Annie Kapur
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I am:
🙋🏽♀️ Annie
📚 Avid Reader
📝 Reviewer and Commentator
🎓 Post-Grad Millennial (M.A)
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I have:
📖 280K+ reads on Vocal
🫶🏼 Love for reading & research
🦋/X @AnnieWithBooks
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🏡 UK
Stories (2879)
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Book Review: "Walkers" by Graham Masterton
You know how much of a fan of cheap books on my phone I am. Well, this is no exception. Graham Masterton is a really good author and honestly, though I've only read a couple of his books, there have often been some pretty interesting horror novels around the area. I'm quite surprised that more people haven't read this one considering it has such a great, classic kind of story. It feels like a cross between some sort of Stephen King novel and The Haunting of Hill House in a way. It feels very obsessive. I couldn't help myself. I told myself to go to bed at a reasonable hour, but this book definitely had other plans for me.
By Annie Kapur15 days ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Julia" by Sandra Newman
I have been waiting to read this for a long, long while. Basically since it came out. Julia is the story of the character 'Julia' from George Orwell's 1984. It starts with Julia working in fiction and we get to experience all the familiarities from the novel's origin story. I have always been interested in books like this. Books like what Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys is to Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, and what Foe by JM Coetzee is to Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. Again Julia by Sandra Newman is a retelling of 1984, something that should be very interesting to you at this particular moment in our cultural timeline.
By Annie Kapur16 days ago in Geeks
Christmas Eve Baking
It's almost Christmas and as you know, I've been doing a lot of baking leading up to it. This year has quite definitely roughed me up (actually, it feels more like I got hit repeatedly by a bus) so I want to do something that makes me happy, even if it means I do it quite a bit. Christmas has some incredible baking flavours and I'll be attaching the recipes as I go so you can see what's going on. So here's how my day went...
By Annie Kapur17 days ago in Feast
Book Review: "Human Monsters: A Horror Anthology" by Various Authors . Top Story - December 2025.
Yes, it's horror again. I'm feeling kind of down and whenever I'm down I read horror because it makes me feel better. Have you heard about that study that states people who are in depression should watch and read horror in order to make themselves feel better? Yeah, I checked it out some time ago - you should too. Human Monsters is exactly what you think it is, it is about monsters who are human - those who lurk in the normal world, not in the shadows, not in the darkness - they stand right in front of us. They are us. Let's go through my favourite stories in the anthology...
By Annie Kapur17 days ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Hotel World" by Ali Smith
I don't read Ali Smith often but this was on sale. I featured her book Autumn in my '5 Books for Autumn' article some years' ago. Hotel World though is a completely different book to everything I've heard by this author. There's something deeply existential about this book and it features some of the most interesting quotation I have read on the subject of death this year. I mean just take a look at this quotation from the first chapter entitled 'Past'. I think it's such a hard-hitting one (I even shared it on social media if you remember it popping up)...
By Annie Kapur18 days ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Conversations with Friends" by Sally Rooney
Yes, I'm reading some more Sally Rooney because I really enjoyed Beautiful World, Where Are You? Even though I really didn't like Normal People - it doesn't matter, there's only one way and it's forward. Sally Rooney's universality is wild because she is definitely not, as a human being, someone who can comment on the common experience of everyone. Middle-class, white and privileged - it is actually a wonder how she can express these existential issues as common problems everyone has without having access to the common working-class person. I would say this is quite an achievement and, as we continue, we look at Conversations with Friends. Again, this book is painfully middle-class and white, but it does ask all the right questions.
By Annie Kapur19 days ago in Geeks
Book Review: "The Scapegoat" by Daphne Du Maurier
I've read many Daphne Du Maurier books and at the moment, I'm in the midst of a quick reread of Don't Look Now. I've reviewed a few over the years and some have been featured in 'Why It's a Masterpiece' with others coming up. You can see my previous reviews for the following books by clicking on their links in the titles:
By Annie Kapur20 days ago in Geeks
Book Review: "The Plague Stones" by James Brogden
Cheap books on my phone are great and this one was found after much sleuthing. The Plague Stones seems to be described as a great mixture between old and new, a folk horror (which as you know, is right up my street) and a descriptive story that moves between people and times. There's a lot of atmosphere in this book and so, I was completely immersed from start to finish. If you, like me, love the subgenre of folk horror then you'll probably be in for a right treat if you were to pick this book up. I know people who have this on audiobook and apparently it's free over there if you'd rather listen to it. But horror isn't just for Halloween and I want you to remember that...
By Annie Kapur21 days ago in Geeks
The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell
The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists was written by Robert Noonan under the pen name Robert Tressell and was first published posthumously in 1914. It is a great work of socialist literature and covers the economic hardships faced by the working class in early 20th century Britain. The author himself, born in 1870, was part of the working class. His life was marked by poverty and political activism in which he struggled to gain recognition as a writer (which was still seen as a middle class sport at this time). He became a house painter and a labourer and thus, he draws on these experiences in his novel. He sought to expose those responsible for the dehumanisation of the working class through his narrative, looking at the way these people would normally treat the poorer folk and why therefore, the lives of these lower classes was so incredibly horrid.
By Annie Kapur21 days ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Ghosts" by Dolly Alderton
Picking up cheap books should be considered a hobby because I found this one. A book I didn't think I'd like judging by the cover - it looked too much like what is usually dubbed as 'chick-lit'. But I know who Dolly Alderton is and I held my breath, hoping that perhaps she would not be as dull and droning as Bridget Jones's Diary. I was pleasantly surprised by Ghosts and eventually, I sort of came around to the idea of maybe reading some more of her books in the future. I'm just waiting for them to come down in price before I do. Let's take a look at the book then...
By Annie Kapur22 days ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Beautiful World, Where Are You?" by Sally Rooney
I read Normal People and I hated it. I almost didn't finish the book and this was some time ago. Surprisingly, Beautiful World, Where Are You? was much much better. I found it more refreshing, Rooney's prose was more lyrical and didn't feel like I was reading something that felt unfinished, or at the least, untied like you stepped on your own shoelaces. At the time of writing this review, my bed is covered in other books and I'm listening the the 1980s radio station on my phone which is playing the Pet Shop Boys' version of Always on My Mind. But I'm still thinking about Sally Rooney's book that, at this point, I finished a few days ago. That's probably something. There's a lot to unpack here...
By Annie Kapur23 days ago in Geeks
