literature
Geek literature from the New York Times or the recesses of online. Our favorite stories showcase geeks.
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
Background and Context: This is going to be pretty short but 'Northanger Abbey' is my favourite Jane Austen novel. Which is yours? If you haven't read any Austen then don't feel bad - 'Northanger Abbey' is probably one of the simpler ones to read if you would like to start there! Happy reading to you and yours.
By Annie Kapurabout 2 hours ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Queen Victoria" by Lucy Worsley (Pt. 2)
After the first couple of chapters, we have a good grounding for the raising of the Princess Victoria. Lucy Worsley takes us on a journey through malaise and sickness in which many did not know what was wrong with Victoria but, then we cover the beautiful love story she has with Albert. It's not quite all sunshine and rainbows but it's close enough. Lucy Worsley makes sure that we know that Victoria initially met Ernest (Albert's brother) and then continued to meet Albert. We are reminded that Victoria did not marry Albert until he had learnt a sufficient amount of English to be able to communicate effectively and we revisit that part of the introduction in our minds, in which Victoria states that after the death of Albert, she shall have to think for herself or at least, by herself, and that seems to scare her.
By Annie Kapurabout 7 hours ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Queen Victoria" by Lucy Worsley (Pt. 1)
5/5 - What a fantastic way to start a book on Queen Victoria! *** There is a certain definitive agreement in calling Queen Victoria the "most recogniseable woman in British history" as she seems to be absolutely everywhere. Near where I live there's a 'Victoria Square' and when I travel around the country there seems to be sporadic references or statues of Queen Victoria usually sculpted in all of her regalia, overseeing the public space for all eternity. Lucy Worsley definitely paints a familiarly British portrait of her in the introduction, one that we will all recognise: though we accept her as being a queen in history and a bloody good one at that, she is still a complex figure with a more than complicated legacy. If we were asked whether we like her, there would be no straight answer.
By Annie Kapura day ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Silent Film: A Very Short Introduction" by Donna Kornhaber
You all probably know how much I love silent movies. In my opinion there is something about older cinema that 21st century cinema simply cannot capture. Pre-1960 we had actors with multiple talents, great amounts of malleability and incredible charisma. Nowadays, I would say that is definitely feigning and films has become a lot more vapid, about the 'star quality' and how much plastic surgery one person can get rather than the actual acting talent of the individual. Silent film is the one era of film that cinema has to thank for being the start of it all. From 1895 to the late 1920s, we saw great amounts of changes and business going on and Donna Kornhaber captures it all.
By Annie Kapur2 days ago in Geeks
The Big Book Review: "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman (Pt.3)
Read Parts 1 and 2 here: Welcome back to this series on Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, part of the 'Big Book Review' in which we look at sections of a book every month in extreme detail, focusing on what they have to teach us about their topics. Part 3, entitled Overconfidence looks at what businesses, experts and individuals may overlook or misread due to their own faith in themselves. A more extreme and intricate form of the 'Dunning-Kruger Effect'. If you haven't read parts 1 and 2 then I suggest you read those before continuing, of course these articles will cross-reference each other and ideas from previous chapters are not going to be re-explained unfortunately (for the sake of length and word count).
By Annie Kapur3 days ago in Geeks
Book Review: "The Details" by Ia Genberg
This is one of those books where I browsed the bookshelves for about a minute before landing on something that felt more Virginia Woolf than linear narrative. The Details is a story about love and grief, a family that isn't liked and a family that is quite literally chosen. It's about sickness and emotional destruction, it has a main character who is constantly trying to make sense of their past. Like the book I Wished by Dennis Cooper, this book feels like a stream-of-consciousness where we are invited into the world of the main character, we are pulled into their thoughts and even though we have only just met them, we are sitting and holding their hand as they speak to us from a sickbed, from a bedroom or even from a reel of photographs representing each important memory.
By Annie Kapur3 days ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Best Woman" by Rose Dommu
If you're looking around a bookshop and can't find anything you like then go to the 'trending' shelf and just pick a random thing without thinking about it, take it to a chair and start reading. If you read more than ten pages in one sitting, get the book. That's a rule that I think is quite good to follow. This is how I managed to find Best Woman by Rose Dommu. I wasn't looking for anything, I couldn't find anything I was meant to be looking for and so, I went to the 'trending' shelf and picked up the first thing I saw. I regret nothing.
By Annie Kapur4 days ago in Geeks
Book Review: "I Wished" by Dennis Cooper
I have to tell you about this: I walked into the bookshop and sat down with the first book I found, it was titled I Wished by Dennis Cooper and told the story of George Miles - the addiction, the love, the rock and roll and everything in between. You guys know how much I adore the literature of the 2SLGBTQIA++ community and well, this is no exception. I Wished is a severely emotional, heartbreaking stream-of-consciousness narrative that I have no idea why more people haven't read. Queer Lit, Manchester - I love you for without you I would never have found this beautiful and earth-shattering novella.
By Annie Kapur5 days ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Anne Boleyn: 500 Years of Lies" by Hayley Nolan
When I first started this book and read some of the cutesy side-notes (such as, and I shit you not, the use of hashtags in the introduction), I sat back in my chair, covered my face and thought "oh, here the f- we go..." The final boss of the millennial quirkdom 3rd-wave-feminist social-media-brained pseudo-historical pop-culture middle-class putrid quippy bullshit. Here the f- we go, indeed. Then I realised that I am pretty much the same and though this took me a while I also realised: that is basically what I do here. Atop of this, Hayley Nolan isn't exactly wrong. Anne Boleyn's records are written mostly by sociopathic men both past and present who were either so regarded with religion that they didn't know where the sun went at night (and they didn't care, but they definitely pretended it was a flex) OR, they are so concerned with her appearance, they forget she was a person - typical of the soft-brained male-dominated academic world.
By Annie Kapur6 days ago in Geeks
The Face of Another by Kōbō Abe
The Face of Another was first published in 1964 and hearkens back to the themes and ideas once presented by Franz Kafka, especially when it comes to the book's theories of identity and the self. Samuel Beckett is another writer the author is often compared to since the novel blends absurdity and existentialism with these strange and sideways explorations of human nature and how we become slowly alienated from our true purpose.
By Annie Kapur7 days ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Parade's End" by Ford Madox Ford (Pt. 4)
Rating: 5/5 - what a fitting end to such a heartfelt novel of war! *** This volume is set on a single June day in the years after the First World War. While the earlier volumes charted the approach to and experience of war, this instalment turns to its aftermath. Here is Ford commenting on a society stripped of its old certainties and confronting the psychological and moral wreckage left behind. It feels more like the ideas presented by an Evelyn Waugh novel. Is it really time to let go of the past? Yes, yes it is.
By Annie Kapur7 days ago in Geeks
