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3rd out of 504 books
—
44 voters
I Am Half-Sick of Shadows (Flavia de Luce #4)
by
Alan Bradley (Goodreads Author)
It’s Christmastime, and the precocious Flavia de Luce—an eleven-year-old sleuth with a passion for chemistry and a penchant for crime-solving—is tucked away in her laboratory, whipping up a concoction to ensnare Saint Nick. But she is soon distracted when a film crew arrives at Buckshaw, the de Luces’ decaying English estate, to shoot a movie starring the famed Phyllis Wyv...more
Hardcover, 293 pages
Published
November 1st 2011
by Random House Doubleday
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Mr. Bradley, write faster!
Having read all four Flavia de Luce novels in the last couple of weeks, I'm all Flavia'd out for the time being. She certainly is unique -- who else would try to capture Father Christmas by coating the roof and chimneys in birdlime? -- but perhaps is best taken in small doses. I don't think I can take much more of her tampering with crime scenes. (Does this bother anybody else? I could understand her looking around, but she disturbs the body, moves things around, and steals evidence for her own...more
5 likes · like · see review
Can't wait to dive into book #4! 3-1/2 months until its release. :)
3 likes · like · see review
Every year at Christmas my friend and I listen to a "Christmas Mystery Novel" in the car while driving across the country to visit our families. She was pretty excited about this choice; the detective in question is an 11 year old girl chemist who lives in her family's ancient manor home and solves murders. The "Christmas" element of this novel is that it's set over the holidays and the child becomes obsessed with the idea of capturing Father Christmas through Chemistry as a side plot. In typica...more
2 likes · like · see review
"I am half-sick of shadows" (Flavia 4) by Alan Bradley is from Tennyson's "Lady of Shalott", the red cover and Santa hat, is Flavia de Luce, precocious 11, using her superb chemist skill to test the presence of Father Xmas with birdlime glue on the chimney pot, and celebrate the night with extra-dose gunpowder firecrackers off the roof. For much needed funds, her widowed father Haviland rents their magnificent manor Buckshaw to famous 1950s British movie director Val Lampman. He brings star Phyl...more
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Probability and reality are not reasons to read a Flavia de Luce book, and that is as true for I Am Half-Sick of Shadows as any of them. I am not looking for a well crafted mystery when I read these books, I am looking to romp around with the characters (especially Flavia) that populate the strange little world of Bishops Lacey. A romp (with a good dash of firework chemistry) is what this book delivers. This book takes place solely in Buckshaw (where pretty much the entire town of BL happens to...more
I have truly enjoyed this series. (I say “enjoyed” since this is the fourth and latest book in the series. I hope there are more.)
Flavia de Luce is an 11 year old, precocious, independent, and intelligent young girl and an amateur detective. I wouldn’t want to have her as a daughter; she’d be too much for me to handle. As a character in book, however; she is a delight.
She is a bane in the side of the local inspector, since she can’t seem to control her impulses and her curiosity enough to not l...more
Flavia de Luce is an 11 year old, precocious, independent, and intelligent young girl and an amateur detective. I wouldn’t want to have her as a daughter; she’d be too much for me to handle. As a character in book, however; she is a delight.
She is a bane in the side of the local inspector, since she can’t seem to control her impulses and her curiosity enough to not l...more
Das vierte Buch in der Flavia Reihe kam mir kürzer vor als die Vorgänger (hatte es an einem Nachmittag durch). Der kriminelle Anteil der Geschichte stand dieses Mal nicht unbedingt im Vordergrund (Flavia stellt, unter anderem, dem Weihnachtsmann eine Falle), aber vielleicht liegt es auch daran, dass ich mich auf alles Familiäre stürze.
Einige Kurzgeschichten nur über die innige Geschwisterliebe, einige tiefe Gespräche mit dem Colonel und auch noch einige Anekdoten über und mit Dogger. Eine klein...more
Einige Kurzgeschichten nur über die innige Geschwisterliebe, einige tiefe Gespräche mit dem Colonel und auch noch einige Anekdoten über und mit Dogger. Eine klein...more
Imagine living in an old English estate house so large and so old that entire wings are unoccupied, unattended and unheated. Eleven year old Flavia DeLuce take full advantage of this by flooding the hallway of one old wing with water and turning it into an ice skating rink. She explains her love for water in all its forms. Flavia glides gleefully with pigtails flying, candles flickering. After all no one will notice what she has done until it get warm again.
Meanwhile Flavia's father, Col. DeLuc...more
Meanwhile Flavia's father, Col. DeLuc...more
Review from Badelynge.
The de Luce family have suspended their usual Christmas preparations in order to try to generate some much needed cash, hiring out Buckshaw to a film company. Usually Christmas is the one time of the year that the warring sisters declare a temporary truce for the celebrations but that seems unlikely amongst the uproar of visiting film royalty. It's not long before things start going wrong and most of the population of Bishop's Lacy is camped out in the halls, pretty much s...more
The de Luce family have suspended their usual Christmas preparations in order to try to generate some much needed cash, hiring out Buckshaw to a film company. Usually Christmas is the one time of the year that the warring sisters declare a temporary truce for the celebrations but that seems unlikely amongst the uproar of visiting film royalty. It's not long before things start going wrong and most of the population of Bishop's Lacy is camped out in the halls, pretty much s...more
Wonderful, funny book that has introduced me to a whole new genre I didn't even know existed- the cozy English mystery. Each one is funnier than the last. I might die before the next one is out. One question though: what was all that yarooing about in the last paragraph? Just happy to be there or something she saw in there? Like, say, something we won't know about till the next book?
2 likes · like · see review
I have finished all the books currently available in this series and am holding my breath awaiting the next one. The 11 year old girl protagonist is fascinating as is her family of old money, now poor. The English countryside about 1950 is the setting and action centers around the ancient family estate of Buckshaw. Flavia de Luce is a chemistry prodigy who is most interested in murder and death, in particular poisons. The village of Bishop's Lacy and its inhabitants are painted with care and Fla...more
I Am Half-Sick of Shadows, the fourth in Alan Bradley’s series of mystery novels featuring the precocious eleven year old sleuth Flavia de Luce is one too many — many times over. This is at least the fourth murder that Flavia has solved within the environs of Buckshaw, the decrepit and crumbling family estate, and since she is eleven years old in all these books, seemingly within a very short span of time. Statistically at least, the dump is a death trap! Even Miss Marple traveled to encounter h...more
It's nearing Christmas, and in order to keep the family in house and home, the Colonel has agreed to allow a movie crew to shoot on location at Buckshaw. The star of the show is one of the most famed actresses of the time. It's about 40% of the way into the book before we get to the corpse. Needless to say, 11-year-old Flavia will get involved in the investigation. This is the first in the series where Flavia has spent the majority of the time at Buckshaw. I enjoyed this change. Flavia is always...more
“I Am Half-Sick of Shadows” is the fourth Flavia de Luce novel published since 2009, and the second published in 2011, so it’s unsurprising that it feels a bit rushed and haphazard. That said, it’s an enjoyable enough mystery yarn — even if it doesn’t get interesting until the halfway mark.
It’s Christmas at Buckshaw, the de Luce family estate, and young Flavia is hoping to capture Father Christmas and disprove her sisters’ claims that he doesn’t exist. But soon the house is overrun with a film c...more
It’s Christmas at Buckshaw, the de Luce family estate, and young Flavia is hoping to capture Father Christmas and disprove her sisters’ claims that he doesn’t exist. But soon the house is overrun with a film c...more
Perhaps this story is not as strong as others in the series. But just read Flavia's delightful musings (chapter 4) and tell me, what's not to love?
Like all matter, water can exist in three states: At normal temperatures it’s a liquid. Heated to 212 degrees Fahrenheit, it becomes a gas; cooled below 32 degrees, it crystallizes and becomes ice.
Of the three, ice was my favorite state: Water, when frozen, was classified as a mineral – a mineral whose crystalline form, in an iceberg, for instance, wa...more
Like all matter, water can exist in three states: At normal temperatures it’s a liquid. Heated to 212 degrees Fahrenheit, it becomes a gas; cooled below 32 degrees, it crystallizes and becomes ice.
Of the three, ice was my favorite state: Water, when frozen, was classified as a mineral – a mineral whose crystalline form, in an iceberg, for instance, wa...more
While Flavia de Luce is fun, it's now a not so must read as it was in the beginning of the series. Yes, Flavia is precocious. Yes, Flavia will do battle with Daffy and Fee. Yes, Dogger will be having PTSD in the corner somewhere and the father wil be absent. There will be a murder to solve and it will require her overly sharp Sherlockian sense of deduction to solve it. Flavia is a perpetual 10 year old who runs around in intelligent hellion delight much to her family's chagrin, but to the accept...more
have you ever been in the library, knowing there is no book waiting by your bedside at home? the titles you want are checked out and you've left your little notebook with intriguing titles jotted down on its dog-eared pages at home? that's why I picked up the 4th Flavia book. I was weary of her before this volume but with so many 4 and 5 stars reviews: well, perhaps I was wrong. However...Same old same old, this book. None of the characters actually grow or change; familial tenderness flames for...more
Hmmm... how do I describe Falvia de Luce? I think the closest I could come to is the character of Eloise. Like Eloise, she endlessly curious, irrepressible, and constantly tiresome to her family and friends. Yet despite all this, she manages to charm all that surround her.
Flavia is in some ways a relic of a bygone era. No, I'm not referring to the time period the novels cover. It's more about her attitude... she is utterly confident in her abilities. This is now so rare among the kids of our ge...more
Flavia is in some ways a relic of a bygone era. No, I'm not referring to the time period the novels cover. It's more about her attitude... she is utterly confident in her abilities. This is now so rare among the kids of our ge...more
Oh, I do adore this series! It's set in 1950, England, at a country estate called Buckshaw. Buckshaw is the ancestral home of the DeLuce's and it's literally falling down around their ears. The current DeLuce family consists of the Colonel and his three daughters, Ophelia "Feely" age 17, Daphne "Daffy" age 13, and Flavia, age 11, plus Dogger, the man of all trades who had bad experiences during the war and is not always with it. Flavia is the heroine of the series. This is book #4.
In this book F...more
In this book F...more
This week I have been reading the latest Flavia de Luce mystery, I Am Half-Sick of Shadows by Alan Bradley. If you have not begun reading this series I highly recommend you start. Right now. What are you waiting for? It is Black Friday, and you can buy these books cheaply today, I'm sure!
I Am Half-Sick of Shadows is the fourth book in the series.
In the fourth installment of the series, it is Christmas, 1950, in the sleepy English village of Bishop's Lacey. The de Luce family's estate, Buckshaw...more
I Am Half-Sick of Shadows is the fourth book in the series.
In the fourth installment of the series, it is Christmas, 1950, in the sleepy English village of Bishop's Lacey. The de Luce family's estate, Buckshaw...more
I have a very conflicted relationship with Bradley's Flavia De Luce series. On the one hand, he's created several engaging characters and a world I missed once I finished this book, but on the other hand, he uses similes so excessively that I sometimes wish for a way to strip nearly all of them out of the text and read the book that way. While his imagery sometimes serves the description, 80 to 90 percent of the time, the similes disrupt the flow of the story, forcing me to stop and think about...more
And now for the fourth Flavia de Luce book. I always look forward to reading this series. Usually, I've preordered the Kindle edition. Once it arrives, I find myself cherishing it, putting off reading it to enjoy the anticipation all the more. But then I break down and it's finished in a day or two.
This episode in the life of Flavia takes place at Christmastime. And Flavia is planning a stupendous Christmas surprise—for Santa! In the meantime, a film company has arrived to shoot a movie at Buck...more
This episode in the life of Flavia takes place at Christmastime. And Flavia is planning a stupendous Christmas surprise—for Santa! In the meantime, a film company has arrived to shoot a movie at Buck...more
Auf Buckshaw ist das Geld knapp, sodass Flavias Familie kurz vor dem Ruin steht. Deshalb erlaubt Flavias Vater einem Filmteam, auf dem Familiensitz zu drehen. Um die berühmte Filmdiva Phillys Wyvern zu sehen, die die Hauptrolle spielen soll, strömt das ganze Dorf kurz vor Weihnachten ins Haus der Famile de Luce. Doch der Abend nimmt eine unerwartete Wendung, denn Flavia findet eine Leiche und das Haus schneit ein, sodass niemand Buckshaw verlassen kann. Währenddessen nimmt Flavia die Ermittlunge...more
These amateur sleuths are getting younger (or is it just that I am getting older?) for Flavia de Luce is 11 years old and already she is into her fourth investigation - all successful let us add!
Flavia lives at Buckshaw, a grand country house, and for the Christmas period a film crew is visiting to make a feature film starring the famed Phyllis Wyvern. Flavia's two sisters, Ophelia ('Feely') and Daphne ('Daffy') are smitten with the star and are really looking forward to the experience.
However,...more
Flavia lives at Buckshaw, a grand country house, and for the Christmas period a film crew is visiting to make a feature film starring the famed Phyllis Wyvern. Flavia's two sisters, Ophelia ('Feely') and Daphne ('Daffy') are smitten with the star and are really looking forward to the experience.
However,...more
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“Du weißt genau, dass du ein absolutes Genie bist”
Inhalt:
Weihnachten steht auf der ganzen Welt kurz bevor, auch in Buckshaw werden Vorbereitungen für das Fest getroffen. Nun aber steht der Familienbesitz finanziell nicht auf gesunden Beinen. Auf das schlimmste muss sich die Familie bereit halten. Aber ein plötzliches Filmvorhaben könnte noch die Wendung bringen. Eines Tages geschieht etwas Schreckliches, und Flavia ist wieder in ihrem Element.
Meine Einschätzung:
Flavia und ihre Leidenschaft für...more
Inhalt:
Weihnachten steht auf der ganzen Welt kurz bevor, auch in Buckshaw werden Vorbereitungen für das Fest getroffen. Nun aber steht der Familienbesitz finanziell nicht auf gesunden Beinen. Auf das schlimmste muss sich die Familie bereit halten. Aber ein plötzliches Filmvorhaben könnte noch die Wendung bringen. Eines Tages geschieht etwas Schreckliches, und Flavia ist wieder in ihrem Element.
Meine Einschätzung:
Flavia und ihre Leidenschaft für...more
I am Half-Sick of Shadows stays true to form in the larger sense of the series, but the holiday theme gave Bradley an opportunity to take a bit of a breather from form in some areas and in the course of so doing the reader is given an engaging glimpse into the Christmas season in a country not yet recovered financially, psychologically or emotionally from the devastation of World War II. The result is pure satisfaction.
Over the course of four novels this series has been consistently special. It...more
Over the course of four novels this series has been consistently special. It...more
I Am Half-Sick of Shadows
I picked this one up expecting only to read a few pages and to put it aside again in favour of something else but found myself once again sucked into Flavia’s world right away. Obviously, I got a bit impatient at the repeated background information as I was eager to get on with the story. Yes, yes, it’s needed for the readers who dive into the middle of the series, I know.
Flavia is still an adorable protagonist. The supporting characters are just as intriguing and peculi...more
I picked this one up expecting only to read a few pages and to put it aside again in favour of something else but found myself once again sucked into Flavia’s world right away. Obviously, I got a bit impatient at the repeated background information as I was eager to get on with the story. Yes, yes, it’s needed for the readers who dive into the middle of the series, I know.
Flavia is still an adorable protagonist. The supporting characters are just as intriguing and peculi...more
I didn't read the first Flavia DeLuce book, this was on the shelf at my local library and I nabbed it because what's not to like about an 11 year old girl who solves murders and is a poison expert?
Alan Bradley has created this little 'creature' Flavia who is sometimes smarmy with the locals, sometimes innocent and wide-eyed and always on her game! I was hooked from the first chapter. I laughed out loud at some of her observations and I felt sorry for her at times. She longs to have known her mot...more
Alan Bradley has created this little 'creature' Flavia who is sometimes smarmy with the locals, sometimes innocent and wide-eyed and always on her game! I was hooked from the first chapter. I laughed out loud at some of her observations and I felt sorry for her at times. She longs to have known her mot...more
‘I Am Half-Sick of Shadows’ by Alan Bradley
Published by Orion, 3rd November 2011. ISBN: 978-0-4091-1420-8
It’s a cold winter in the 1950’s and devotees of this series will know that with the fortunes of the de Luce family being in a dire state, it’s cold indeed in Buckshaw the family seat, which is fast becoming a ruin. In an effort to stem the tidal wave of deterioration and improve the family’s financial situation Colonel de Luce has rented out Buckshaw to a film company - well not in its entir...more
Published by Orion, 3rd November 2011. ISBN: 978-0-4091-1420-8
It’s a cold winter in the 1950’s and devotees of this series will know that with the fortunes of the de Luce family being in a dire state, it’s cold indeed in Buckshaw the family seat, which is fast becoming a ruin. In an effort to stem the tidal wave of deterioration and improve the family’s financial situation Colonel de Luce has rented out Buckshaw to a film company - well not in its entir...more
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| English Mysteries...: New Flavia de Luce book | 7 | 36 | Feb 13, 2012 05:50am | |
| English Mysteries...: New Flavia de Luce book | 1 | 14 | Nov 22, 2011 01:37pm |
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
With an education in electronic engineering, Alan worked at numerous radio and television stations in Ontario, and at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute (now Ryerson University) in Toronto, before becoming Director of Television Engineering in the media centre at the Universit...more
More about Alan Bradley...
With an education in electronic engineering, Alan worked at numerous radio and television stations in Ontario, and at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute (now Ryerson University) in Toronto, before becoming Director of Television Engineering in the media centre at the Universit...more
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“Books are like oxygen to a deep-sea diver," she had once said. "Take them away and you might as well begin counting the bubbles.”
—
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“I lay for a long time in silence, staring at the ceiling. Was my life always to be like this? I wondered. Was it going to go, forever, i an instant, from sunshine to shadow? From pandemonium to loneliness? From fierce anger to a fiercer kind of love?”
—
10 people liked it
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