As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust by Alan Bradley

To say that I've been in a slump may be one of the great understatements of the year. Life has been ... slumpish. On the upside, I've been working out more ... but on the downside, I've been reading far less. I have a huge list of books that I "should" be reading from NetGalley and other review requests (sorry!), but I decided that I needed to revisit an old friend and spend some quality time with her.

The slump is, at least temporarily, over.

As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust  is the seventh novel in Alan Bradley's series featuring chemist/sleuth/pre-teen extraordinaire Flavia de Luce. Unlike the other installments, this tale takes place in Canada at the boarding school Flavia's mother had attended in her youth. I missed Buckshaw and Bishop's Lacey back in England almost as much as Flavia did, and found myself sniffling more than a few times as she recalled her home, friends, family, and even her beloved bicycle, Gladys.

Of course, along with the anguish of missing home, Flavia also has to deal with a murder mystery almost literally falling at her feet ... as well as a great deal of other mysteries which may or may not be related. After all, this isn't a typical boarding school. It's also the training facility for a secret society known as the Nide. There wasn't as much detail about that aspect as I was hoping for, but the poor girl was a bit busy trying to adjust and solve the mystery of the body that fell out of her chimney. She managed in typical Flavia fashion with her wits and more than a bit of spunk. I do so love her spunk.

I debated, briefly, giving this less than five stars. When it came right down to it, though, I had no good reason. The mystery and characters kept me guessing. Flavia kept me entertained. Once again, Alan Bradley reminds me why I love reading so much, and how much joy can be had in staying up late for just "one more chapter." If I ever find myself in a slump again, he will be the first one I turn to.

Title: As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust

Author: Alan Bradley

Publication: Delacorte Press (Random House), 6 January 2015

First Lines: If you're anything like me, you adore rot. It is pleasant to reflect upon the fact that decay and decomposition are what make the world go round.

Faves on 5s:

5%: One of the things I dread about becoming an adult is that sooner or later you begin letting sentimentality get in the way of simple logic. False feelings are allowed to clog the works like raw honey poured into the tiny wheels of a fine timepiece.

15%: "Curse this life!" I thought. And then I remembered the dead body upstairs and I cheered up at once.

55%: There is an electric silence that comes with shock: a silence which is intolerable yet which, in spite of that, you are powerless to break.

75%: There's something in human nature, I'm beginning to learn, that makes and adult, when speaking to a younger person, magnify the little things and shrink the big ones. It's like looking -- or talking -- though a kind of word-telescope that, no matter which end they choose, distorts the truth. Your mistakes are always magnified and your victories shrunken.

95%: Sleep was impossible. I tossed and turned, sweated and swore. By daylight I was a bad-tempered haystack, but I didn't care.

Rambling About.. Alan Bradley's The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches

The last time I read one of Alan Bradley's Flavia de Luce books was in March. Even though at the time I had said that "the very last sentence was the clincher that makes me itch to start the next book sooner than later," when it came right down to it, I couldn't dive right in.

I knew that there would be feels that I didn't necessarily want to embrace quite yet.

Holy fudge was I ever right!

This book hit me hard and hit me repeatedly and I really can't say much about it without giving away whole lots of the previous five books ... so I won't even try. If you've read any of the previous books, keep going ... IN ORDER ... and then grab a box of tissues when you get here. This is a crucial installment and should not be skipped under any cirsumstances. If you haven't read any of the others, do so. Especially if you love historical mysteries, but even if you normally don't. This series is so much more than that. Start with The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.

Book Beginnings & Friday 56 - Alan Bradley's Speaking From Among The Bones

Ah, Flavia de Luce. I'm putting off an ARC or three in order to read the next in the series. I've missed her.

Per Amazon:

Eleven-year-old amateur detective and ardent chemist Flavia de Luce is used to digging up clues, whether they’re found among the potions in her laboratory or between the pages of her insufferable sisters’ diaries. What she is not accustomed to is digging up bodies. Upon the five-hundredth anniversary of St. Tancred’s death, the English hamlet of Bishop’s Lacey is busily preparing to open its patron saint’s tomb. Nobody is more excited to peek inside the crypt than Flavia, yet what she finds will halt the proceedings dead in their tracks: the body of Mr. Collicutt, the church organist, his face grotesquely and inexplicably masked. Who held a vendetta against Mr. Collicutt, and why would they hide him in such a sacred resting place? The irrepressible Flavia decides to find out. And what she unearths will prove there’s never such thing as an open-and-shut case.

So glad to see that she's just as precocious and morbid as in the previous installments! The fact that five books in she's still described as being the same age bothers me slightly, though. An awful lot of murder happening in such a small place in a year. Remind me not to visit.

Friday 56 (share a blurb from the 56th page or 56% mark) is hosted at Freda's Voice & Book Beginnings (share the first few sentences) is at Rose City Reader.


************************Post-Ramble************************
I seem to have a 5th book curse. With most series the fifth book, unless it's the last in the series (or Harry Potter), tends to feel like a slump. Like a "haven't I read this four other times?" slump. Such was the case here. I still enjoyed it because I adore Flavia, but it wasn't until the very end that I really sat up with wide eyes and an "oh my goodness" look on my face. In fact, the very last sentence was the clincher that makes me itch to start the next book sooner than later.

I Am Half-Sick Of Shadows by Alan Bradley

It's Christmastime at Buckshaw -- home of the de Luce family and my favorite chemistry/poison-obsessed youngster, Flavia. Facing financial angst her father has rented out the house to a film crew  including famed actress Phyllis Wyvern. As a favor to the vicar she and her co-star agree to put on a short performance for the locals to help raise money for the church. While dealing with the movie crew, the majority of the town showing up for the performance, and her everyday hassles with her two older sisters, Flavia is also making plans to try and capture Saint Nick. Of course someone ends up dead, a blizzard strands everyone at Buckshaw, Flavia butts her nose in where it shouldn't be, and all is well in the end.

While this has not been my favorite Flavia tale by a long shot, there were some delightful bits and pieces. The relationship between Dogger and Flavia gives me so many warm fuzzies it almost makes up for the fact that the mystery aspect of the story seems to have been thrown in as an after-thought. It was also nice to see some surprise guest appearances by characters from previous books and even Aunt Felicity.

All in all, not one that I'll probably add to the re-read list, but a nice addition to the series as a quick Christmas-y read.

#BookBeginnings & #Friday56 -- Alan Bradley's I Am Half-Sick Of Shadows

Oh, Flavia at Christmastime! I've only just begun so I'm not quite sure what all will be happening with my favorite poison-obsessed 11-year-old, but I do know that there's at least a plot to capture Santa in the works ...

As always, Friday56 (share a blurb from the 56th page or 56% mark) is hosted at Freda's Voice & Book Beginnings (share the first few sentences & your thoughts) is at Rose City Reader.

Alan Bradley's A Red Herring Without Mustard

Oh, Alan Bradley ... you've done it again! The third Flavia de Luce book, A Red Herring Without Mustard, started out a little slower than the first two for me ... the flow didn't seem as easy. Shortly after I had stated as much in my Teaser Tuesday post it picked up and kept going and going and kept me guessing the whole way through.

Flavia is still obsessed with chemistry and still eleven and still wise beyond her years ... in some ways. I think this time more than the first two installments, though, we get to see a little more about how much of a little girl she still is.

She's still tortured by her two older sisters -- physically and emotionally.

*****

She still has her trusty companion, Gladys -- her mother's old bicycle:

She can still always rely on the family jack-of-all-trades, Dogger, to be there for her:

Her relationship with her emotionally distant father seems to be improving ... albeit still more a distant closeness than an up-close-and-personal one:

And, of course, she still stumbles into murder investigations!

(Yes, I mustard-ed out the victim's identity. Spoilers, you know.)

As always, Inspector Hewitt is there to investigate ... or, at least, to assist Flavia in her investigations, although not always answering her questions (and, in turn, not always answering his):

Ah yes ... I, too, adore Hewitt and I still adore Flavia and as the book progressed I adored the whole tale. We got to meet new neighbors, revisit characters from past books, dig deeper into the mystery that was her mother (whom I'm still not totally convinced actually died on that mountain when Flavia was a baby), and see Flavia discover more about herself.

The next book, I Am Half-Sick of Shadows, has a Christmas theme to it according to the GoodReads write-up so you can expect me to ramble about that (or, at the very least, take a bunch of screen caps of it) some time in December. I'm already excited!!!

#TeaserTuesday # 30 -- Alan Bradley's A Red Herring Without Mustard

The Book & The Tease

Alan Bradley - A Red Herring Without Mustard

This is the third book in Bradley's Flavia de Luce series. I rambled about first one HERE and the second HERE. At the time of the second ramble I said "Maybe I won't wait four months before reading the third." Yeah .... that was May 20th. Whoops!

I still adore Flavia and despise her sisters.... and even though this installment didn't seem to have the same easy flow as the first two did for me, I KNOW I won't wait four (or more) months before reading the fourth installment because it's part of my Christmas line-up for this year!

The Meme

Alan Bradley's The Weed That Strings The Hangman's Bag

Back in January I fell in love with Alan Bradley's eleven-year-old character Flavia de Luce. I've put off returning to the series because, well, I don't marathon book series. Bad things happen when I read series books back-to-back ... like I end up reading them all and then I'm left to whimper.

So, I've put it off.

I've had it sitting patiently in my cloud since before I even finished the first and finally decided it was time. I even checked it out of the library because they feel like books that need to be held and read more intimately than an ebook.

From the get-go, The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag was just as I had hoped it would be -- like revisiting an old friend.

Of course, the "I" was Flavia and she wasn't quite dead. She's still incorrigible and imaginative and obsessed with chemistry (especially poisons) and, according to her father, unreliable.

Once again, Flavia ends up helping to solve a murder mystery (well ... two) as only she can. Being eleven and "invisible" does have its advantages, after all, even though her previous exploits have already earned her quite the reputation.

Through it all, we learn more about Flavia and her family and neighbors and meet some new ones along the way. And, of course, she tells us a lot about chemistry. A LOT. It's gotten to the point where I just skim it like I do the steamy scenes in romance novels. Still, even with the skimming I love the tale and the fact that I didn't have it all figured out right away. As much as it sometimes exasperates me to need things figured out for me, the pay-out of reading how Bradley-via-Flavia gets the job done is worth a little exasperation.

Maybe I won't wait four months before reading the third.

Alan Bradley's The Sweetness At The Bottom Of The Pie

Have you ever woken up the morning after finishing a book with a sense of utter grief after remembering that the book has been completed?

I woke up this morning, grabbed my phone, and pulled open my reading app ... and then remembered that I had finished The Sweetness At The Bottom Of The Pie before going to bed last night. I was forlorn. I gave a little sniffle and added my next book to my GoodReads. Even though I've been looking forward to the next read, Sweetness is going to linger in my head and heart for a good long while. It almost seems unfair to read something else right away.

The Sweetness At The Bottom Of The Pie is the first in the Flavia de Luce series by Alan Bradley. 

(First of all, how awesome is that name?) 

I was in love as soon as I had read the first paragraph:

The tale is told by Flavia de Luce (sometimes referred to as Flave), an 11 year old girl in 1950 England. She's obsessed with chemistry (especially poisons), tortured (literally) by her sisters (13 year old Daphne and 17 year old Ophelia), beloved by the family's live-in Jack-of-all-trades, Dogger, and often lost in the shuffle by her philatelist Father. Her mother, Harriet, disappeared when she was still an infant so she doesn't have any clear memory of her. It is said, though, that she's quite similar. 

One day a dead bird appears on their doorstep with a stamp on its beak. That night Flavia overhears an argument that her father is having with a man she doesn't know in his study. The man ends up dead in their cucumber patch, her father ends up being arrested, and Flavia ends up on the case.

It's a beautifully written book and one that I fully intend on purchasing in hardcover so I can have a copy of it "for real" on my bookshelf with my other treasured reads. Flavia, as the narrator, is a delight with "her" descriptions and observations. Considering that Alan Bradley is a 70 year old Canadian man writing as an 11 year old English girl, this is quite the amazing feat. The way she works out the problems that she is faced with made me hoot, more than once, "You go, girl!" There were also times when I wanted to wrap her in my arms and give her a giant well-deserved snuggle.

After-the-fact I read some of the negative reviews on GoodReads. Several of them complained about Flavia being a brat. Well, she IS eleven. And they complained about how "unrealistic" it was for her to be so knowledgeable about chemistry and for her sister Daphne to be so well-read. I call poppycock. I started sitting in on my mom's college courses when I was about 8 or 9. I read whatever the professors assigned and became enchanted with Shakespeare and Thornton Wilder and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Not typical reading material for most children. I also went through a phase of knowing more than a child "should" about aeronautics. And architecture. And I'm fairly certain that if I lived on an estate with a fully decked out chemistry lab with a complete library of chemistry texts that I would have known more than a typical child about chemistry. There's absolutely nothing wrong with not being typical.

****************************************************************

Earlier I mentioned on the Facebook page about how I was breaking my attempt at being random and going back to doing my A to Zs in order. And then I got thinking about how if I just did THAT it would take me a freaking eon to get back to my dear Flavia. And THEN I got thinking about how this is, still, the 125th birthday year of Agatha Christie and how I still really want to read a crapton of Poirot's. SOOOOO here's the Thing for the Thing:
Alphabet, Series, Random, Alphabet, Christie
Lather, rinse, repeat.
SO I did A (Auxier), then a Series (Peter Shandy), a Random (the CYOA), B (Bradley) and now next up:

Amazon Affiliate Link:

GoodReads Blurb:

The Mysterious Affair at Styles (Hercule Poirot Series #1)

by Agatha Christie

Poirot, a Belgian refugee of the Great War, is settling in England near the home of Emily Inglethorp, who helped him to his new life. His friend Hastings arrives as a guest at her home. When the woman is killed, Poirot uses his detective skills to solve the mystery.