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:

‘A million girls would kill for this job’

The World's Worst Assistant (2022) by Sona Movsesian

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CBR bingo square ‘funky’, because…Sona Movsesian seems like a funky and groovy person, and Conan O’Brien used to do a funky little ‘string dance’ with his hips, and Max Weinberg and the Max Weinberg 7 were pretty funky back in the day, and Sona Movsesian is Conan O’Brien’s assistant. If I haven’t horribly misjudged the time difference and therefore deadline or missed something else egregious, I believe this review completes a bingo for me. ‘A million girls would kill for this job’ is, of course, […]

Foiling spies and spying foils

The Ministry of Unladylike Activity (2022) by Robin Stevens

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CBR Bingo ‘Font’ square–the title on the cover embeds a cool little plane, a magnifying glass, and a fluttering blackout curtain in its lettering, while the print text inside is interspersed with lists and notes that look like handwriting. Robin Stevens’s ‘Murder Most Unladylike’ series (2014-2021) is rather marvellous; it starts off in a very English boarding school in the early 1930s, where the very English Honourable Daisy Wells befriends Hazel Wong, a new girl from Hong Kong who is trying to find her place […]

“My boy was a montage”

The Summer I Turned Pretty (2009) by Jenny Han

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This is for the Adapt/Camel cbr14bingo square; the book and its sequels have been adapted into a series on Amazon Prime, and narrator Isabel ‘Belly’ Conklin has to adapt to her changing body and growing up and the things and people she’s taken for granted changing around her. “My boy was a montage / A slow-motion, love potion/ jumping off things in the ocean / I broke his heart cause he was nice”, sings Taylor Swift on ‘Midnight Rain’, the sixth track of her new album. […]

“As far from God, as heaven is wide”

The Language of Bees (2009) by Laurie R. King

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CBR Bingo square: Minds: Sherlock Holmes and his wife Mary Russell are solving the mystery of Sherlock’s missing daughter-in-law and granddaughter; minds are vulnerable to influence by the predatory; Damian Adler is a surrealist artist who rejects reason in his paintings. I was given The Beekeeper’s Apprentice (1994), the first in Laurie R. King’s ‘Russell and Holmes’ (yes, that Holmes) series for my birthday last year, and read it in the weeks following my surgery in May. It was a hot and arid few weeks, […]

Are you shining just for me?

City of Girls (2019) by Elizabeth Gilbert

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CBR14 Bingo square: Scandal! Vivian Morris is involved in a scandal that scandalises her suburban upper middle-class family; the theatre is generally considered to be a disreputable environment by the polite society that relishes it. Whether or not you like City of Girls will depend on whether or not you like Vivian Morris, narrator and heroine, who is a white rich suburban girl (daddy owns a mine, mother is obsessed with horses) kicked out of Vassar in 1940 and sent to live with her theatrical […]

‘The ocean was exactly as she’d imagined it’

Summer Sisters (1998) by Judy Blume

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CBR14 BINGO square: Shadow. (Holiday would be too easy.) Judy Blume’s Summer Sisters (1998) is a mood, a vibe, an energy, rather than a novel. It’s the salty taste of chips (or fries) and the soft sweetness of ice cream and the sharp chill of a vodka and cranberry with ice. It’s a long slow afternoon by the shore, a long slow stare into the shadows of the past. It’s strawberry lipgloss and windblown hair and new yellow swimsuits and singing along to ABBA and holding […]



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