Annie Kapur
Bio
Film and Writing (M.A)
150K+ Reads on Vocal
IG: @AnnieApproximately
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Stories (1679/0)
Reading "Shantaram" by Gregory David Roberts was an Experience.
It has washed over me all of a sudden in a Reddit thread that I need to read Shantaram. But there are also so many other books to read at this time, from reading books to work books to personal development books. But Shantaram has to fit in somewhere. I got it on my Kindle App on my phone after much thinking because I was on the bus and wanted to check it out. Now, had I seen Shantaram in the shops? Possibly, but I paid little attention to it when it came to other books. Did I know how long it was? No. On my Kindle App it simply came up with a file size and if you were to say a file size to me then you may as well be speaking in an ancient alien language - I haven't got a clue what you're talking about. Long story short; nobody told me this book was nearly a thousand pages long and whilst I was in the midst of reading other books - I felt like I'd committed some sort of crime.
By Annie Kapurabout a year ago in Geeks
Book Review: "An Artist of the Floating World" by Kazuo Ishiguro
You know when you're reading a book and you come across certain sections where you think: please don't get anymore emotionally destructive and then it does? Well that is exactly how I feel whenever I read Kazuo Ishiguro. A while back, I went on an Ishiguro binge, this was around the same time The Buried Giant was released and honestly, I never actually made it on to An Artist of the Floating World for some reason. I just completely missed it. Well, now I have read it and it is so beautiful I almost started to cry by the end. I am absolutely in love with this book.
By Annie Kapurabout a year ago in Geeks
Book Review: "A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing" by Eimear McBride
I remember reading my first Eimear McBride novel entitled The Lesser Bohemians and I cannot tell you how bored I was really. I decided that I'd lay off the post-modern stream of consciousness novel for a while and move on to reading stuff I actually enjoyed. I came across A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing whilst in university and did not actually read it from the library because of the blurb kind of putting me off. When I came across it again just a few days before this review is being written - I gave in and started to read. It didn't seem so bad at first. Please note, I said at first and not all the way through - because it wasn't all the way through.
By Annie Kapurabout a year ago in Geeks
Book Review: "The L-Shaped Room" by Lynne Reid Banks
Writing books in some kind of dialect and making it believable can be hard. It's not so much about the way in which you drop and change letters, but also about the way the sentences are structured. In some cases, this can be detrimental to understanding the book and finding it entertaining. For example, The Lonely Londoners by Sam Selvon is written in dialect according to syntax mainly, and sometimes it even has dialect according to spelling. In this book, there is a lot of syntax-based dialect changes in order to make it truthful to time and place. However, I think that this actually makes the book seem more cliché than it is. I would have personally gone for something written quite standardly with other more symbolic things to point out setting and time.
By Annie Kapurabout a year ago in Geeks
Book Review: "The Woman Destroyed" by Simone de Beauvoir
I have read a lot of Simone De Beauvoir in my life. These include the books The Second Sex, A Very Easy Death, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter and some others. Most recently though, I have picked up from the library, a Simone de Beauvoir book I had never even heard of before entitled The Woman Destroyed. A brilliantly written book encased with Simone De Beauvoir's existentialist-tinted feminism, there is something deeply encapsulating but also absolutely despairing about this book. An introspective text that can be difficult for some to get into, it is riddled with hints and clues as to how existentialism is changing. Three stories have been woven together in this course of brilliance.
By Annie Kapurabout a year ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Now in November" by Josephine Johnson
When I say I want a dramatic story filled with intense emotional turmoil and great turbulence, I mean a story like The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough, The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea by Yukio Mishima or, this one. It's called Now in November and it's by Josephine Johnson. Her debut novel written and published by the age of just 24 years' old. It tells the story of emotional breakdown in a family that has been practically kicked to the bottom of the barrell. An intense and foreboding story, it haunts the reader with its incredible descriptions, it beautiful landscapes and its amazing character development.
By Annie Kapurabout a year ago in The Swamp
Book Review: "History of a Pleasure Seeker" by Richard Mason
Flowery language, over-the-top descriptions and hedonism in intense amounts has been something in literature that makes a great mix to fascinate me. But sometimes, it can turn into a bit of a mess. For example: the greatness of The Picture of Dorian Gray shows us each of these things in equal amounts with extended metaphors, hints and foreshadowings lurking around every corner. The symbolism is intense, fiery and yet added for impact only when necessary. Even in Marquis de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom, there is something incredible about the symbolism and hidden meaning presented in the text. Unfortunately, History of a Pleasure Seeker tried too hard to add all of these things into a story that was pretty half-baked from the beginning.
By Annie Kapurabout a year ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Scenes from a Village Life" by Amos Oz
Amos Oz was a fantastic writer and I have yet only read a couple of works by him, including but not limited to: Judas, My Michael and obviously our current topic of discussion: Scenes of Village Life. One thing I have always loved about his writing style is its flow. The style is always very fluent that even when the most intense emotion is taking place, it never feels out of place. It feels like this is just the way it is supposed to happen. This is also true of this book Scenes of Village Life in which the stories have no beginning and no end. Yet, every story has its own personality. Personally, I think that this is probably the best Amos Oz book I have read to date.
By Annie Kapurabout a year ago in Geeks
Book Review: "A Wolf in Hindelheim" by Jenny Mayhew
At times, you come across a book where you are wholly confused about what it is trying to be and how. You may be confused about the genre, the setting, the context, the characters - but whatever you are confused about seems to colour your reading experience of the rest of the book. Now, I'll never tell you not to read a book on here, even if I give it a bad review. I'll always say this: read the book for yourself. It's very important to make up your own mind, and maybe if there is something I don't fully get about the book or can't get into - you may be able to work it out and it won't colour your experience of the narrative. Unfortunately though, there were a few things that made me think about the legitimacy of this book by the context in which it placed itself.
By Annie Kapurabout a year ago in Geeks
Book Review: "The Watchers" by A.M Shine
This is A.M Shine's debut novel that I actually found by sheer accident whilst I was browsing for a new horror novel to read on my Kindle. I kept coming across it after that accident and a few days later, I decided to get it. It then sat on my virtual shelf for a while and then, when I first opened it up, I saw the word prologue. A prologue in a book to some publishers is a very outdated concept but the one thing I thought was 'damn, this is going to be good...' And, I was right, the prologue was bloody amazing. So, let's get into the review of the book entitled The Watchers by A.M Shine.
By Annie Kapurabout a year ago in Geeks
Book Review: "The Devil's Beat" by Robert Edric
Robert Edric is an author I am still getting interested in after reading his book The London Satyr. I am not going to lie to you, it took me a bit longer to actually get into this one since it was a slow start and I felt like the atmosphere wasn't all there to begin with. I was wrong though, the slow start was actually part and parcel to the story and possibly would not have worked as well if we were simply thrown into it. Between the two of them, The London Satyr was slightly better in terms of writing and slightly more interesting in terms of story, but this book here was also great in its own way.
By Annie Kapurabout a year ago in Geeks
Re-reading: "Fingersmith" by Sarah Waters
So a few days ago, I had an itch to re-read a great book I'd read a couple of years ago called Fingersmith by Sarah Waters. It is a great book and the problem I'm having this time is because I know the story, I'm seeing other things that I didn't see before and pretty much losing my mind over it. The main question I have is: what is the point of the body?
By Annie Kapurabout a year ago in Geeks
