Annie Kapur
Bio
200K+ Reads on Vocal.
English Lecturer
🎓Literature & Writing (B.A)
🎓Film & Writing (M.A)
🎓Secondary English Education (PgDipEd) (QTS)
📍Birmingham, UK
Stories (1979/0)
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Perhaps one of the best known modern plays in all of 20th century theatre, ‘Death of a Salesman’ is a 1949 play written by Arthur Miller. Set in Brooklyn, it takes place over two acts and portrays the tragedy of the Loman household - specifically that of protagonist Willy Loman. It deals with the crushing of the American Dream and forces the audience to confront the harsh truth about what America has become. It ended up winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play and as it is revived many times we in literature and drama hope it can continue its influence for years to come.
By Annie Kapurabout 9 hours ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Out of the Shadows" by Walt Odets
“True self-acceptance is readily recognizable: it is largely free of needless explanation, apology, and pandering, and free of reactive, unrealistic self-confidence and compensatory false pride. Self-acceptance allows realistic self-confidence, which is significantly unhinged in adulthood from the expectations and approval of others. In the end, authentic self-acceptance—or the lack of it—is almost the entirety of what defines a life. Without true self-acceptance, there is no true self-confidence or self-realization. Without self-realization, lives feel squeezed, purposeless, and truncated, cut short long before physical death finally ends them entirely.” - Out of the Shadows by Walt Odets
By Annie Kapur2 days ago in Geeks
Book Review: "The Painter's Daughters" by Emily Howes
Now, I had heard a little bit about Thomas Gainsborough's daughters and the fact that one of them was less in health than the other but I did not know much of the small details of the story such as the strictness of the mother or the way in which the father wanted them to live outside the city. This may be written like a fiction novel but it is based within the facts of some very real lives. Thomas Gainsborough was a famed English painter and yet, his daughters were central to his world. Producing many paintings of them, he seems to have spent a lot of time with the girls as they were growing up, possibly fuelling these wild imaginations that they had.
By Annie Kapur3 days ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Annie Bot" by Sierra Greer
You can probably imagine why I picked this book up: I love anything with my name on it. From a musical based on the eponymous protagonist which is a kind-hearted red-headed child to this new-age dystopian novel about human connection. This book was a lot more complex than I thought it would be from simply reading the blurb. To be honest, if it didn't have my name in the title, I probably would not have noticed it for the fact that I tend to steer clear of a lot of dystopian fiction.
By Annie Kapur4 days ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Bright Young Women" by Jessica Knoll
“Absurdly, I placed an order for a Venti Chai Latte while Judge Lambert famously told The Defendant that someday soon a current of electricity would pass through his body until he was pronounced dead by the warden, and that he should, even more absurdly, take care of himself.” - Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll
By Annie Kapur5 days ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Can't Even" by Anne Helen Petersen
I have turned my nonfiction attention to a book about my generation: the millennials. Many books about the millennials state the same sorts of things including: how we grew up and are thus living pieces of the worst economic era since the great depression, how we are basically doomed from the beginning and the newer one is that now we are approaching the middle of our lives, our health is essentially failing us.
By Annie Kapur6 days ago in Geeks
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
When the Second World War broke out, the author of (the yet to be written) ‘The Little Prince’ was a pilot in the French Army and, when Germany beat France, he flew to North America intending to help fight the Nazis - becoming a voice for the French Resistance movement. Drawing on experience of being in the Sahara Desert which were initially outlined in his memoirs written earlier, he is thought to have conceived the idea for what would become one of the greatest children’s stories ever told.
By Annie Kapur7 days ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Tell Me How This Ends" by Jo Leevers
Now, I am a big fan of the BBC Radio 2 Book Club and admittedly, I have to catch up on what they are reading. One of the books they have covered is called Tell Me How This Ends by Jo Leevers. A book which is brilliantly structured with some really great characters, it is honestly one of the best thriller fiction novels I have read this year (sorry to the Dexter series, but you don't really come that close, no matter how beautifully sardonic you are). Jo Leever's writing style brings out individual voices in a way that when you do read the book, is actually a massive achievement. It makes you really feel like you're reading converging stories rather than one writer writing in a few different tones. Leevers has done something quite incredible here.
By Annie Kapur8 days ago in Geeks
Book Review: "The Gravedigger's Daughter" by Joyce Carol Oates
“Three days later on October 29, 1959, the Pontiac registered in the name of Niles Tignor would be discovered, gas tank near-empty, keys on the floorboards beneath the front seat, in a parking lot close by the Greyhound bus station in Rome, New York.” - The Gravedigger's Daughter by Joyce Carol Oates
By Annie Kapur9 days ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Sedated" by James Davies
Full Title: Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created Our Mental Health Crisis by James Davies I am still on my nonfiction binge and honestly, I am a little bit worried I might be 'doom reading' myself into sadness but I'm not sure whether I want to stop just yet. This book is called Sedated and is about the over-medicalisation and over-medicating of our entire culture despite the fact in the past 20 years, there has been way more of a focus on mental health. I am glad that we seem to be waking up to something I said about five years' ago. The question is: if there is so much emphasis on mental health help and wellbeing then why is it that our mental health across the western world has progressively been plummeting? Well, its our entire culture that is causing it. It goes from the over-medicating of our everyday ill feelings all the way to our disengagement with our work and even further.
By Annie Kapur10 days ago in Geeks
Book Review: "How They Broke Britain" by James O'Brien
There are times when you find a really good book and think to yourself 'I'm going to savour this one'. Then there are books like this where it is still really good but instead you think 'ah, let's relive this trauma...' The showboating carousel of politics in the UK has definitely been in shambles since 2010 but the efforts of the kangaroo cabinet of the Pandemic Era definitely took the biscuit as quite possibly the worst case scenario. Brexit had not been delivered properly, a global virus was spreading quickly and the folks of the United Kingdom were trapped in their homes being led by a bumbling fool of a Prime Minister and his horrific attempts at government which mainly involved him covering up lies he'd told the previous day. In an era that will definitely turn into a case study, this book doesn't just teach us about the things we didn't know, but makes us realise how what we did know was just ridiculous.
By Annie Kapur11 days ago in Geeks