literature
Geek literature from the New York Times or the recesses of online. Our favorite stories showcase geeks.
Have You Decolonized Your Bookshelves Lately?
February is Black History Month, which is a great time to think about who and what you read, and open yourself up to more diverse perspectives. Many of us do, but not often in a systematic manner. It’s easy to keep reading the same authors over and over, or only pick up writers who don’t fit our usual brief when their work makes a big splash in the public consciousness for some reason. Over the last year, with more focus on Black Lives Matter and the need for more diverse books by diverse authors, more books by Black authors have gotten the attention they deserve.
By Jana Van der Veer5 years ago in Geeks
Book Review: "A Good School" by Richard Yates
"A Good School" is a novel by Richard Yates, author of the famed text "Revolutionary Road". Yates is normally known for his half-romanticist, half-realist style that captures both the raw emotion, melancholy and splendour of real life situations in which he is able to insert a cast of characters which we cannot help but become involved with. This is also true for the novel "A Good School" in which we meet a whole load of students studying at a boarding school when World War 2 and Pearl Harbour both break out. The novel becomes this battle between detachment, the want to feel involved and this deep-seated symbolism of feeling displaced and dislocated. The character of William Grove being one of the most relatable characters in the book, he experiences deep-seated trauma at the hands of his classmates who taunt and bully him day-in day-out.
By Annie Kapur5 years ago in Geeks
Book Review: "The Memorial" by Christopher Isherwood
An early work of Christopher Isherwood, author of "Goodbye to Berlin" and "A Single Man" that is normally regarded as flawed and imperfect is "The Memorial". Honestly, I have to say that I do not know why people regard this work as flawed or a bit off - only really because it is not up to the Isherwood standard that we hold him to today.
By Annie Kapur5 years ago in Geeks
Hiro's Affliction
Times were very bad. A poor young man, Tatsuo, lived with his mother in a small house on the outskirts of town. Mother tended a small vegetable garden squeezed between them and their neighbors, while Tatsuo found odd jobs in town to bring home extra cash. He sometimes had to be gone for weeks at a time. One day after one of his job stints, Tatsuo brought home an ordinary-looking girl named Hiro.
By Nanako Water5 years ago in Geeks
The Importance of "Ulysses" by James Joyce
Published in Paris on the 2nd of February, 1922, James Joyce's giant novel 'Ulysess' would go on to receive public acclaim as one of the most difficult novels ever written and yet, also simultaneously one of the greatest of all time. The importance of this work is immessurable and honestly, I have only ever read it once. When I first read it I must have been around eighteen years' old and it took me an entire month to read because:
By Annie Kapur5 years ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Existential Dialogues II" by Daniel Chechick
If I have said it once, I have said it a million times - I wish I had these books whilst I was doing my Master's Degree Philosophy essays (which, by the way, I did not choose to do - I had to take that class). I wrote my essay on Existential Philosophy and Oriental Philosophy and these books would have made my life a whole lot easier. The point is, these books kind of remind me of reading things like Plato's "Phaedo" because of the dialogue style they are written in. There is something incredibly fluent about each chapter and, reading like an interview, the reader feels as if they are sitting in on the conversation as opposed to being outside of the argument.
By Annie Kapur5 years ago in Geeks
Book Review: "A Posthumous Confession" by Marcellus Emants
This book is most definitely one of the best I have read of 2021 so far and that being said, the character has also brought me much to think about. When first going through the book, I noticed that the character, at the beginning is someone we should feel sorry for in terms of his forced solitude and emotional isolation but as the book continues, he becomes less and less likeable and ultimately you simply cannot pity him at all.
By Annie Kapur5 years ago in Geeks
What Is The Way Out Of The Labyrinth? Answers From John Green's Looking For Alaska
This article was originally published at rochizalani.com The story in Looking for Alaska is set in a time when everyone is building their self-image, identity, dreams, and love lives – high school. John Green introduces us to Miles Halter, who is the unreliable narrator of this story (But, as you know, the story revolves around our heroine, Alaska) He remembers the last words of famous people – that is his ‘thing’. And unlike Francois Rabelais, whose last words are ‘I go to seek a Great Perhaps‘, he does not want to wait till the end of his life to see his Great Perhaps.
By Rochi Zalani5 years ago in Geeks
Book Review: "Existential Dialogues I" by Daniel Chechick
For many years I have studied psychology and philosophy and I have done this both at Bachelor’s Degree level and Master’s Degree level but I can honestly say that just like everyone else, it has been difficult and often confusing. I have really enjoyed studying existential philosophy for many years of these and honestly, Soren Kierkegaard is my personal favourite philosopher. So when I found this book (and it has a part 2!) I was overjoyed that I was about to get a brand new lesson in existential philosophy. One thing I was most excited about when it came to this book was that it was written in the style of a dialogue. I have always preferred reading philosophy as a dialogue. Why? Well it’s because it makes it not only seem more like a real conversation that you can get stuck into, but there is also the ease of reading. Philosophy is normally difficult to read because of the fact it keeps skipping between ideas and then relating back to other ideas. All this as one big block of essay can seem overwhelming and make you not want to read it. In this book however, you have this almost question and answer session. You get smaller blocks of texts, you get ideas that are far more understandable and most importantly, you can get lost in thinking about the conversation for ages. It is not only factual, it is not only understandable, but it is also entertaining and worth a good, intense read.
By Annie Kapur5 years ago in Geeks
What Is In Unlikable Characters? Emma By Austen
This article was originally published at rochizalani.com The novel is set in a beautiful, British, fiction town, Highbury. Austen’s Emma is beautiful, rich, smart but also meddlesome, deluded, and spoiled. She is not a likable character and you won’t really root for her when you read Emma.
By Rochi Zalani5 years ago in Geeks
Can You Sleep Your Way To Enlightenment? Lessons From Ottessa Moshfegh's My Year Of Rest And Relaxation
This article was originally published at rochizalani.com ‘My Year of Rest and Relaxation’ by Ottessa Moshfegh is easily one of the oddest books I have read. The story premise sounds ridiculous: Our unnamed character decides to hibernate for a year to sleep away from her depression and wake up a new person. She is tired of the world. Alongside ridiculous is an insight into the heart and spirit of a tender, vulnerable, and exhausted woman.
By Rochi Zalani5 years ago in Geeks
Book Review: "A Christmas Memory" by Truman Capote
Truman Capote is one of my favourite writers in the entire world and honestly, this is the only book I had never read by him before. I have always made a point of reading everything by my favourite authors but I do not understand how I managed to miss this one. Anyways, this is just what it says it is - it is a Christmas story from Truman Capote's own childhood. I will not be discussing how much of it is true and how much of it might be fiction because really, that is not my concern. Instead, I am looking at how Truman Capote writes about his own life.
By Annie Kapur5 years ago in Geeks
