I have started going through my wish lists at libraries and trying to organize by country/continent. I seem to have way more ideas than I ever expected! I have been collecting these for three years so I guess it's understandable. Many are mysteries..... No surprise there! I will try and post them tomorrow.

Matryoshka, The only gold rush books I have read recently are The Sister's Brothers and The Boneshaker. I was not a fan of The Sister's Brothers but someone liked it, enough sad. The Boneshaker is a stretch but it had gold mining in Seattle, I think. It's steampunk.

The links are great. The 10 exceptional books for women took me elsewhere but the article was interesting, 🙂. I learned a bit about artificial intelligence........ I don’t like the backwards book trend mainly because I suspect it will damage the books. Plus half the fun of bookshelves is to be able to browse. I recently read somewhere that looking at people's bookshelves when you are in their homes is considered rude. I love looking at people’s bookshelves so I am very rude apparently!

I will admit that I am waiting for someone to read Caroline first. I loved the Little House books as a child but they were one series that fell flat with my kids. I still feel slightly warm and fuzzy towards the stories and don't want to completely wreck them. I really enjoyed Hillbilly Elegy and liked The Essex Serpent more than others here. Glass Houses by Louise Penny is also part of the sale for Gamache fans. ErinE said [*]Broke, USA: From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc. - How the Working Poor Became Big Business by Gary Rivlin. Nonfiction - Business History. A look at the check-cashing, pawnshop, and payday lending businesses. There was a study done on payday lending and check-cashing fairly recently (I'm still trying to find it), showing that in many ways, it was actually cheaper than having a bank account for the working poor when low balance, ATM, overdraft, and other various banking fees were added in. J.D. Vance makes a similar point in Hillbilly Elegy. But there's a saying in finance: pigs get fed, hogs get slaughtered. In this book, there's a whole series of hogs, one after another. When I read stories about borrowers who start out with a $150 loan and end up with $2000 in fees and the loan balance still outstanding - I can't help but fume. The home equity stripping stories are particularly egregious - essentially financial firms were lending money to people regardless of their ability to repay, leading to loan defaults and home foreclosures. The times Rivlin overstates his case detracts a bit from the his point. Just as an example, he points to the outrageous earnings of $220 million on $3 billion in revenue. That's a net income ratio (net income/revenues) of 7.3% - not an unusual rate for many firms and certainly lower than most financial firms with 2016 net income ratios ranging from 20.0%-25.8%. For comparison, Apple's 2016 net income ratio was 21.1%, Microsoft 23.6% and McDonald's 19.7%. So $220 million sounds high, until you make comparisons with similar firms. But overall, he makes a powerful case. I can see a need for these services, due to convenience and comparatively lower cost, but in my opinion, more should be done to limit the lending practices and fees charged. I do plan on looking into the Center for Responsible Lending. As someone who works in finance, financial education is extremely important to me, and once my littles don't need me so much, I want to do more to help people in this area. "Pigs get fed and hogs get slaughtered" is one of my Dh's favorite sayings! :lol: I hear him explain it frequently to people he is working with. He does a lot of volunteer work with a variety of charities. I always enjoy reading your summaries of the financial books you have read for ideas for dh and dd.

I am returning to planning next years reading.....really I should be finishing my Bingo card and my author A to Z for this year but looking for mystery books with locations in all of England’ s county’s seem to be more fun. Yes, I am back to Brit Tripping ..... In my search I ran into this article which I am sure has been previously posted. The 20 best crime novels of all time from the Guard http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10616667/The-20-best-crime-novels-of-all-time.html It did make me realize I could reread Dorothy Sayers and achieve several counties! 😂. Not my original plan but it would work for several.

I read You Will Know Me last spring and remember liking it far more than I expected to after the first few pages. A good friend has a serious gymnast in her family so I continued for the gymnastics. I wonder if we are related because I like books with flowers on the cover too. Flowers and cats always make me look twice! 😋 Glad that you decided to give the Innkeeper Chronicles another try after much heavy handed encouragement from me. I hope you enjoy it! I have heard really good things about the Assiti Shard series. Dd may have read one because I know they have been in the physical stack before. At some point I would be willing to try one if you want to plan. Just remember I will need to start at the beginning........ :lol: You just answered a question that I have been too busy to research. I used to listen to Cadfael in the car on cd many years ago and know my narrator was not Jacobi but I really liked him/them and have hesitated because Jacobi seems to be the narrator on the books I have looked at. Now I know who to look for! 😊. Btw, I love Jacobi on the tv but nostalgia means Tull apparently for audio!

I finished reading The Final Girls https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32796253-final-girls which I put on hold for spooky reading back in October. I remember seeing it on some of our lists! It was more of what I consider to be horror than thriller. Not a favorite but OK. I am still listening to Runemarks and reading Sarum. I have also started the latest holiday themed Donna Andrews book titled How the Finch Stole Christmas. I love the Grinch and have many fond memories of watching the special every year so am curious how she is going to tie things together. Right now the story just has way to many Gouldian finches due to a customs seizure of smuggled birds. I finished spelling Topaz for the Birthstone Challenge. T. Blood Trail by Tanya Huff O. One Fell Sweep by Ilona Andrews P. Hot Pursuit by Julie Ann Walker A. Ash and Quill by Rachel Caine Z. The Zig Zag Girl by Elly Griffiths

Thank you! I am sort of relieved to know it isn't obvious. Cheers, I love margaritas!

I have started a post several times today. So once again.... Angela, I hope everyone is back to normal soon! Now for the problem part which is posting a photo from an iPad. I seem to be able to get my selected photo to my post using the directions at the bottom of the reply to post but when I go to post it’s to big. Is there a way to shrink it.?

We did the Tao of Pooh as a read aloud for school at one point. Great book with many fun discussions. Glad you had a fun family celebration, glad you didn’t have to cook by 🔦. Yes, still playing...... Now for the question of the Day.......I am currently reading two books. In The Final Girls I would end up in NYC in the current time period. I would prefer to miss that one because I suspect something really bad is about to happen in my book and I don’t want to visit and end up a victim!This is a carry over spooky from Spooky October and was on our linked lists someplace. I think it probably is going to be more horror than spooky. Not sure if I am up for it but will read a few more pages. My other book is Sarum. I have started reading slowly again. I am currently in Tudor Times in England near Salisbury. That would be fun potentially since lots of foreign trade seems to be occurring I might just avoid being in service.

This was a while ago but my dc’s used to really like Rick Steves travel videos. I know he has Spain, France, and Italy which would fill in some more countries. My library had them. ETA For UK sites English Heritage has videos for many of the ones they manage on YouTube like Stonehenge. https://www.google.com/search?q=english+heritage+stonehenge&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari

I can’t resist doing this. I received an iPad as an early Christmas gift and am playing with it. Hopefully the autocorrect will be much less extensive so I will stop posting so many odd random words. I just discovered the emojis and look 🊠an alligator or perhaps it’s a crocodile! Anyway I had to share and also see if it works. Another skill I want to figure out is posting pictures but for today keyboard use is great.

DS appears to have stopped growing at 17. We are actually hoping that he has because he is 6’ 4â€. But one of his uncles did not really start growing until 17 so how tall is this guy going to be is the running family joke.

I stayed up late last night and finished Rosemary and Rue which is the first in the October Days series that both ErinE and Robin have really enjoyed. All I can say is while I liked it a whole lot her InCryptid series is still my favorite! ;) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6294549-rosemary-and-rue https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11402002-discount-armageddon

Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate!!! I want to add that I am very thankful for all of you. I wish you all a lovely time with family and friends, safe journeys, and productive Black Friday shopping if that's in your plans! Robin, it sounds like you had a lovely birthday meal. I love Cornish Hen.....oddly not really a choice in England. :lol: Yes, the Sarum I am trying hard to finish is the 1000 plus page Rutherford.

Mashed potatoes are really easy with an instant pot.

I just got a message about Future learn having free classes utilizing the Raspberry Pi. Here is a link for one of them. https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/physical-computing-raspberry-pi-python which starts in February 2018.

Happy Birthday to Robin! Congratulations on your Bingo blackout, Lady Florida! Really glad Amy got her project done......there's another one to finish also I think? I never chimed in on old cemeteries because I live maybe a hundred yards from one and frequently walk through it as a shortcut. I do find them fascinating. Our village church has even started holding part of it's annual Garden Fête in the cemetery. It doesn't bother me and I find the tombstones interesting but I will admit that I find the Garden Party in the cemetery odd and have not attended since it had to be moved there. Robin, Bingo question......I was under the impression that the Ancient book could be set in ancient times also which is why I choose Sarum. If I am wrong no worries because I will switch.

OK, I will give this a try! I don't want to offend anyone but for my answer at least I would like to set the Bible to one side and essentially put it out of the running because for me it would be all to easy to give that as my answer. I am very grateful but I want to go in a different direction. My answer isn't going to be terribly deep and profound but since I happened to read Robin's post before leaving on a walk I have thought about this a bit. Another obvious answer would be the WTM which obviously brought us all together here on BaW which I am very grateful for. Wtm also to some degree made the home education journey that has been so important in my family's life possible. It gave me ideas when I had none and that book truly held my hand when I moved to a place where home education wasn't seen as quite the academic event I wanted it to be. It kept me from quitting several times. But I am going to give a possibility silly answer in some people's eyes with a bit of background. My oldest brother is not someone who reads for fun. He most likely has some sort of an undiagnosed reading disability but did well enough in school so no one worried tremendously. I was also a late reader who thanks to my big brother could have easily been allowed to simply follow behind him. ;). The place we were living when I was in second grade was rural and remote which equaled no public library. My school was the afterthought of not a great school district but it had a small library stocked with what were probably the discards of the rest of the district. I don't want to paint a picture of having no access to books or no one read to me because that was not the case at all. My mom loved books and I had many but I simply had no motivation beyond being read to. I don't remember ever reading to myself for pleasure until I checked The Boxcar Children out of my school library. I was required to check a book out and pulled that one off the shelf because it was red. :). See I even remember why I picked it. I ended up loving it and read it many times while I was at that school. I also started devouring books after that and a public library branch was built the following summer. So I will give the really weird answer of The Boxcar Children because it opened my eyes to the joy of reading for pleasure which changed my life.

I just finished listening to Glass Houses and it was wonderful! https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34006116-glass-houses. A really well done mystery with surprises all the way through which I think was particularly hard to achieve because the book started with the ending and much of the story is told through Gamache's testimony at a trial for the undisclosed defendant for an unknown crime. If anyone else listens to this audio book make sure to take the time to listen to the author's notes and Louise Penny's interview with Robert Bathurst, the new narrator for this series of books. I think the writers in this group would enjoy listening to her describe her writing process in particular. At the end Bathurst asked Penny what Three Pines means to her and her response paraphrased was safety and home. Probably why I love these books so much. Kareni, Thanks for the Lineman review. I was able to locate them in my Overdrive and have been added to my wish list. Not sure if I added them for me or one of my dc's ;) but they do look like something we might like. Good luck with your purchase requests. Now that I have gotten in the habit of making requests via my overdrive they are being answered frequently so it definitely is worth while.

OK Kathy, you just proved me wrong in a recent disagreement with my ds. He argued vehemently that Florida had crocodiles but I stated maybe a few that people let loose. End of arguments because mom closed it down because Florida has alligators, everyone knows that. But 2000.....not so insignificant.

The Disney resorts are all fun to look at IMO so I would probably spend my days walking around resorts and stopping for the occasional snack or coffee. I would probably throw my Kindle in my bag so I could sit and read a bit along the way. :) With Disney transportation you can easily visit the shops at the Contemporary then take a boat or the monorail over to the Grand Floridian and Polynesian area. Don't forget to get a Dole Whip at the Polynesian because it's my favorite. That could take up a whole day for me! The Wilderness Lodge, Animal Kingdom Lodge, and Port Orleans would be other entertaining destinations on my own.

I am loving Glass Houses and have to say it is lucky I am listening to the audio version because the temptation to peek with a paper version would have been irresistible. I probably would have looked with a kindle too. ;) I am past the 75% mark and still not sure who the big criminal is and I generally know for sure by this point. I have turned it as off for the night which is a huge sacrifice because I would love to know the ending. I have skipped a few of the Black Knight books and actually thought this one was the first in a new series by the author but that does not appear to be the case. Being out of order doesn't seem to be a problem. Shawne, Glad you are enjoying The Handmaid's Tale on audio. It's another one I abandoned years ago. I wonder if I would enjoy the audio?

Someone read The Guinevere's last year and asdvised me I wouldn't like it and I think they were right! I do feel bad for you having to stop at 2\3 but sometimes you have to. I dislike characters with multiple names also. Matryoshka, Congrats on the bingo black out. Only 3 more for me. Regarding the gold rush books I can only think of two, The Sisters Brothers which I didn't like and Boneshaker which is probably a huge stretch but I did like it. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1137215.Boneshaker?ac=1&from_search=true Kathy, I wish I was better about learning the names of the narrator's I like. The only one I know is Ralph Cosham who was Inspector Gamache until his death and he doesn't appear to be on the list.

Ali, Congratulations on 52!