The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

I just finished The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley.  I really liked this book because the heroine, Flavia de Luce- is so freakin' cool.  You can read more about Flavia (a fictional character) and her adventures here (yes, even fictional characters now have blogs).  Flavia is tormented by her older siblings, and she is also genius-level smart, which, of course, makes her both weird and interesting.  But, like all geniuses, she sometimes gets ahead of herself and makes the requisite rookie  mistakes.  But I like that she is so into chemistry- especially poison- I respect characters that dedicate themselves to odd areas of study and it's fun to see a girl in science (and one that excels at it).  Also, she lives in this crumbling, ancient British manor house, she rides her bike around the rural fields and towns of England, and she concocts her own hot cross buns on the fly.  Thus, she's a totally original girl and deserves to have her own series (which she does, you can find her other books here).  Finally, as the ultimate mark of awesomeness, she was created by a guy who wrote an entire non-fiction book on his hypothesis that Sherlock Holmes actually was a FEMALE character and totally angered most of the Holmesian fan community in the 80's and 90's (now, that's an idea I could totally get behind).  So, this book is not only a wonderful mystery, but actually made me wonder why it had been so long since I had read a mystery (I used to love them in high school).  Maybe because Alan Bradley took so long to perfect and publish this delectably diabolical heroine!

Monday morning- P.1

I'm trying to see how many connections I can make between classical mythology and our present culture. This weekend, it was constantly running through my head, and I came up with several "new" discoveries of connections: our idea of Fate (if you believe in it) as a force that decides the outcome to human events comes from classical mythology, the idea of true and romantic love appears in so many things- books, magazines, movies, television. Also, the idea of the hero- the man who accomplishes incredible feats is present in today's society especially in movies such as Troy, Flags of Our Fathers, Pearl Harbor, Disney cartoons, Star Wars, and Lord of the Rings. These are ideas and beliefs the Greeks and Romans had about the world, but they have influenced our own ideas and beliefs, which is incredible when you really think about it. In reading the chapter about how the world got started, consider how the classical myth differs from our scientific theory-based explanations today. What does this tell us about the Greeks and Romans? What does it say about us? In at least one paragraph (250 words), comment on what you think about the two questions above. Post your comment.