literature
Geek literature from the New York Times or the recesses of online. Our favorite stories showcase geeks.
Book Review: "The Au Pair" by Emma Rous
I remember when I was at work a few years back and I was in the midst of reading a book called “Luckiest Girl Alive” and I was really enjoying it. A woman, my coworker whom I will not name, came up to me and said that because I had studied literature and film for so long that I should be reading something more literary and classic and sophisticated than a chick-flick thriller. I am not going to lie to you, I felt kind of bad for reading it then. But after a while I realised something. As I have been studying literature and film for so long, I can pretty much read what I feel like and if I want to read, as she put it, a ‘chick-flick thriller’ then I am going to read a ‘chick-flick thriller’. Why? Well, because I felt like it. Do not ever let anyone make you feel bad about what you are reading. Reading should be for enjoyment not for the sake of making yourself look smarter than everyone else. And honestly, they are pretty good books - flicking from one perspective to another from one time to the next, revealing secrets and keeping you gripped unit the end. I don’t remember the last time Don Quixote did that since I read it when I was fifteen. Other times? Not so much.
By Annie Kapur4 years ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Baby Teeth" by Zoje Stage
Now, I have read books like “We Need to Talk About Kevin” and ever since the films “The Exorcist” and “The Omen” came out, we have seen numerous books and films of horror deal with the problem of demonic children. Many of these children have powers that, like in “The Exorcist” or “The Conjuring 2” are caused by supernatural entities and therefore can be fixed. Whereas, more commonly in “We Need to Talk About Kevin”, “The Omen” and in this book entitled “Baby Teeth” we see a child who is demonic but there is no real explanation for it. This, in my opinion, is far more frightening because as of yet in the early pages and chapters of the text, we do not know how far the child will go to get their own way, to do what they want to do and we are unaware of their agenda and whether it is working out, whether they are winning or which techniques are no in place to stop them from winning. Everything seems to collapse in on itself when we start learning about how the parents got to this point at which the child is now seen as demonic and a problem. This means that still, we are given no answers and are told that they were simply born this way. The question though is not the ‘how’ it is more the ‘why’ and the ‘what’.
By Annie Kapur4 years ago in Geeks
We ruptured Nature. But Nature is giving us a second chance. #lockdownlessons
G’day & Chao (hello in Aussie slang and in Vietnamese), Spring is in the air down here in Australia. As promised in my last piece about the Anthropocene talk I attended, In this piece, I share my thoughts and reflections on the book: Defiant Earth (2017) by Clive Hamilton, an Australian author, thinker and Professor of Public Ethics.
By 🇻🇳 Journey with Juju 🇦🇺4 years ago in Geeks
Science, Fiction, and Horror
I have always thought that science, fiction, and fantasy should not have been put together in the first place, even though the line between the two is blurred. For me, SF should only take into account future technological advances (space flight, life extensions, robots, or "space microbes", alien life, etc.). That is to say, many of the things that are now easily taken away, electricity, airplane, fast communication around the world, can be like magic to someone born 1000 years ago. But installing SF with dragons, magic ropes, etc. I think it's a mistake, BUT some shocks are associated with SF, like the movie "Alien and Predator", blurring the line very much with "Star Wars". That is not true. A “real” myth claims to be true. I have taught writing and closing writing for forty years - I am a novelist - and I always have to remind my readers that it is a building block. Or you are trying to write a non-creative myth, and even if it is autobiography, it is still a fabrication. The fun with SF, fantasy, and horror is that they take on gloves, in a figurative sense. I really like science fiction because where it takes it takes great ideas.
By dhroov nanda4 years ago in Geeks
8 Great Anthologies I Read in 2021 (so far!)
Anthology books can be a challenge for some people as some require quite a solid and long narrative in order to get fully engrossed in the story. But I'm not just talking about stories here, I'm talking poetry, I'm talking about everything that constitutes as literature (yes, even essays) rolled up into an anthology because sometimes, if the anthology is good enough - you can get lost in it after all.
By Annie Kapur4 years ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Death in Her Hands" by Ottessa Moshfegh
So far, I have read all of Ottessa Moshfegh’s novels. I remember when I was in university and she was up for the Booker Prize for her novel “Eileen”, my lecturer recommended we read the book and I spent the whole night up and reading it. It was one of the most psychologically messed up things I had read in a long time and though I spent the whole night with it, I spent the rest of the semester trying to shake it off. It was quite disturbing. A few years later I read her books “Homesick for Another World” and one of my personal favourites, “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” which I actually read twice. Now that I am on her novel “Death in Her Hands” I understand that many people think that she writes novels about lonely and isolated women - but seriously this is far different than anything I have read by her so far. This is less of an isolated female novel and more of a psychological thriller that is both horrifying and disturbing at the same time. When I read this book, I found myself being unable to put it down during my work breaks and ended up reading the whole thing in only a few hours. Let’s take a look at what it is about and I will try my best to leave out the spoilers.
By Annie Kapur4 years ago in Geeks
How to Read More Books?
There are two types of people; the first type comprises those who take time out of their reading schedule to do other activities, whereas the other type consists of those who can’t manage to take out time to read any book. It only happens because they haven’t developed the habit of reading books.
By Katherine Allen4 years ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Come Closer" by Sara Gran
I have read quite a few horror novels in my time, especially the contemporary kind. I enjoy reading contemporary horror because of its ability to fuse itself with very real life situations, making us question the legitimacy of the entity involved. For example: in “The Dangers of Smoking in Bed” by Mariana Enriquez we have a story about two women who fall in love with the same man, but he goes for a different woman. What ensues afterwards involves something that feels almost supernatural in behaviour, but can be explained through the real world as well. A tragic ending shows us a few things too - it can be well written (as in the Mariana Enriquez story) so that we can blame it on both ‘worlds’ but it can also come into question of whether it actually happened or a character is simply fantasising its happening. When the mind of the characters change, we tend to blend the two ‘worlds’ involved together and therefore, we cannot know whether the event takes place in the real world, or in their now infected state of mind. It is something I have always loved about contemporary horror and if you want to learn more about how the mind of the character becomes infected with obsession, then I would look at the seminal text for this - Shirley Jackson’s “The Haunting of Hill House”.
By Annie Kapur4 years ago in Geeks
10 Great Humanising Books I Read in 2021 (so far!)
Books that make us human again are not really very rare, these can include anything from a dramatic family tragedy by Isabel Allende to a light romantic comedy by Hannah Rothschild. A book that humanises us is a book that reminds us that we have to really sit with our feelings and situations, we have to make amends with each other and more than often, there are many people we care about that, if they disappeared, we would be very concerned and extremely upset.
By Annie Kapur4 years ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Murder by the Book" ed. by Martin Edwards
So far, I have read nearly every single British Library Crime Classic book going. I love to read classic crime novels, they are like my guilty pleasure. I have to admit though when crime is written as a short story, it can normally get a bit repetitive and boring as there are only so many storylines you can do in such a short space. Whereas, if you have a whole novel’s length then there are considerably more storylines you can cover. As I was making my way through the series, I have often encountered short story crime classic anthologies that made me rethink my stance on crime short stories. These have included but are not limited to books like: ‘Blood on the Tracks’ (the book by the British Library - not the Bob Dylan album). Another one has been “Deep Waters” which dealt with mysteries at sea and was considerably better than other short stories of the same genre I had read before. And the final one I enjoyed was called “The Long Arm of the Law” which are police stories - as my mother is a retired police officer, I can honestly say that I love reading about the fictionalised version of events that the police may get up to on the job. But, when I read this one entitled “Murder by the Book” I found that once again, I was wrong about short story crime. It can happen and it can happen well. It can happen very well, actually.
By Annie Kapur4 years ago in Geeks
