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Blinds, The

The Pain Of Remembering Author: Adam Sternbergh Memories are bullets. Some whiz by and only spook you. Others tear you open and leave you in pieces. ~ Richard Kadrey The entire town of Caesura is filled with criminals – killers, rapists, and worse. The twist? They don’t know it. Welcome to Caesura, or The Blinds as the locals call it. They’re all here for life, for better or worse. They all got here by accepting a desperate deal, allowing the memory of their crimes or, in rare instances, of what they have witnessed, to be wiped free. In exchange, they must [...]

Frances Carden2024-07-28T16:35:38-07:00July 28th, 2024|Tags: book review, botm, read, reading, scifi, western|

Eileen

Alcoholism, Laxative Purges, and Maybe an Eventual Scandal Author: Ottessa Moshfegh Living alone with her alcoholic, demented father, Eileen is both caretaker and jailer and, in turn, she is also confined. She is imprisoned by her own outsider nature, both the nature that she affects and the one that she has been given by uncaring parents and a dead-hearted town. As a young woman, Eileen is well down the road of alcoholism herself, working by day as a secretary at a corrupt prison for boys. Eileen is defined by her bodily shame – an intense focus on her looks, her secretions [...]

Frances Carden2024-07-27T21:36:26-07:00July 27th, 2024|Tags: book review, Eileen, mystery, read, reading, thriller|

Marie Antoinette: The Journey

An Empathetic Look Into a Misunderstood Monarch Author: Antonia Fraser Historically, Marie Antoinette is known as a vicious, yet fashionable queen, with her two-foot-high powdered pouf and miniature recreated village in the Trianon. Famous for stating “let them eat cake” when confronted with the poverty and starvation of French peasants, she was also known for her perversions and anti-France political machinations. But was Marie Antoinette as evil and extravagant as history has painted her, or was she in truth the victim of propaganda and discrimination? Antonia Fraser takes on Marie Antoinette’s life, from infancy to her execution, in this 500+ [...]

Frances Carden2024-07-27T13:47:52-07:00July 27th, 2024|Tags: biography, book review, France, French Revolution, history, Marie Antoinette, read, reading|