literature
Geek literature from the New York Times or the recesses of online. Our favorite stories showcase geeks.
Book Review: "A Spool of Blue Thread" by Anne Tyler
So, I have probably told everyone and their mother how much I love Anne Tyler's writing. Critics (normally male critics) dismiss her as 'sentimental' because they do not have the depth to understand the softness of syllables in contrast to the tension of situational drama. That is their own problem. Anne Tyler's writing often comes across otherwise as the 'everyman' style - this family could be any of ours, this situation could be any of our own and certainly, this story could be told by our friends about their own or by us about our own. It's pretty much an 'everyman' story. I've read numerous books by her so far and I am planning to read all her others, of course my Julian Barnes read and re-read binge will have to continue concurrently. I am finally reliving the books I loved as a teenager (and this time it's not just The Vampire Chronicles. Although, that was a huge part of it).
By Annie Kapur5 years ago in Geeks
"The Maias" by Eça de Queiroz
The Maias: Episodes of Romantic Life is a book by the Portguese author Eça de Queiroz and is about a man who has his life completely turned around, he thinks, by a woman. Ultimately, he finds out some secrets that cause him to nearly have a breakdown and must find his way in world after knowing this incriminating information. It was first published in 1888 and is set during the 1870s and covers mostly the life of the Maias son, Carlos de Maia.
By Annie Kapur5 years ago in Geeks
5 famous works of literature that have withstood the test of time
Classics, are almost universally agreed upon. Most lists include novels by Austen, Bronte, Dickens, and Hardy, which provide fantastic portrayals of life at the time. However, while their ideas and sentiments are still pertinent today, they are not always accessible to the modern reader.
By DAVIS TREVOR AUGUSTUS5 years ago in Geeks
Book Review: "The Childhood of Jesus" by JM Coetzee
I'm going to have to break it to you here and now: I have not read much JM Coetzee. I have read a little bit. I read Disgrace, which is often considered his masterpiece though I didn't considered much of it compared to his book Slow Man which is pretty good and goes along well with another book if you're reading Saramago's Blindness any time soon. Next, I think I read The Death of Jesus some time ago and remembering not really thinking much of it. I have kept trying again with JM Coetzee because though I do not think too much of him, I definitely do not dislike him. I think his stories are fascinating, but there is so much symbolism that there is normally no room for introspection, analysis and having those thoughts about what he actually meant. It is almost too apparent as Animal Farm is about its criticism of the Soviet Union.
By Annie Kapur5 years ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Searching for Caleb" by Anne Tyler
I adore Anne Tyler's writing. I've read her pretty much ever since I was a teenager starting off with her book Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant when I was sixteen. After that, I read books such as The Accidental Tourist and Earthly Possessions. I have returned to her after two years of not reading her works where the last one I read was her newest out at the time (and possibly my favourite out of all of her books) Redhead by the Side of the Road. Her writing is amazing. I tend to differ with people who call her writing 'sentimental' - like The Observer and its 'critic' did. I think that if you cannot understand the softness of the language and its depths, then you come off as fairly underwhelming as a human being. You lack depth and that is on you. As I'm writing this review even, my current book is Anne Tyler's A Spool of Blue Thread.
By Annie Kapur5 years ago in Geeks
Book Review: "A Book of Common Prayer" by Joan Didion
Joan Didion was a superpower of literature and culture, her influence was wide and great and she wrote some books that have touched women from every walk of life. Personally, my favourite book by her is The Year of Magical Thinking which is a nonfiction book that she wrote shortly after the death of her husband and it is all about grief and dealing with such a close loved one passing away. It is truly a beautiful book. I normally love Didion's writing but this book entitled A Book of Common Prayer, failed to impress me in a lot of ways. Much of it felt forced, and a lot of the story felt a bit on the surface. I think that Joan Didion's attempts at fiction novels are not as great as her nonfiction. They are not in any way 'bad' books - they are just outshone by books like The White Album, We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live and of course, The Year of Magical Thinking. I think that this book is a prime example of how Didion's fiction can come off slightly weaker - fiction was never as interesting as her life and work anyways.
By Annie Kapur5 years ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Before She Met Me" by Julian Barnes
Julian Barnes is one of my favourite authors ever. I spent a long time in my teens reading his works and until a few years ago, Arthur and George was my favourite book by him. Recently, that has been replaced by his newer book about the Belle Epoch called The Man in the Red Coat. Julian Barnes is truly one of the greatest literary talents of the 20th and 21st centuries with his deep wit, his characterisation of incredibly realistic people and his nature to make you laugh and cry - both within the matter of a few pages. Julian Barnes is a massively great author and with his new work in 2022, I hope he continues to write even more. This review is about the 1982 novel Before She Met Me.
By Annie Kapur5 years ago in Geeks
Book Review: "A Pale View of Hills" by Kazuo Ishiguro
Published in 1982, this was the first book Kazuo Ishiguro ever wrote and since, it has become a testament to his writing style in which the darker tension lies beneath the surface of the first meaning of the book. Kazuo Ishiguro has always been a brilliant writer from his more commercially known novels such as Never Let Me Go, to his most recent effort Klara and the Sun and all the way to Ishiguro clearly showing off his great prose skills in An Artist of the Floating World and once again to his slightly more confusing novels written less in his classic style but just as interesting as The Unconsoled was. I don't think we ever question whether he is a good writer, just which topic he will try to remove the layers from next. In A Pale View of Hills - Kazuo Ishiguro makes sure that everyone understands that he is here to find your darknesses.
By Annie Kapur5 years ago in Geeks
Breaking The Audience
Breaking The Audience: Methods of Fear Elicitation in Stephen King’s The Shining By Brittany Nunez Abstract: This article analyzes Stephen King’s novel The Shining (1977) using a psychological and formalistic approach. Focus is placed on King’s methods of elicitation of fear in readers, which are argued to be (1) use of narrative elements such as setting, point of view, character, plot, and style in combination with prior successful writing styles by King to make readers feel empathy for the characters and their relatable problems; (2) exploitation of the vulnerable emotional state of the empathetic reader to induce a feeling of dread through specific phobias; (3) grasping at the insecurities of readers and implanting the fear of judgment by those whose opinions have significant meaning to them; and (4) capturing of multiple subgenres of horror to ensure fear is evoked from all readers based on their preferred form of horror. Several examples of narrative elements are provided with relevance to highly relatable themes. Stephen King’s On Writing is used to emphasize how his previously successful writing techniques are used in The Shining. Conclusions from an experiment on induced fear from “Relating Experimentally-Induced Fear to Pre-Existing Phobic Fear in the Human Brain” (Levine et al.) are used to prove the ability to create new forms of fear during heightened vulnerability with an explanation of specific phobias from the text. “From Big Sticks to Talking Sticks” (Davenport) is cited for its analysis of Jack Torrance with relevance to how King wrote this character to tear into the readers’ self-image. Horror is broken down into subcategories as defined in “The Genre of Horror” (Prohaszkova) and these are proven to each be present in The Shining, ensuring a scare from all horror enthusiasts.
By Brittany Nunez5 years ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Talking it Over" by Julian Barnes
As you probably already know, Julian Barnes is one of my all-time favourite writers. He has written many books that I have read, enjoyed, reviewed and even studied, including but probably not limited to: Pulse, The Sense of an Ending, Arthur and George, Flaubert's Parrot, The Lemon Table, The Noise of Time, Metroland, A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters, Cross Channel and, possibly my favourite by him, The Man in the Red Coat. This review is about one book I particularly enjoyed called Talking it Over - with all the major themes that signs it off as a Julian Barnes novel, I cannot for the life of me believe how I have not read this one in the past. But I am still glad I found it.
By Annie Kapur5 years ago in Geeks
Book Review: "A Traveller at the Gates of Wisdom" by John Boyne
Now, it's been a very long time since I have read anything by John Boyne and really, I have missed him a lot. A very long time ago, I read This House is Haunted and even longer before that I read the all-important The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. I knew he wrote other books but after checking the blurb of The Heart's Invisible Furies I was kind of put off seeing that he was writing soppy romance-based stuff now. Recently, I decided to put that aside and check out a book called The Traveller at the Gates of Wisdom and now, I'm stuck because I think that this is possibly one of the best books I've read this year and yet, there are some points that I am really not getting about it. I am stuck on a very divisive fence.
By Annie Kapur5 years ago in Geeks
