Cannonball Read 11

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This Was a Heck No Times Two

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

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Seriously…I see that some of you all liked/loved this one but I am baffled. This is up there with “The Catcher in the Rye” with most loathsome young adult character I have read in like decades. Flavia is dancing towards being a psychopath. I would have brained her for the crap she was doing to her two sisters. And all of them were just the most dysfunctional family ever. I can’t even tell you much about the murder. Someone was murdered. Flavia “investigated”. Bah. At least I counted it for two separate games. So “The Sweetness at the Bottom of […]

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6/21/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:134 |

The Grave’s a Fine and Private Place – A Fine Mystery in a fine series

The Grave's a Fine and Private Place by Alan Bradley

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Whenever someone posts a generic “what should I read” status on social media, and if mystery is a genre they enjoy, I often to go this Alan Bradley series. Flavia de Luce, the youthful Angela Fletcher of 1950s England, is fun to follow on her exploits. It is just refreshing to have a fun female character to follow! Bradley has done a good job of keeping it fresh – though the murder mystery portion is formulaic, we have watched Flavia grow as she has faced family adversity and tragedy. The main characters have changed as the years have passed, but […]

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Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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6/6/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:21 |

I would hire Arthur Dogger & Associates.

The Golden Tresses of the Dead (Flavia de Luce, #10) by Alan Bradley

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Flavia (and Dogger) continue to delight me. The mysteries continue to frustrate me. Will I continue to read this series (even though this was originally supposed to be the last book)? Most likely. The book opens at Flavia’s sister’s wedding to the German POW Dieter. Feely finds a severed finger in her wedding cake. She loses it and almost ruins her own wedding; Flavia is fascinated, and quickly tucks the finger away. Whose finger is it? Who put it there? Why? Flavia and Dogger are on the case, with their new investigative business, Arthur Dogger & Associates. And they have their […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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2/20/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:23 |

Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew’d – Precocious Mystery Fun Times

Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew'd by Alan Bradley

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This Alan Bradley series is one of my favorites to recommend to others. Light and fluffy I describe the protagonist as a young and plucky Jessica Fletcher, a la TV’s “Murder She Wrote.” At this point Flavia is a pre-teen and still using her smarts to solve murders in her village, and I find these books, and her, delightful. This is the 8th installment and it’s been over a year since I read the 7th. As murder mysteries go, they have become a little predictable, not the outcomes persay, but there are a lot of familiar tropes, so I like […]

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Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

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1/21/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:1 |

The Blood of an Englishman

The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan Bradley

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I love Flavia de Luce, the 11-year-old budding chemist living in the small village of Bishop’s Lacey in post-WWII England. Flavia uses her natural curiosity and scientific knowledge to solve murders. In The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag, Flavia works to solve both the murder of a puppeteer. She soon finds it’s related somehow to the mysterious death of a young boy in her village that happened 5 years ago. This is the second book in the series, and it seems to take place very soon after the first. I had trouble getting into The Weed That Strings the […]

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9/17/2018 's CBR10 Review No:37 |

I still love Flavia, but I don’t know if that’s enough anymore.

The Grave is a Fine and Private Place (Flavia de Luce, #9) by Alan Bradley

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Sigh. When is the right time to give up a long-running series? Last I heard there were only going to be nine books in the series, but this is book nine, and no end in sight*? I’m just not enjoying them like I used to. Which is weird, because I still love Flavia, her family and friends and assorted hangers-on. But the mysteries and plots just don’t do it for me anymore. I find myself having a really hard time keeping my attention on them. Even in this one, where Flavia actually has help from Dogger, Daphne and even Feely, […]

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3/21/2018 's CBR10 Review No:37 |

Precocity, Poison, and Pie

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie: A Flavia de Luce Mystery by Alan Bradley

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I think every review of the Flavia de Luce books contains the word “precocious” in it somewhere. Flavia is no ordinary 11-year-old. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is the first book in this mystery series, and introduces chemistry whiz, poison-obsessed Flavia, her widowed father, her two sisters, their retainer Dogger, and their housekeeper Mrs. Mullett. The de Luces own a slightly dilapidated country home in 1950s England. At the start of the novel, Flavia overhears her father arguing with a strange man, and later finds the man dying in their vegetable garden. She begins her own murder […]

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3/4/2018 's CBR10 Review No:7 |

Precocious 11 year old to the rescue

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

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I am late to the Flavia de Luce train, but a random comment about the series that I came across somewhere intrigued me enough to request this book from the library.  While I didn’t up loving this book, it wasn’t bad.  It’s set in 1950s Britain, and Flavia is a precocious 11 year old girl who lives with her father and two older sisters; her mother passed away some time ago, but she she is far from forgotten.  Her family is rather eccentric and Flavia is pretty much left to her own devices. She aspires to being a chemist, and […]

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11/28/2017 's CBR9 Review No:93 |


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