Annie Kapur
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I am:
🙋🏽♀️ Annie
📚 Avid Reader
📝 Reviewer and Commentator
🎓 Post-Grad Millennial (M.A)
***
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📖 300K+ reads on Vocal
🫶🏼 Love for reading & research
🦋/X @AnnieWithBooks
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🏡 UK
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Book Review: "Intermezzo" by Sally Rooney
Sally Rooney's novels tended to be a hit and miss for me. Normal People was the first book I'd read by her which, admittedly, completely put me off all of her writing and I hadn't bothered to read more until recently. I don't know what made me give her another go, but Beautiful World, Where Are You? was fantastic and Conversations with Friends wasn't too bad either. I was beginning to enjoy my traversing into the Rooney-verse with all of its inspiration very clearly taken from Woolfian writing (though, I would happily change that adjective to describe Virginia Woolf's influence to 'Woolfish' given half a chance). Intermezzo was perhaps one of the most anticipated books of the last few years and unfortunately, there are a few things I need to grapple with.
By Annie Kapurabout 15 hours ago in Geeks
Book Review: "The Substance of Civilisation" by Stephen L. Sass
There are many different substances throughout history that make up the way in which we have lived our lives. Stephen L. Sass goes through the materials which sought to make us humans and shape our meaning with it. From the clay era in which we are shown that even though we are known to use clay, we have no idea what kind of accident brought it about all the way through to the 'silicon' age - the author makes it clear that throughout history we all have one thing in common: we wanted to revolutionise our materials for production. We have always wanted to create something to make our lives easier - and that's what we have been doing since the dawn of humanity.
By Annie Kapura day ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Agatha Christie" by Lucy Worsley (Pt.4)
This review covers chapter 31 through to chapter 41 (the end of the book). *** So, first of all, Rosalind gets remarried (I definitely didn't see that one coming) to a man named Anthony Hicks. But that's not really the story, it's a representation of Agatha's life returning to something more normal and her daughter being up and about again, in some spirits. Agatha's life really returns to normal when she continues writing and though, in the chapters we cover, it is seen that she slows down her productivity - she definitely doesn't do anything to decrease the sales.
By Annie Kapur3 days ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Agatha Christie" by Lucy Worsley (Pt.3)
This review covers chapter 24 through to chapter 30 *** The back and forth of whether to marry Max is described by Lucy Worsley as troubling for Agatha. She was aware of the mistake she made by marrying Archie and didn't want to make the same one. Max hadn't told his father, whom he lived with, of the engagement - but was adamant he wanted to marry a woman almost fifteen years' older than him. The differences between Archie and Max are again, made even more pronounced by the fact that Archie wanted to play golf and be away from Agatha and Max wanted to read her Ancient Greek Poetry and be around her always. Lucy Worsley paints us a picture of Agatha's life through these two men - one of which treated her badly, the other who is a shy, but gentle person.
By Annie Kapur4 days ago in Geeks
The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
A masterpiece of modernist fiction, The Good Soldier was first published in 1915. Subtitled A Tale of Passion, it serves to be Ford's analysis of deception and moral ambiguity and what that means when relationships begin to disintegrate. A great example (if overlooked) of the 'unreliable narrator', this book is a highly influential one which, if you're looking for an immersive classic, this is the one you want to turn towards.
By Annie Kapur4 days ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Agatha Christie" by Lucy Worsley (Pt.2)
This review covers chapter 13 through to the end of chapter 23. *** After the birth of her daughter, Rosalind - Agatha Christie seemingly sinks deep into domestic life. She learns to make foods, and the author makes a wry comment about how cooking was now considered too interesting for servants alone and how Virginia Woolf accidentally baked her wedding ring into a dish. Agatha Christie and Virginia Woolf were contemporaries yes, but they are two very different women. For example: Agatha Christie was not yet part of a great writing circle, whereas the richly born and richly married Woolf was part of the Bloomsbury Group. But nonetheless, Agatha Christie would continue to cook and write and yet, her husband was not too interested in her cooking at all.
By Annie Kapur5 days ago in Geeks
Boys Don't Read?
It's very clear that by this stage of the post-modern world we have entered the post-literate stage. A few years' back people were using the phrase 'post-truth' to describe the presidency and its lies and later on, the term post-capitalist popped up. But what does the term 'post-literate' actually mean and why are we getting it all wrong?
By Annie Kapur5 days ago in Psyche
Book Review: "Agatha Christie" by Lucy Worsley (Pt.1)
This section covers the introduction all the way through to chapter 12. Well, perhaps you already know that recently I finished reading Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley after finding it in the shop of the Jane Austen centre just after my birthday. Now, I have moved on to yet another Lucy Worsley biography, yet another well-researched and entertainingly written piece of some considerable detail. Agatha Christie proves so far, to be a wonderful read and, as we press on I hope it will continue to let me into the life and times of one of literature's greatest introverts.
By Annie Kapur6 days ago in Geeks
I Am Emmanuel Goldstein
The packing floor was drenched with rain through a hole in the roof that nobody had bothered to fix, she stared into it as the bell rang signalling her lunch break. Her book open, she opened up a chicken salad and ate with one hand, reading with the other. Julia chewed silently at the back of the room and read Anna Karenina, struggling to keep the book in one hand since it was so big. She was roughly halfway through and was beginning to think about how rich, decadent and parasitic this society had to be for their biggest problem to be whether a woman was cheating on her husband or not. She was taken out of the story by another woman who turned on the television with a broom, poking it until she found the 'on' button. The static fuzzed about and then that weird show began to play.
By Annie Kapur6 days ago in Fiction
Book Review: "How We Love" by Clementine Ford
How We Love isn't a book about teaching you how to love, it isn't even a book about the correct way to love. It is a book that tells us the different ways in which love can impact our relationships with ourselves. Now, I may think romantic love is a representation of stupidity, but the way in which the writer describes the ideas of selflessness that is required for all types of love shows us that they possibly aren't all that different within us. She admits that she has made her own mistakes and she doesn't shy away from the difficult topics, and after a lengthy introduction in which we are introduced to the way in which the writer realised that loving boys wasn't worth the returns (and swiftly moved on to women instead) - we are met with the opening in which she talks of her mother's cancer and death.
By Annie Kapur7 days ago in Geeks
Book Review: "I Feel Bad About My Neck" by Nora Ephron
Back when I read The Most of Nora Ephron I complained about the fact that the ricotta omelette was absolutely terrible (it was, it was so disgusting I cannot believe she would eat that). But the book itself was absolutely hilarious. Universally female, funny and conversational - Nora Ephron didn't really hold back from showing us the frustrations and microaggresisons women experience every day. Even if that meant they were feeding it to themselves. I Feel Bad About My Next and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman is another one of these books where Nora Ephron takes us on a funny journey through the thoughts of womanhood.
By Annie Kapur8 days ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Call Them By Their True Names" by Rebecca Solnit
Rebecca Solnit previously wrote an incredible book called Recollections of My Non-Existence in which my review called it 'fantastic'. Solnit has a special talent for creating universality in her experiences through her incredible use of language. Articulate and yet, not overly verbose, charming without being saccharine, Rebecca Solnit is one of the best writers of our day and is bound to be remembered as a Joan Didion kind of figure in the future. A woman who's craft is as important as the story she writes. And there are very few more important stories to tell than what has been going down with our friends across the Atlantic for the past decade or so. Let us therefore, not mince our words. We should take these atrocities and call them by their true names...
By Annie Kapur9 days ago in Geeks
