Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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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. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: drmllz's Quick Questions interview.)

drmllz's Reviews:

“An hour, once it lodges in the queer element of the human spirit, may be stretched”

The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2012) by emily m. danforth

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CBR Bingo square “Queer Lives”: The Miseducation of Cameron Post is a queer YA novel, and was banned in a middle school in 2015 in Delaware for “inappropriate language.” I mean, fuck that. The novel was also criticised by the School Library Journal for its length and pacing, and my inclination is also to say fuck that, but I do understand that this is the kind of thing where YMMV. It did take a while to get into, but I was fully immersed when I did. […]

Shoulder pads and shootouts

G is for Gumshoe (1990) by Sue Grafton

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CBR Bingo Square: Relation”ship” (Fiercely independent PI Kinsey Millhone has to allow fiercely protective PI Robert Dietz be her bodyguard) I read a bunch of the ‘Alphabet Mystery’ series in my teens, when there was somehow time to read everything, and I would stock up on library books rather than booze for staying up all night on New Year’s Eve. They star, and are usually narrated by, Private Investigator Kinsey Millhone, a young-ish woman in California. She and Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski (1982-2022) were probably […]

“Before I learned civility / I used to scream ferociously”

Sawkill Girls (2018) by Claire Legrand

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I find it hard to write or think about YA fiction without thinking about Taylor Swift sometimes–in this particular case, ‘Seven’ from Folklore (2020): “Please picture me in the weeds / Before I learned civility / I used to scream ferociously /Any time I wanted.” Sawkill Girls is a scream of a book beneath its veneer of preppy popularity politics and teenage drama and desire: a scream of fear and despair and fury, a loud barbaric yawp against vanishing and silencing, a howl against monsters and the different […]

“you underestimate the detective instinct of village life”

The Murder at the Vicarage (1930) by Agatha Christie

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Bingo row 2, dwelling–the titular vicarage/crime scene. The vicarage in England is where the pastor of the Anglican Church lives–it’s usually associated with teas with the church ladies and sermon-composing and parish administration, rather than murder–especially the murder of a church warden. The cover of my edition is annoyingly irrelevant–the vicarage is far more important than the graveyard. We find out far more about the vicarage as a crime scene than as a dwelling here; Christie tends to sketch rather than paint a background. We […]

“something beautiful left town, and she never even knew its name”

Again, Rachel (2022) by Marian Keyes

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I haven’t been very well in the last couple of months–various new aches and pains and discomforts and a couple of random fevers; tests and scans come back OK for now; lots of “could be stress, could be anything” and late night browsing what “anything” might be (which is a bad thing to do, don’t do this). So I sought something chill to read (I’m about of a 10th of the way through Emily M. Danforth’s Plain Bad Heroines (2020) which is brilliant and tangled […]

“Wayne Gretzky takes Pierre Trudeau into the boards”

The Kids in the Hall: One Dumb Guy (2018) by Paul Myers

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So I watch a celebrity game show type thing in the UK called Taskmaster, and this season a Canadian comedian called Mae Martin is one of the contestants. I became instantly mildly fixated with them, and watched everything they’d ever done, including a sharp and dark and funny drama on Netflix called Feel Good (2020-21), their stand up set, and a sort of comedian game of chicken called Last One Laughing (Canada) on Prime, which also starred Dave Foley, who I knew from NewsRadio (1995-1999) […]



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