Blog

The first Thursday of the month is always good for me. That's book club day. Yesterday was no exception. It was April Fool's day, which I always enjoy AND book club day to boot. Since I am in the process of piloting a public book club for my company at Whole Foods Markets around the country, I actually have to drive quite a way to get to the store where I am the leader. And yesterday traffic was for fools! It took me over an hour to get there and by the time I did I was late and flustered.

I rushed in ready to go and was happy to find the group had waited for me. We were discussing THE SWEETNESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PIE by Alan Bradley, a book I really enjoyed but could barely remember as I had read it too far in advance! (Has that ever happened to you?). I was rolling the dice a little when I chose the book as I knew it was lighter fare, but thought that maybe the setting and quality of writing would make up for any shortcomings.

As it turned out, the group had mixed feelings. Some really enjoyed it and others just thought it was "cute" and weren't particularly thrilled.

The book is a British cozy mystery with a very precocious 11 year old female protagonist. It's not juvenile, but it is sweet.

Our discussion jumped around a bit in part due to my traffic-frayed nerves, but largely because there wasn't much to talk about. We did hit on whether or not we found Flavia (the main character) to be believable, and we all agreed that we wish there had been more depth and development in the relationship between Flavia and her father.

Bottom line? I really enjoyed the book and would recommend it but maybe not to everyone and maybe not as a book club pick. I will also allow myself more time to get there next time and perhaps come up with an appropriate zen mantra for use when traffic sucks.

-- Dana Barrett, Contributing Editor