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!

Books, books, and more books...

Now, I am reading five books at once: The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin, Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger, The Disappearing Girl (all about teen girls who struggle with depression, non-fiction), Utopia by Thomas More, and I'm re-reading The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck to prepare for AcaDeca competition. Oh yeah, and I'm re-reading The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien with my seniors. I really need to get a life! That is my goal for the New Year, to reacquaint myself with the joy of simply being with people and enjoying the adventure. I can be a bit of a workaholic control-freak who seriously needs to take a chill pill. Aside from the latent OCD, I love to dance, eat food from different countries, laugh, and tell stories.

Weekends

This weekend, I went home to spend time with my family. In many ways, this is significant. There was a time when I could not be dragged kicking and screaming back to Visalia, CA. Once there, I would soon break out in hives and have trouble breathing due to the claustrophobic feeling that I would be trapped there with no way out. Now, the negative feelings towards my hometown have diminished greatly, and I will actually choose to go back there on occasion. This was one of those times. I spent it baking mostly, topping off what was a successful run of cookies, fudge, and bread pudding with complete failure. I love it when success and pride come before the sour taste of ruin. Oh well, it was only one batch of cookies (minus the butter- apparently a key ingredient). Other than that, I spent time sitting quietly with my father, who for the first time in his life is not supposed to talk due to a possible polyp on his vocal chord (this awful thing causes your vocal chords to rub against each other and become irritated, it must be surgically removed- scary!). My father, retired teacher and preacher, is not supposed to talk louder than a soft, indoor voice. It is killing him emotionally, and it bothers my mom, who is used to hearing his voice constantly. Isn't that funny, sometimes we don't miss something until it is gone? I want my father's voice back, especially his sharing of trivial stories and facts he reads in the newspaper, his updated statistics on the big businesses of the world, and his recounting of his adventures around town. Instead, he listens a lot, which is nice, but different. Six weeks, and then hopefully the nasty polyp will either a)be healed, b)need surgery- MORE silence, or c)be something else entirely- possibly cancer or permanent damage- fun! Needless to say, I'm glad I was able to enjoy this weekend. Life is short and taken for granted too often.