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Aussie Comedian Memoir Double Feature

Ten Steps to Nanette by Hannah Gadsby

Challenge Accepted by Celeste Barber

May 18, 2022 by Caesar's Wife Leave a Comment

I just finished reading two memoirs by Australian comedians concurrently: Hannah Gadsby’s ‘Ten Steps to Nanette’ and ‘Challenge Accepted’ by Celeste Barber. The parallels and differences between each were, in a word, fascinating, so that is why I am reviewing both together. Gadsby’s tone throughout was dire. She recounted the damage and traumas she’s endured over a lifetime – from her sexuality, her neural diversity, her physical appearance, and her family relationships… she has been through the ringer. She is diagnosed as autistic, has been […]

Management Matters

Becoming a Better Boss by Julian Birkinshaw

May 2, 2022 by Caesar's Wife Leave a Comment

What makes a good boss? What separates the worst managers from the best? How can you keep your team happy and engaged, even as they and the work continues to grow and change? How can you get the leadership balance right between overlord and buddy? These are the questions that plague me. It’s no small thing to have a group of smart, caring, and committed people looking to you each weekday (and some weekends too) for guidance and support. People are incredibly complex and bring […]

Burn it all

Fail State by John Birmingham

April 25, 2022 by Caesar's Wife Leave a Comment

This short book follows a few groups of survivors as they struggle for life and liberty following the ‘Day Zero’ event that has taken down North America. I think John Birmingham is an Aussie writer who just really really loves destroying the USA. I swear every novel of his that I have read finds a new and awful way to take down the states. Fail State (which I now see is actually #2 in his ‘End Of Days’ trilogy) continues this theme in fairly predictable […]

Niche

The Carbon-Neutral Adventures of the Indefatigable Enviroteens by First Dog on the Moon

April 21, 2022 by Caesar's Wife 4 Comments

If you haven’t heard of First Dog on the Moon, let me illuminate: First Dog on the Moon is Australia’s only Walkley award-winning marsupial-based cartoonist and has done all sorts of things including books, radio, stage shows and a lot of lying down First Dog on the Moon cartoons feature weekly in The Guardian and are typically silly-yet-scathing takedowns of politicians and the various ways in which they fail us. I picked this long-form version of First Dog up from the library, as I always […]

Who’s the real barbearian? (see what I did there?)

Bear Head by Adrian Tchaikovsky

March 31, 2022 by Caesar's Wife 1 Comment

Bear Head is an award winning science fiction novel about a settlement on Mars, a Martian junkie, a despicable politician, and an admirable Bear. Most of the novel is told through they eyes of Jimmy Martin, the aforementioned junkie. Jimmy (Jimbles, Jimbo) is a human who travelled to Mars to help build a settlement for the future. His body and mind have been adapted so that he can survive the harsh environment, and he spends his days completing menial labor while popping ‘stringer’ to keep […]

Sliding Wars

The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver

February 24, 2022 by Caesar's Wife 2 Comments

Lionel Shriver is never afraid to get down into the muck of humanity and ask the hard questions. Weight gain, overpopulation, school shootings, exercise addiction – every book I’ve read of hers has conjured up strong and uncomfortable emotions. Yet I found The Post-Birthday World to be uncomfortable in a slightly different way, as it examines a quieter and more domestic question of ‘what if?’. The protagonist of this tale, Irina, is a 40-something USA expat living with her long-term partner in London. She is […]

narfna on And now, jump back hundreds and hundreds of years…#BlameMalin on this one for me, too, because she literally sent me a copy.
narfna on “And that very same evening—that very same evening—Lord Edgware dies. Good title that, by the way. Lord Edgware Dies. Look well on a book stall.”That's gotta be the new headcanon.
drmllz on “And that very same evening—that very same evening—Lord Edgware dies. Good title that, by the way. Lord Edgware Dies. Look well on a book stall.”I like to think the wife packs Hastings off to England to hang out with Poirot and enjoys having a whole ranch to herself...
Emmalita on And now, jump back hundreds and hundreds of years…Oh yay! Another #BlameMalin victim. That was an expensive miscommunication. I'm glad your grandmother is ok.
Emmalita on I liked this more as an exercise in boundary pushing for meI have to admit, I really liked this one. But Anita Kelly's whole vibe just works for me. I do have a couple of non...

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