Annie Kapur
Bio
Film and Writing (M.A)
150K+ Reads on Vocal
IG: @AnnieApproximately
Pronouns: (she/her/hers)
Stories (1679/0)
Book Review: "The Finkler Question" by Howard Jacobson
It's been many years since I read a book by Howard Jacobson, well - about six years really. I read his book Shylock Is My Name when it first came out in 2016 and I remember being absolutely engrossed in it from start to finish. I cannot imagine why I did not pick up another book by him until now, in 2022. The Finkler Question is a really heartfelt novel that kind of reminds me of things written by Julian Barnes. It's got such an incredible amount of emotion between the characters and, from start to finish, is an achievement of character development, identity discovery and a larger critique on human natures of desire, love and death.
By Annie Kapur12 months ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Reading in the Dark" by Seamus Deane
I have never heard of this book in my life, I simply found it at the library and thought it would be something good to read. I did not look at the blurb or the cover really but instead, paid attention to why it was called Reading in the Dark. I too, like to read in the cover of darkness with maybe a small lamp (it would probably explain my terrible eyesight too). One thing I found out whilst exploring this book is that the stories within are each connected to various ideas of life, learning, poverty, death, art and the list goes on. Each a philosophical realisation, each a very realistic picture of the lives of those we sometimes forget. This book may not have been what I thought it was going to be about, but it has really opened my eyes to a brand new aspect of Irish Literature.
By Annie Kapur12 months ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Mikhail and Margarita" by Julie Lekstrom Himes
I have to admit, I read Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita over ten years' ago now - it has been an awfully long time. I have seen it here and there but since, I have focused my strengths with Bulgakov on his other novels such as Heart of a Dog - which I would have to say is possibly my favourite by him. This book is a slice of history which I really did not know about before - I had heard of what happened in not a lot of detail, but to learn all of this information puts his career into a lot more context than it once did. It also puts into context the tyranny of the Soviet Union and the lengths that they really went to when it came to silencing people that they did not deem friendly to the state.
By Annie Kapur12 months ago in Geeks
Book Review: "The Unconsoled" by Kazuo Ishiguro
Kazuo Ishiguro is an amazing writer. When I was younger, I read books by him including Never Let Me Go, Remains of the Day and The Buried Giant. - I've loved reading Ishiguro's books because of his presentation of human nature both good and bad. He has a way of giving each character he creates and insane amount of goodness in order to create a connection with the reader, but then again they can also go to the darker, deeper aspects of humanity that are not such good attributes to have. His last book to do this, I would say was Klara and the Sun in which he demonstrated the good and bad in the responses from human to AI. Ishiguro went above and beyond in order to give us a window to what our own humanity could possibly become. In An Artist of the Floating World he does this once again - the light and the dark both come through the characters and their actions. In The Unconsoled, Ishiguro repeats this once again, but with a discomfort that some critics have still not been able to shake because of the madness of the writing style.
By Annie Kapur12 months ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Suttree" by Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy is an absolutely brilliant author with some great literature from over the course of more than forty years of writing. His book All the Pretty Horses is in my own favourite books of all time list and I have read many others by him too. I was recommended the book Suttree - a book by Cormac McCarthy I hadn't really heard of before and I was immediately excited about it. Online reviews stated that it was written in the style of William Faulkner and seeing as William Faulkner is one of my favourite writers of all time - I didn't imagine that this book could do any wrong for me. Though, be that as it may, I held off judgement until I had read the book. And it was amazing.
By Annie Kapur12 months ago in Geeks
Book Review: "The Lemon Table" by Julian Barnes
I've read quite a bit of Julian Barnes in my time. My favourite Julian Barnes book is obviously The Man in the Red Coat because it's all about one of the most fascinating cultural movements in artistic history - the Belle Epoque. The Man in the Red Coat really does showcase the beauty of Julian Barnes' prose, as we also see in some of his other works, notably The Sense of an Ending. But, as I'm reading The Lemon Table I'm starting to discover that maybe I don't know him as a writer as well as I thought. I have been left in a very positive state of confusion by these stories and I couldn't be happier about it. Of course, it's heavily descriptive, it's mundane and not a lot happens at all - it's definitely my kind of book.
By Annie Kapur12 months ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Red Dog" by Louis de Bernieres
Another Louis de Bernieres novel so soon? Of course. But this one is a lot shorter and I only found it because I was trying to get another book. Honestly, I was quite surprised at this book because it's different to the two de Bernieres novels I have already read. Over a decade ago I read Captain Corelli's Mandolin and as recent as a couple of days ago, I finished Birds Without Wings. One thing I've noticed about Louis de Bernieres novels is that he will always attempt to emotionally attach you to something, whether it be a cause or an idea and then, he will subvert it. For example: in Birds Without Wings, we have a very clear idea of the fact that we are supposed to like certain characters over others, but this is subverted later on in the book - not so that we do not like them anymore, but just so that we think about our opinions of them, formed throughout the course of the book. I think a similar thing can be said about Red Dog. So let's get into the review...
By Annie Kapur12 months ago in Geeks
"Absalom, Absalom!" by William Faulkner
This is by far one of my favourite books of all time and definitely in my personal top five when it comes to American Fiction. It is an excellent novel to read in order to learn about power dynamics and the way in which power can go to a man's head very quickly and come crashing down around him. A definite plus when you are living through a constantly changing world.
By Annie Kapur12 months ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Birds Without Wings" by Louis de Bernieres
Someone on Reddit said that I should read this when I asked quite an open-ended question (which received way more replies than I thought it would). I've read Louis de Bernieres before in the form of Captain Corelli's Mandolin and yet, I never watched the movie because according to a lot of people who did it ruined the book for them and did not do the book justice at all. I enjoyed the book when I read it and so, as I continue with my journey into this author, I have to thank the person on Reddit that suggested I read Birds Without Wings by Louis de Bernieres.
By Annie Kapur12 months ago in Geeks
The Attention Crisis
In the last ten to fifteen years, a whole new generation has been born - the generation that has never lived without social media. In some cases, when the child is born, the parents have created a Facebook photo album of them from baby to teenager, or in other cases there have been entire accounts dedicated to this child from the age of only a few months in order for family to communicate with them and then we have the dreaded family who post endless photos on social media of being ‘with the new baby’. As these children grew up, they have been taught to seek attention and approval from social media. They have seen ‘social media influencers’ as people to look up to and aspire to be since communication has been commodified as ‘likes’ and ‘comments’. The more you can get of these things, the more popular and successful you seem to others. Social media plays on the insecurity that you are never really going to be popular and who is more concerned about popularity than teenagers? Nobody. Concerned about everything from the way they look to how their lives have been curated online, teenagers are the most vulnerable to falling into every trap on social media from buying things from most of the adverts they get to following pages that tell them suggestively that they aren’t good enough to achieve high like-comment status. But why do they seek attention and what are the real harms of it? I want to explore in-depth what it means to be a teenager wanting attention online.
By Annie Kapur12 months ago in Psyche
Book Review: "Shantaram" by Gregory David Roberts
The Reddit Book Club had a new book for February and March of 2022 - Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. When I first saw it, it had to take a back-burner because I was, at the time, in the middle of some other books and a TBR as tall as I am. Ultimately, when I did read it, I started off really weirdly into the book - it was as if I wasn't sure whether I wanted to read it or whether I was only reading it because it was the book club book for those two months. At almost one thousand pages, Shantaram was about to blow my mind, but first it had to make me hate it.
By Annie Kapur12 months ago in Geeks
Book Review: "The Possession of Mr Cave" by Matt Haig
If you know, you know. I'm going through a difficult time at the moment. I'm up and down, I'm here and there, I'm sick and I'm not. But, I can assure you that I'm definitely trying with this content. Enough about me though, more about the book. Matt Haig is a great writer. Some people I have seen call The Midnight Library a really overrated book, but I thought it was written beautifully. This book we have here called The Possession of Mr Cave really hit me. It was not like anything by Matt Haig I had read before and I really liked it a lot.
By Annie Kapur12 months ago in Geeks
