Annie Kapur
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I am:
🙋🏽‍♀️ Annie
đź“š Avid Reader
đź“ť Reviewer and Commentator
🎓 Post-Grad Millennial (M.A)
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I have:
đź“– 300K+ reads on Vocal
🫶🏼 Love for reading & research
🦋/X @AnnieWithBooks
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🏡 UK
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Book Review: "Utopia Avenue" by David Mitchell
Honestly, I am slightly biased seeing as David Mitchell is one of my personal favourite authors ever. He is able to create such brilliant realities within his novels such as “The Bone Clocks”, “Slade House” or, his magnum opus, “Cloud Atlas” which was made into a film with Tom Hanks and Ben Whishaw in 2012. One thing that this book does that the others do not is that it takes a single reality and shows it to us through this psychological evolution. The other novels tend to span over different realities and then turn and come back on themselves. This novel is, wait for it…linear. Linear realities are not really very common in the wonderful literary world of David Mitchell and guess what? I like it.
By Annie Kapur6 years ago in Geeks
"Down and Out in Paris and London" by George Orwell
This is a book I read once whilst I was in school and not again until recently, about last year. I had completely forgotten all about it and now, I feel like it’s so important to talk about my first reading experience of it because it was such a memorable study of Orwell. By the age of fourteen, I only knew George Orwell as writing “Animal Farm”, “1984” and “Keep the Aspidistra Flying” and yet, I had never even heard of this book before. When I began reading it, I realised that it wasn’t anything like any of George Orwell novel I had ever read. This one felt more realistic, it felt more like my own world and yet, it was so different to my own as well. I remember my first reading experience being so immersive that when I actually finished it, I went back to read certain quotations and pages again. Especially the ones about the economy and the deception of large companies and organisations. When I came back to read it again, I was about twenty-three and I noticed so much more than I did before, especially having experienced more about the key themes in my own life and times. It was like reading an autobiography and I know that it is supposed to be, but I have to wonder how much of it is completely true - it’s just in my nature.
By Annie Kapur6 years ago in Geeks
"The Brothers" by Masha Gessen
I read this book when I was about twenty years old, so around a year after the book was actually released and honestly, this book scared the living daylights out of me. I don’t think I slept well for a long time after reading it and yet, when it was finished, I read it over and over - trying to make myself believe that it wasn’t real. But the only problem is that all of it was real. It all actually happened and not a single detail had been missed out. This is a book that is basically our generation’s answer to Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood” and like Capote’s novel it takes two people from a very human background and sticks them in a situation that endangers them, turns them inside out and indoctrinates them. I have read this book so many times and I think that it should be required reading in high schools all over the world. It is one of those books that teaches you about how people can just turn bad because of their struggles, can commit crimes because of their problems and can hurt others purely out of the want to cause chaos and dread in every single person around them. This book is all about the two brothers that committed the horrifying Boston Marathon Bombings in April, 2013. I remember seeing it on the news and really, I don’t think I had ever seen such a horrific sight on TV since the Twin Towers came down. To think that the living brother is only a year or so older than me makes me want to be sick. He is and will always be an absolutely terrible human being.
By Annie Kapur6 years ago in Geeks
"Billy Budd, Sailor" by Herman Melville
I first read this book when I was in school and it was shortly after I read Moby-Dick by the same author. The real reason that I initially picked up this shorter work by Herman Melville was initially because I recognised the author’s name and in fact, I thought stupidly that they were a part of some series. Even though I was disappointed when they weren’t a part of some series, I read it anyway and I’m going to be perfectly honest that the first time I read it, I didn’t get it. So I read it again because I thought I’d missed something - and then it hit me. This book is a religious allegory of the treatment of Jesus by the Romans. The way in which people like Clagart treat Billy Budd is a very similar situation but it is when Billy Budd reacts that he is punished and it is for this punishment that everyone else suffers greatly. I only realised later that there were many literary criticisms published on this book and honestly, they were all so interesting because I had such an extensive memory of reading and experiencing the book. I could really get lost in those articles that examined the instances of violence and punishment in so much grand detail. I have been amazed with every piece of literary criticism I have found on this book so far and hopefully, I will find more soon.
By Annie Kapur6 years ago in Geeks
"The Haunting of Hill House" by Shirley Jackson
I first read this book when I was about fourteen years’ old and honestly I can say that I lost a lot of sleep afterwards. I found it in the library and the copy was a bit tattered and old, it looked like it had been there for a while and I took it home to read at night time. Honestly, I didn’t think it was going to be that bad because by that time, I’d already read and watched William Peter Blatty’s “The Exorcist” and read a bit of Stephen King. I was pretty solid during my teens. But this book is a book that literally chilled me because different to all of those, it was a book in which your mind is completely turned and twisted and even the language makes you swallow your pride. The book is a reality of one woman who slowly loses it and yet, you lose it with her. It’s almost impossible not to feel the book in your body whilst your going through the insanity of its history, its story and every single one of its three dimensional, dark and flawed characters. Before you ask, I wasn’t a big fan of the TV show even though I did watch it - it didn’t seem to have anything similar to the book but the name. I hope they don’t do the same thing with “The Turn of the Screw” by Henry James. I really hope they don’t. But, Carla Gugino was stunning as always.
By Annie Kapur6 years ago in Horror
"Absalom, Absalom!" by William Faulkner
Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner is probably one of my favourite novels of all time, and if you remember my post on my top five favourite novels ever you would’ve noticed that Faulkner’s epic drama is at number five. Clearly one of the greatest novels ever written, Faulkner’s story tells the tale of a man called Thomas Sutpen who, with too much greed and power gathers his machiavellian self to commit to a life of the American Dream in the most Southern Gothic way ever imagined. But, as his life comes down crumbling around him like the Gardens of Babylon, this Biblical-Scaled tragedy is far darker than it first seems. I remember first reading this when I was sixteen years’ old and I immediately fell in love with Faulkner’s writing style. It was the first Faulkner I read and straight afterwards, I began “Light in August” and “As I Lay Dying” - I finished his entire bibliography only recently because for some reason I missed “Intruder in the Dust” for about six years until three months ago. But, in my re-reads of Absalom, Absalom!, I can honestly say that I have discovered far more about the Southern Gothic than I ever got from any other work of literature ever.
By Annie Kapur6 years ago in Geeks
"A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini
I wouldn’t be so surprised, a lot of Asian Girls have this as one of their favourite books ever because for the first time, we get a raw insight into what life is like for the women we are in the war. I read it for the first time maybe a year or so after it was released. It was released in 2007 and I read it in 2009 - so there we go. I loved this book from the very first time I read it. I re-read the book in 2012 because we had a read of it in school and then, I re-read it again in 2015 because I just felt like it and I was in the middle of university needing some respite. It’s one of those books that no matter how many times you read it - it will never fail to move you. It moves you emotionally and psychologically to a different place and the way in which it tells this story of women during a horrid war is almost too heartbreaking to read. The ending brings it all together and makes it half worth while and also leaves us with heartache for our characters. It’s a saga and a journey and definitely Khaled Hosseini’s greatest novel.
By Annie Kapur6 years ago in Geeks
"The Talented Mr. Ripley" by Patricia Highsmith
When I was about twelve or thirteen, I found this book in the school library and obviously, due to the fact that it was bright red and the book next to it was bright greenish-blue (“Strangers on a Train”) I picked them both up and took them home with me. Both of them had an equally profound impact on the way I think about literature but I seem to remember more of my experience reading “The Talented Mr. Ripley”. I was not a huge fan of the film (and I didn’t get around to watching it until I was about fifteen) but the book was something else. When I read this book I felt all of this tension wash over me and I think this book is possibly the reason for many of my trust issues when it comes to meeting new people. All in all, in every re-read of this book I can honestly say that there is a tiny bit of me that feels some sympathy for Tom Ripley, but another bit of me that wants to just simply punch him. When you read it, you figure out how easy it is to become someone else, and yet how difficult it is to keep up the ruse. It’s one of those machiavellian novels where you cannot help but think about the fact that there may be someone out there, doing this exact same thing right now and nobody will ever know.
By Annie Kapur6 years ago in Geeks
"The Beast Within" by Emile Zola
This book was one of my favourite books when I was a teen purely because I thought it was a raucous and raging event of pure irony. It really made me fall in love with Emile Zola’s works, even more than “Therese Raquin” and that’s saying something. It’s a deliciously dark book that you cannot help but love. It’s psychological, at moments it can be terrifying and in some parts it can even make you emotional. I think that this is possibly Zola’s greatest effort at the novel and has a brilliant sense of futurism to it that many fail to recognise. It is Zola’s magnum opus and I’ve read it quite a few times since. It’s a brilliant novel in which you learn a new thing about the psychological aspect every time you revisit it.
By Annie Kapur6 years ago in Geeks
“The House of the Spirits” by Isabel Allende
I first read this book whilst I was in university, I was about 20 years’ old and it was the first semester of the new year. I spent a lot of time reading this book and so, I got it completed in just under two days. The reading experience of it was absolutely brilliant and so very immersive. For the next year and half I could not stop talking about it. I kept recommending it to everyone and everyone I knew who had read it, loved it so very much. I was completely enamoured with the characters, the atmosphere and the whole rich cultural history of the book. I read it more than once obviously because this book changed my perception of the entire aspect of Latin American Fiction altogether. It was one of those books which allowed my scope to expand ten-fold and after that, I proceeded to read everything by Isabel Allende. But nothing was quite as an experience as “The House of the Spirits”.
By Annie Kapur6 years ago in Geeks
"Pensées" by Blaise Pascal
Pensées by Blaise Pascal, also known as “thoughts” in English, is one of the most heavily disputed texts in the history of Catholic Theology. This is mostly because of the order of the text since it was published after the death of its author. Initially, the second and complete edition was first published in 1670 but the more popular translation of the text into English by WF Trotter was published in 1958 and there have been other translations in between, each with their own approach to not only the translations of certain more philosophical French phrases, but they also have differentiating interpretations of the order of the text and the way in which they are organised.
By Annie Kapur6 years ago in Geeks
“The Heart is a Lonely Hunter” by Carson McCullers
I first read this book in my teens after finding it in the local library and I was absolutely enamoured with it. I fell in love with the book almost immediately and there was something incredibly inspiring about it. Carson McCullers is an incredible writer and her style of prose has always been so emotionally driven that she is possibly one of my favourite writers of all time. My first reading experience of this book was sublime. I didn’t need anyone to tell me to read it or recommend it to me, I found it and it was well worth the find. I felt like I’d stumbled across a goldmine. It totally changed my opinion of American Literature, I realised that there was a whole world out there I hadn’t read yet and that Carson McCullers was one of the authors who started the process for me. You would not believe how happy I was.
By Annie Kapur6 years ago in Geeks
