Book Club

[smoky22]

@LoriLori  No one could describe the Flavia de Luce books better than you.  The earlier books are charming.  Book #7 is my least favorite.  And Book #8 seemed like he was trying to get the series back on track.  I have high hopes for the next one. 

[CareBears]

@LoriLori Your description made me sit up and take notice, I put the 1st one in my Wish List and look forward to reading it!

[mollybgood]

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@proudlyfromNJ wrote:

Just finished Corrupted by Lisa Scottoline. Pretty good. A lot of legal talk. 

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@proudlyfromNJ

I gave up on that series a while back.  I enjoy listening to her new stand-alone every year.

[LoriLori]

@smoky22, @CareBears, thanks! 

I just edited my post because I forgot to say the first book takes place in 1950.

CareBears, let us know what you think, and any and everyone else who reads them.

[mcbet]

Oh thank you for this title. I remember looking for it a few months ago with no luck, but I forgot the author's name. I will visit the library this week and see if they have it. A   book sale coming up soon, even better.

[kitty45]

Reading Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson. About four little girls growing up in Broooklyn.  I just started so I don't have an opinion yet.

[proudlyfromNJ]

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@mollybgood wrote:

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@proudlyfromNJ wrote:

Just finished Corrupted by Lisa Scottoline. Pretty good. A lot of legal talk. 

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@proudlyfromNJ

I gave up on that series a while back.  I enjoy listening to her new stand-alone every year.

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@mollybgood That's the first book I read in that series. Had to flip through the legalese talk. Don't like having to skip parts of a book, but the rest was ok.

[mollybgood]

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@proudlyfromNJ wrote:

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@mollybgood wrote:

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@proudlyfromNJ wrote:

Just finished Corrupted by Lisa Scottoline. Pretty good. A lot of legal talk. 

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@proudlyfromNJ

I gave up on that series a while back.  I enjoy listening to her new stand-alone every year.

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@mollybgood That's the first book I read in that series. Had to flip through the legalese talk. Don't like having to skip parts of a book, but the rest was ok.

@proudlyfromNJ

I enjoyed listening to the first seven books in the Rosato and Associates series.  I didn't realize she has a newer, related series.

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[sunala]

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@LoriLori wrote:

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@Judaline wrote:

@sunala  If Flavia is a chemist, I guess I have the wrong person! I wonder who I was thinking of.

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@Judaline, @sunala, @smoky22 (smoky because you may say it better than I can):

Flavia is an 11-year-old girl living on a large but crumbling British estate in 1950.  Her mother is deceased, her father owes taxes.  He was in the war as was his best friend who works for them.  They have a cook.  Flavia has two sisters, one gifted musically and the middle one an avid reader.

She is precocious.  She has an entire wing of the estate to herself, which includes the chemistry lab and writings and book collection of a great-uncle who was a chemistry genius.  Like her great-uncle she is brilliant at chemistry and uses it in her crime solving.  I can't stand chemistry but in the books I don't mind it a bit, it's entertaining.

She solves crimes because she's clever.  She also gets into scrapes riding her bicycle everywhere, trying to outdo the police, and she gets into scrapes because she's eleven. 

The first book, "The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie", won all kinds of awards, including for a first mystery.  It's a cozy and it's also laugh-out-loud funny at times with wonderful descriptions of the estate and countryside and a decent mystery.  That book made a very big splash when it was first published.

Alan Bradley writes with great humor and charm.

There are eight and of the eight there are only two I didn't love (and of those two, I am very much in the minority, particularly with the most recent one which has a ton of five-star reviews, but I gave it two). 

The other six, while the mysteries are weak, are very entertaining if it's your flavor.  They're unlike anything you've ever read so you have to try it to know. 

HTH.

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@LoriLori - thank you for your synopsis. Maybe I will try one of these books one day, but to be honest, I have so many wonderful books that I really want to read, I don't know when (or if) I'll ever get to this series. You're right; you don't know until you try!! 

[Catch71]

Just finished reading The Nightengale by Kristen Hannah.

Takes place in France during Worls War II.  Fiction

I found it hard to put down and enjoyed it thoroughly!