Annie Kapur
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šš½āāļø Annie
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"The Book and the Brotherhood" by Iris Murdoch
Within this text there is a clear account of each character being tortured by three things: their identity, change and the past. The book represents the way in which the characters evolve through their understandings of themselves and the growth of each of their relationships. From the death of Gerardās father to Tamarās strange and aloof attitude - this book constructs character identities from their past experiences and gives the reader reason to believe that now that all is said and done, their lives are falling apart at the seams. Each and every one of them has an individual identity and yet, their identity is entirely different to what the reader believes of them after reading the book.
By Annie Kapur6 years ago in Geeks
10 Books: Existential Men
Men have constantly been the source for great soliloquies of existentialism in literature. Just thinking about some such as the speeches of Hamlet in William Shakespeareās eponymous play, Victor Frankenstein in Mary Shelleyās magnum opus and in the works of Dostoevsky, Gogol, Victor Hugo, and many more. These books always have men who are mentally disturbed by either their own existence, are disturbed by someone elseās existence, feel either hunted, alienated from reality, treated like outsiders for some reason or have been rejected, resented or hated for reasons that are not entirely fair, but you can definitely see where the other characters are coming from.
By Annie Kapur6 years ago in Geeks
20 Books of 2020 (Pt.35)
We have finally hit 700 and I can honestly say thank you to everyone who has been joining me on this journey. Recommendations have been welcome from every corner of the globe whilst I have also been expanding my knowledge of the modern classics. I also want to thank you for joining me in my 'first impression' articles where I spend around 2'000 words on a book I've been analysing and write about what my very first impression of themes and plot were. It has been incredibly interesting this year since I've had a lot more time to read during lockdown and yet, I feel like I'm not exhausted or burnt out at all. I find that I've become more social in my reading - giving and receiving recommendations, people actually caring about what I think about books and I've made a ton of new friends.
By Annie Kapur6 years ago in Geeks
"The Red and the Black" by Stendhal
Itās been a long, long while since I read āThe Red and the Blackā by Stendhal. I first read it when I was sixteen and the reason I read it was because I accidentally mistook it for āThe Charterhouse of Parmaā by the same author. I was actually looking for āThe Charterhouse of Parmaā and picked up āThe Red and the Blackā from the shelf instead. Itās recorded in my diary as me making a strange mistake and not really looking at what I was picking up. But it proved to be an amazing book anyways and ironically, I enjoyed it far more than I enjoyed āThe Charterhouse of Parmaā when I got around to reading that one. My first reading experience of āThe Red and the Blackā was admittedly a little difficult. There was a lot of political language I needed to look up and so, I kept my dictionary at hand again. When I finished the book, I had a sense of real pride and yet, I found the book to be very satirical and actually somewhat humorous about the way political position and social hierarchy were seen in France during the time of the author himself. The book changed my opinion on French Literature forever because until then, I had only been exposed to either horrors or books like āLes Miserablesā and āNotre Dame de Parisā. I had never really read anything that directly made fun of itself. It was a cool and refreshing idea of France and I thoroughly enjoyed my experience of it.
By Annie Kapur6 years ago in Geeks
The Best Works: William Faulkner
William Faulkner is one of my favourite writers in the world. From a young age, I was interested in Faulknerās divine writing style, his southern gothic atmosphere, his Shakespearean and Biblical-scaled tragedies. Most importantly, I think I was interested in his characters the most. Faulknerās works are known for being filled with intense darkness, destruction and the danger of humans when they are taken out of their natural environments. A satire on the heavy industrialisation of the USA during and after the times of the Civil War, Faulknerās writing was often heaped in darkness, tragedy, well-written and almost poetically style prose along with characters that you couldāve seen coming from either a Shakespeare Play, the Bible or a 18th Century Opera. These almost Byronic heroes tend to take the Hamlet-like form and often end up worse than they began. Death overtakes in many cases and the natural world around the character is harmful, turned against them, as they move through the world and get out of their habitats, they long for release from this new, self-destructive lifestyle that brings them nothing but greed and misery.
By Annie Kapur6 years ago in Geeks
The Best Works: Nathaniel Hawthorne
Biography Born in Salem, Massachusetts, Nathaniel Hawthorn was one of the key 19th Century American Writers of the Dark Romantic Era. But, he wasn't always the great writer that we appreciate him as today, he started off somewhere else.
By Annie Kapur6 years ago in Geeks
"The Aeneid" by Virgil
Itās been about nine or ten years since I first read Virgilās āAeneidā and thereās a strange reason behind why I even read it in the first place. I found it in a beautiful copy at a bookstore. It was clothbound and patterned. The reason I actually picked it up was because I was watching a strange cartoon on the internet the previous day that was all to do with romans, I canāt remember exactly what it was but when I opened āThe Aeneidā, the cartoons reminded me of the ones from the video - just drawn a billion times better. My first reading experience of āThe Aeneidā was actually really strange because I remember trying to bullet point exactly what was happening all the way through the book and yet, I didnāt really understand what happened at the end because it didnāt really end at all. This book really ended up changing my opinion on the possibilities for poetry. It was a whole new poem with a great amount of drama. It was an epic in every sense of the word and I loved it so much that I ended up reading it every year since. I studied it for my undergraduate dissertation and I even got some people in to it online as well. Itās a brilliant poem with some great characters and history.
By Annie Kapur6 years ago in Geeks
July 4th: A Celebration of American Literature
American Independence Day is a great day, even though I am not American and nor do I live in America, I like to see how our friends across the Atlantic are celebrating this auspicious occasion. Filled with fireworks, party foods, gatherings of friends and family, this is set to be incredible day complete with unforgettable memories and happiness all around. American Independence Day is obviously the day where America celebrate being free of their overlords in Britain and became their own country, their own power and their own land. I think itās a brilliant day to celebrate the works of fiction and nonfiction that came out of America due to its rapidly changing scene. From the late 1700s to the present, the USA has undergone so many changes in their artistic movements and so many social reforms that it is difficult to really count where one ends and another begins. I would like to celebrate alongside our friends across the Atlantic by offering a book set in every state of the USA. From the Southern Gothic to the Jazz Age, from the Harlem Renaissance to the 80s Transgressive Era and from Civil War Literature to the Post-Modern Destruction of the American Dream. American Literature has so much to offer us in terms of characters like the loveable George and Lennie from Steinbeckās āOf Mice and Menā or the regrets of characters like Thomas Sutpen from Faulknerās āAbsalom, Absalom!ā, the terrifying prospect felt by John Unger in Fitzgeraldās āDiamond as Big as the Ritzā and even the innocence of one of the most beloved character from any American Literature Work ever, little Scout Finch of Harper Leeās āTo Kill a Mockingbirdā. From fiction to nonfiction, poetry and back again, American Literature is endless in its surprises and innovationā¦
By Annie Kapur6 years ago in Geeks
"Miss Ravenelās Conversion from Secession to Loyalty" by John W. De Forest
This book represents the way in which learning from each other can be a struggle especially in the midst of a war. But, the American Civil War is more than just war politics and a class struggle, it is also about race and slavery and humanity. There is also a great amount of violent language and the exploration I did into this book was to do with the way in which the characters talk about the war and what the reader learns about the view of the war throughout the novel. We get firsthand character judgements and a range of differing opinions to the way in which the war impacts the younger generation - both positively and negatively. When the reader encounters more humane characters, they are in no way perfect or even progressive for our own day, but when it comes to the American Civil War and the other characters who are brilliant examples of the racially insensitive and the racially abusive stereotypes, it makes the progressive characters obviously look more progressive than they actually are. Thus, we have this range of different characters that mostly depend on the way in which other characters too are viewed in the book.
By Annie Kapur6 years ago in Geeks
10 Books: Fallen Women
Fallen Women in literature actually has its own genre concerning women who gain agency through marriage and love affairs etc. and then, have their secrets found out or are violently mistreated and so, fall from this agency back down to either abject poverty or even worse, death. The literature of fallen women were most famous during the 1700s and 1800s with women being seen as more than alive for their agency in the 1900s and 2000s. Be that as it may, we can find fallen women in literature even in early eras of artistic movements. In Ancient Greece, we have the Orestian Trilogy and Sophoclesā Theban Plays which both contain fallen women, and in Shakespeare we can find fallen women in Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Othello and even in aspects of Julius Caesar. The fallen woman sub-genre has been around for ages throughout literary history, but became more and more famous in the decadent eras of the 1700s and 1800s partially because of the adornment of women of the aristocracy. The scandal that was created around women of the richer classes who required to hold themselves with decorum but ended up becoming involved with acts of degeneracy and the such. Readers were very much used to tragedies involving men and so, from the decadent courts of the Enlightenment and Romanticist Era we get women becoming more involved in tragedy, most obviously inspired by the richness and vulgarity of the Baroque and Rococo Styles. Towards the 1900s and 2000s, the āfallen womanā sub-genre became more complex as instead of just having a rich woman who gains agency and falls into tragedy - we get a more complex story. We still have a woman either coming into riches or being above a certain social class, but then, we have a number of turns: familial tragedy, love stories, backdrops of war and sometimes the woman fell from grace before the plot line began and now, she is attempting to redeem herself. It certainly comes into the modern and post-modern eras with style and poise.
By Annie Kapur6 years ago in Geeks
The Best Performances: Margot Robbie
Margot Robbie, I feel, is an often underrated actress. Her range is incredible and her ability to portray characters with a thorough often romantic nature is her forte. As she turns thirty, Margot Robbie already has quite a lot under her belt, being nominated for an Academy Award for her role in "I, Tonya" (2017) which I felt she wholeheartedly deserved but unfortunately didn't win. However, Robbie has also been known to portray comic book characters with Harley Quinn becoming a cultural phenomenon pretty quickly. Margot Robbie has not only proved that she is more than just a pretty face, she is also quick-witted, intelligent and often very down-to-earth, humble and confident in her nature - arriving at interviews with the prime focus of keeping interest on her growing career.
By Annie Kapur6 years ago in Geeks
"Le Morte d'Arthur" by Thomas Malory
When I was a little girl, like a lot of other small children, I liked reading the Arthurian Tales in childrenās form. There were so many of them: The Sword in the Stone, The Knights of the Round Table, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Lancelot and Guinevere etc. But the best thing is that as I grew up, they got more and more sophisticated until I was fifteen and found the two volumes of Le Morte dāArthur by Thomas Malory. It was like discovering a diamond after having nothing but crystals - there werenāt very many words for having the real thing in my hands. I am going to admit I read both volumes in the same day because I just couldnāt put it down. It was everything Iād ever wanted - an adult book made from the books I read as a child. This book completely changed me and changed what I thought about the childrenās stories of my younger days. They really did come from other things. That was all a well and good theory until we got on to the fairy tales and Charles Perrault. Then it just got creepy and weird.
By Annie Kapur6 years ago in Geeks
