Post#12: Books I Want to Read

It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini
1984 by George Orwell
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Room by Emma Donoghue
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling
The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan Bradley
A Red Herring Without Mustard by Alan Bradley
Divergent series by Veronica Roth
Paper Towns by John Green
The Selection Series by Kiera Cass
Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling

Post #11: Book Talk

Book 3 review: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

Book 3 Review

The book The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley is set in the Buckshaw mansion in the 1950s in England. A little eleven-year old, chemisty-obessesed girl named Flavia de Luce is the narrator. A dead bird is found on her doorstep with a postage stamp pinned to its beak. That same night, she finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he says his last word, “Vale”. The reader follows her on her quest to find the murderer.

            This book is enjoyable because of the unique characters that it contains. Flavia is the most intriguing to me. In a recent interview with Alan Bradley, he said, “Flavia understands chemistry better than she understands life in her own household. That idealism has great interest for me. Flavia is completely blind to family relationships. Her experience of life is zero. She sees things but doesn’t understand them.” Flavia relies on chemistry whenever she is frustrated. Even when she got a cold, she concocted her own medicine with eucalyptus leaves and chicken broth, calling it “chicken fizz”. Flavia is always seeking out adventure. She loves the fact that a murder needs to be solved, and she doesn’t care what measures have to be taken. Flavia also tends to make fun of her two sisters, Ophelia and Daphne, quite a lot. She thinks Ophelia is obsessed with herself too much, because she is always looking in the mirror. Flavia then decides to put poison ivy in her lipstick to make her break out. The reader can obviously relate to Flavia because of her curious hobbies and revenge on siblings.

            The book is a story that evokes emotion from the reader. It lets them relate themselves to a quirky eleven-year-old girl, and use their imagination to solve the mystery. It also lets the reader struggle a bit with moral issues intertwined within the plot. If Dogger, the gardener, murdered Horace Bonepenny it would perfectly acceptable because he occasionally has episodes where he can’t remember anything. The reader also trusts Dogger because he is extremely trustworthy and loyal to the de Luce family. Then we have the issue of Flavia’s father being the potential suspect. Readers are torn at this point because they know that he had good reasons to get back at Horace, with him potentially killing his favorite schoolmaster and getting away with it because most people believed it was suicide. The novel really does a great job at getting inside of the minds of readers.

            The writing style is pretty simple and sometimes seems plain if someone was just flipping through the book, but when reading, it feels organized and smooth, with flowing vocabulary. He uses lots of similes, “Whenever I heat this music it makes me think of running so fast that my legs can barely keep up with themselves as I swoop from side to side, mewing into the wind, like a rapturous seagull. Most of his style comes out through Flavia’s humorous jokes and view on the world around her. “And don’t puff out your cheeks like that: It makes you look like a petulant pear”. Flavia’s humor is what keeps the reader interested throughout the novel because she provides the most interesting commentary. Even when she was kidnapped, gagged and tied up, she said she thought the situation was amusing. Bradley shows that children are usually the bravest and most positive people on the planet.

            I would give this book an overall 4.5 stars because of the entertaining perspective, interesting characters, hidden themes, and smooth writing style. This book was as spunky, strange, and unpredictable.

Book Cover:

Photo of Alan Bradley:

Alan Bradley interview on abebooks.com:
http://www.abebooks.com/books/authors-corner/alan-bradley.shtml

Book Trailer:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVkxr7e9YGs

Blog Post #9: likability

 I am reading the book The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. The book is narrated by an eleven-year-old girl named Flavia de Luce, who is living in Britain in the year 1950. Flavia discovers a body in the cucumber patch, and is very intrigued. Instead of being frightened or shocked about the murder, she says, "I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn't. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life." Flavia is a very likable character because of her curiosity and desire for adventure. Most readers can relate to being the kid who is always searching for adventure and solving mysteries. Even if the reader can't relate, I think most people will like Flavia because of her humor and sassiness. I think most people will like her because of her boldness and maturity.Flavia would most likely fit the arguments made by Jennifer Weiner because she is the kind of character you can relate to and become attached to. "I don't care if it's supposed to be wrong. I will freely admit to reading books to find friends. I did it when I was young, and friendless; I do it now that I'm an adult, and my social situation is somewhat improved"(Weiner). I think Flavia is a likeable character despite her flaws, especially since she's only a child. This novel is a mystery, so it's pretty unusual that the narrator is a little girl. I think this makes the book more interesting because it makes me wonder how I would act in her situation.

Post #7: video

Blog #8; memoir IS truth

I think a book has to be 99-100% true to be considered as nonfiction because readers will believe it is true once it has been labeled as nonfiction. I like to quote books knowing that the facts contained in the quote are true. I think many people find memoirs to be inspiring because they can relate to the character in a real sense. The reader can know that someone else has REALLY overcome what they might be struggling with. If the genre was fiction, the reader might still relate to the character in the novel, but wouldn't be as inspired because it was an imaginary character who was bound to overcome the obstacle anyway. If the author was lying about the facts from the memoir, the reader wouldn't be able to trust that author anymore. If you were the reader who just put a lot of time and emotion into reading the memoir, but found out that some/many of the facts were false, would you be disappointed? I would! I think a reader's trust can change the way they look at the memoir and the author.
I do think it's okay for authors to assume certain things, but I don't think it's okay for the author to change events in the story that he/she knew were making the memoir inaccurate. I think it's okay for the author to write certain dialogue that reflects what happened in an event from their childhood, or event from recent years. I don't think any big facts like, marrige, race, family, or religion should be changed. These all have a big impact on the story and the reader.

Blog #6: readicide

Blog #6
I think that Readicide is a real problem in our public schools. I think students aren’t interested in reading because they are required to analyze books so much that the reading isn’t enjoyable anymore. I think books like To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, and Brave New World would all be enjoyable if I had read them outside of my English classroom. Once I had to annotate, analyze, and write an three page essay on these novels, I didn’t enjoy these books anymore. I didn’t want to read these on my own time because I had so many bad experiences from school. I do not think genre fiction is less “worthy” than literary fiction, but I don’t think they should place genre fiction or best sellers in the curriculum because it would also ruin genre fiction for the students. I think it would only be acceptable if students didn’t have to have to analyze every idea, theme and symbol from the text. Once a student is assigned to do this, they will most likely become less motivated to enjoy or even read the text. I think this class does a very good job at keeping students motivated to read and enjoy reading outside of school. I think genre fiction is very important and is just as worthy as literary fiction, but I believe it should stay at home where it can be enjoyed. I would NOT be okay with switching out Of Mice and Men for Twilight because it is a very specific genre. With all the romance in this book, every boy in America would rebel if we did this. In 20 years, every student would hate this book. It doesn’t matter what book it is, students are not going to enjoy the book they’ve been asked to analyze.