Caesar’s Wife – Page 22 – Cannonball Read 17

More like an idling neutral, actually.

Full Throttle by Joe Hill

January 24, 2021 by Caesar's Wife 2 Comments

Full Throttle is a collection of 13 (heh) short stories penned or co-authored by Stephen King’s spawn, who goes by ‘Joe Hill’ in an admiral attempt not to trade of his father (and mother’s) name. The stories within range from disappointing, to confusing, to middling, to verging on brilliant. It’s an uneven achievement and overall I found it disappointing. The quality of each story was so uneven, I’ve tackled a very brief review of each below… Full Throttle Hill’s answer to a modern retelling of […]

Transformation

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

January 1, 2021 by Caesar's Wife 3 Comments

Each year, instead of making a resolution, I set myself a word; a single word to guide me through the year and keep me on track to meeting my goals. For 2020, my word was transform. Yet it was not until the closing days of disasterous 2020 that I found a book that matched my word completely. Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine tells the story of the titular Eleanor who, in her 30th year, is unknowingly on her own transformation journey. Up until this point […]

Oof.

The Motion of the Body Through Space by Lionel Shriver

December 25, 2020 by Caesar's Wife 1 Comment

Oh MAN this book. This bloody book. I knew what I was getting into with another Shriver tale but… she really pushed problematic discomfort to the extreme with this one. The synoposis is this: Serenata is in her sixties and, after a lifetime of punishing physical exercise, her knees have failed her and she has not comes to grips with her new reality. Serenata is superior and insufferable in every way. She sees herself as a trend setter, but hates that everything she loves eventually […]

Gimme that sweet sweet Zombie fix

Closure, Limited and Other Zombie Stories by Max Brooks

December 25, 2020 by Caesar's Wife Leave a Comment

This novel brings together my two great low-brow literary loves: short stories and Zombie fiction! This collection of stories includes four short stories, of varying quality, that I’ll tackle briefly separately. This is a very short book so I’ll keep this review very high-level and rate each story separately. Closure, Limited This is a story taking place following the events of World War Z which grapples with the question: how can the sorry survivors find closure? It was a very upsetting and poignant tale, and […]

A Study in Literal ‘Othering’

The Wall by John Lanchester

December 25, 2020 by Caesar's Wife Leave a Comment

The Wall follows the exploits of a young Draftee, Kavanagh, as he does his time patrolling a literal Wall encasing his entire island nation (this name of which is never explicitly revealed). The Wall separates the ‘good’ people of Kavanagh’s homeland from the ‘Others’, sea-faring refugees who are desparately seeking to conquer The Wall and resettle in safe lands. A cataclysmic event (climate change? nuclear war?) has rendered most of the world uninhabitable and plunged most countries beneath the ever-rising sea. Kavanagh does not initially […]

Dream a little dream of me

The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker

December 7, 2020 by Caesar's Wife Leave a Comment

The first novel of Karen Thompson Walker’s that I read, The Age of Miracles, was a bit of a miss for me. While the story was engaging, Thompson Walker seems to me to have trademarked a clinical way of writing that keeps events and characters at arm’s length from the reader. In her first novel, that just didn’t gel with me and I found it hard to be invested in the story. But, in The Dreamers, Thompson Walker’s detached descriptions hit the right tone, and […]

Zirza on A Gothic Classic for a ReasonIt's one of those wish-you-could-read-it-again-for-the-first-time books. I loved it.
Emmalita on “It came to something when you found yourself hoping that the footsteps you heard were ghosts.”I loved the ending! I don’t think it’s been out long enough to talk about why though.
Dixie on Track Her Down by Melinda LeighI am just starting Track Her Down and I have read them all in order till now and thought I...
Roland of Gilead on How can you give us the gift of a crazy character named Rando Thoughtful and then just as suddenly take that gift away? We need to talk, Uncle Stevie.I came across this randomly years after it was written because I was searching "Random Thoughtful. But I have the...
Emmalita on “Only you, Em, would refer to heartbreak as a distraction. I think I would have a more sympathetic response if I asked to marry a bookcase.”Oh my goodness, Gallifrey was beautiful. I’m sure her mittens were gloriously murdery.

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