missing from a lighthouse when the door is locked from the inside.
Annie KapurPublished 11 days ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Reborn: Early Diaries" by Susan Sontag
Susan Sontag was a great writer and none of us can debate that fact. In her books where she discusses the truths about love and suffering, it hits you hard from the very moment the words enter your mind to long after the book is closed. But these books are all planned philosophical pieces in which she has spent a long time simply crafting the way in which her ideas come across to others. In her book "Reborn", she does none of this. It is not crafted, it is not planned. These are her early diaries from the years 1947 all the way through to 1963 and I have to say that even though it is not a fiction book - we can all see that Sontag has a gift for storytelling. She has a gift with words, using the only the one that fits absolutely with the sentence she is conveying. So instead of reading just her critical pieces, or her fiction - I would highly suggest looking into her nonfiction pieces on her own life. The emotion simply runs off the page, overflowing with a sense of self.
Annie KapurPublished 12 days ago in Humans
Product Review: Candy Cloud's "Lavender Moon Bedtime Sugar Scrub"
Recently, I required a new face scrub. My ‘Soap and Glory’ scrub had run out and I was sick of buying the same product over and over again and have my face smell of oatmeal and cereal every morning. Let us just be clear that the most impulsive thing I do is change the products I use on my face. I went out in search of a new face scrub and this time, it had to be vegan.
Annie KapurPublished 13 days ago in Blush
