Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About drmllz

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I'm a literature and media studies lecturer and researcher at a university on the south coast of England (my reviews are absolutely not meant to be taken in my professional capacity nor reflect the views of my institution). I've participated in some early CBRs and then came back for CBR 14 onwards. Much like every year, I'd like to do more reading for fun, especially of contemporary fiction, and less crashing in front of Netflix. In 2021 I had a cancer diagnosis and surgery--it really helped following along with CBR reads and Facebook chat and knowing there were people out there enjoying reading books and supporting cancer research and patients even amid all the pandemic chaos.

drmllz's Reviews:

cloisterf*ck

The Cloisters (2022) by Katy Hays

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I am posting a picture from Christchurch Priory, Dorset, a medieval structure which actually would be a good place for a murder mystery. I’m not going to post a picture of the book cover, because the cover is beautiful and it will suck you in to buying it and you will end up throwing it across the room and denting it anyway. At least if you’re an academic. The setting is the Cloisters section of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the narrator/protagonist is Ann, a […]

“change the dedication / from revolution to revelation”

Special Topics in Calamity Physics (2006) by Marisha Pessl

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At some point as a student I came across French theorist Roland Barthes’s ‘The Death of the Author’ (1967), which suggests (in translation) that a text ought to be read as a “tissue of quotations” (instead of a single isolated product of a clearly identifiable authorial intention; I paraphrase and summarise wildly here). I vaguely thought of “tissue” initially as the kind of tissue you’d sneeze into, woven to be flimsy and fragile and disposable. Later, I thought of “tissue” as in the weavings of […]

“Everybody knows that you’ve been faithful / give or take a night or two”

The End of the Affair (1951) by Graham Greene

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The End of the Affair exhumes a febrile wartime love affair between Maurice Bendrix, author, and Sarah Miles, wife of civil servant in the Home Security ministry Henry Miles. The affair is revisited retrospectively from Bendrix’s perspective, filtered through his authorly lens, hazy with self-righteousness, foggy with jealousy and thwarted passion–and then we get to visit it in real time via Sarah’s diary, which slices through Bendrix’s craft and self-centredness and desire and pretension with a steel blade forged in the fires of the Blitz […]

“For whom the wedding bells toll”

Sofia Khan is Not Obliged (2015) by Ayisha Malik

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I wrote a review of Dorothy B. Hughes’s bleak noir novel Ride the Pink Horse (1946) as part of my Bingo this year, and said something about how it implodes comforting myths, and Emmalita commented, which was lovely, about how she came back to romance because sometimes people need escape from noir and need comforting myths (I paraphrase). I chewed this over in my head for a few weeks, and ended up digging out an unread romance novel I bought a while back, Sofia Khan […]

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results

You Exist Too Much (2020) by Zaina Arafat

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“You exist too much”, the narrator’s mother tells her. The narrator’s mother is needy, and manipulative, and homophobic, and devouring; the narrator has grown up censoring and hiding different parts of her self in turn, lying and blending and adapting and code-switching (and part of the brilliance of the book is that it’s sometimes not clear whether this comes out of desire or survival instinct). The narrator is rearranged like a kaleidoscope sometimes by chance and sometimes by circumstance until a relationship crisis forces her […]

“Summer went away, still the yearning stays”

It's Not Summer Without You (2010) by Jenny Han

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“Before Jeremiah or anybody else could answer me, I made a run for the sliding doors, and then I stumbled down the steps and sprinted onto the beach. I felt like a flying comet, a streak in the sky, like I hadn’t used my muscles in so long and it felt great to stretch my legs and run. The house, all lit up with people inside, felt a million miles away. I knew he’d come after me. I didn’t have to turn around to know […]



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