literature
Geek literature from the New York Times or the recesses of online. Our favorite stories showcase geeks.
Book Review: "Herzog" by Saul Bellow
I'm not sure how many of you know this but there was one point in my life where I would not read Saul Bellow's novels purely because a few years' ago I got through The Adventures of Augie March with not a lot of the old 'will to live' left in me. I'm sorry if you loved it, but I just thought it went nowhere. The language is pretty good, but he's written objectively better books. I mean Ravelstein is a book I read much too late and yet, it's a masterpiece. I've tried The Adventures of Augie March more than once but, it seems like it's just not a book I'm going to gel with. Henderson the Rain King is also pretty good and here we are on another one: Herzog. Let's take a look...
By Annie Kapurabout a year ago in Geeks
Book Review: "A Very Easy Death" by Simone de Beauvoir
Is anyone obsessed with getting Fitzcarraldo Editions as soon as the price comes down or whenever they're in the library or even on Kindle Unlimited? Yeah I knew it was only me. I have ✨ no money ✨ (I think that is the first time I've ever used those icon things in a post). But anyways, Simone de Beauvoir is not an author I usually like to read often, I find her philosophies on life to be flawed and her feminism to be fair but injected with light Communism. But, I did however have to read this book by her seeing as I was getting an eye-full of it on social media and the price was basically nothing. So here we go...
By Annie Kapurabout a year ago in Geeks
Book Review: "A Girl's Story" by Annie Ernaux
It's the end of April 2025 and I know I always start with the rough dates but I do need to say something about that. Often people ask me how I'm able to release new content every day. This book review probably won't be released until June or something I don't know, I sort of choose them at random by this point. Sometimes I work through chronologically to when I wrote something but other times I release what I think sounds good. The truth is, I've got quite the backlog on here in my drafts. So don't get upset about it, I have been writing like this for a while so there's a lot of stories in my drafts sitting around waiting to be released.
By Annie Kapurabout a year ago in Geeks
Book Review: "HappyHead" by Josh Silver
I love being recommended books in real life, but when I'm recommended a book by a teenager it becomes even better because I can see young people are somewhat still reading. This child explained the book HappyHead to me and I was quite interested. I didn't do anything about that for a long time though and then, an adult recommended the same book to me. It made me think about the teenager who told me about it first and I thought 'well, there's two widely different people telling me about this book, it's got to be good...' - and reader, it was...
By Annie Kapurabout a year ago in Geeks
Book Review: "The Empusium" by Olga Tokarczuk
Olga Tokarczuk is a writer I've read before but admittedly probably not as much as the brodernists of Twitter are pretending they have. I've always found her works difficult to access at first, they are perhaps quite obtuse and a little on the slow start side, but the slow burns at vital moments of the text exude her lyrical confidence more than that. I think it's something special about Olga Tokarczuk's literature and why she won the Nobel Prize in 2018. She definitely has a way with description and how she makes you see the very intellectual side of what are mundane details of life.
By Annie Kapurabout a year ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Liquidation" by Imre Kertész
Yes, I've been back to the library and this time (because they haven't actually done my reservations yet so I'm sad) I have tried to go for a theme. The theme this time was black and white book covers. I know it sounds silly but I really had no other idea. I have currently also been shopping for used books. I love looking for books that other people have read and enjoyed (sometimes they have even annotations and drawings inside which makes it all the more interesting). It's April 2025 and I'm sitting around drinking coffee and listening to podcasts. I've finished Liquidation and all I can say is: what the f-?
By Annie Kapurabout a year ago in Geeks
Book Review: "In Memory of Memory" by Maria Stepanova
"The woven fabric of language decomposes instantly, never to be felt again between the fingers: "I would never say 'lovely', it sounds so common" Gayla admonished me once. And there were other prohibited words I can't recall, her talk of one's people, gossip about old friends, neighbours, little reports from a lonely and self-consuming life." - In Memory of Memory by Maria Stepanova
By Annie Kapurabout a year ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Hitch-22" by Christopher Hitchens
“Flaubert was right when he said that our use of language is like a cracked kettle on which we bang out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we need to move the very stars to pity.”- Hitch-22 by Christopher Hitchens
By Annie Kapurabout a year ago in Geeks
Book Review: "On Swift Horses" by Shannon Pufahl
It's late April and I can honestly say that there are some cool library books still about even though I think they've given up on my reservations (I have a lot of them and every time I go, they are never done). Anyways, I decided to pick up this book purely because I see it every time I go to the library, it's like it's calling me. On Swift Horses is a book about a woman called Muriel and her brother-in-law Julius, two people who live very separate lives in very separate places - neither definitely contented and both in an odd position in life. As they navigate their new-found lives, their hearts long for something else. I have to say that this book is something else and I am so glad I found it.
By Annie Kapurabout a year ago in Geeks
Lotte in Weimar by Thomas Mann
Lotte in Weimar, published in German in 1939 as Lotte in Weimar: Der Roman von Goethe, was written by Thomas Mann whilst he was living in exile from Nazi Germany. The novel sees Mann's turn to historical fiction and reflects on his engagement with German cultural identity and history. Mann based the story on the 1816 real-life visit of Charlotte Buff, (a former love interest of the young Johann Wolfgang von Goethe), to Weimar, where Goethe was then a famed public figure. Mann used this event as a framework to delve into Goethe’s life, influence, and the psyche of the emerging Germany.
By Annie Kapurabout a year ago in Geeks
Book Review: "The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell" by Robert Dugoni
I'm back to reading those books that I have never heard of by authors I have never heard of. If you're struggling on what to read, then I suggest you let Amazon Kindle Unlimited do the choosing for you. Go for something you like the initial read of and run from there. You will find that even though the big corporations are, in fact, evil - this is probably the best way to discover books you would have never otherwise seen around and about. This is how I discovered this John Irving-esque novel entitled The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell - a boy born into strange circumstances with something that makes him special, but left out amongst his peers.
By Annie Kapurabout a year ago in Geeks
