One of my mother's close friends also reads for the books for the blind project. Really wonderful project because it can be accessed by paraplegics etc also. When I had my back surgery the man who ran the exercise facility at my PT's only had the use of a couple of fingers due to a diving accident. He was an exam short of being a physical therapist at the time of his accident and was getting an accounting degree using books read by people like your grandma and aunt. Incredible program. I couldn't find a list of books he narrated either. I love the convenience of audio books but he certainly would not be my choice of a narrator. Two mystery series you might enjoy on audio..... Inspector Gamache, Louise Penny(you knew that one was coming) Elizabeth Peter's (I can't stand the child's voice but it seems to improve as he ages....I am far from done with this series) Julia Spencer Fleming (Great series and must be read in order, did not care for the narrations possibly it was the first book as much but wonderful after that)https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/33986.Julia_Spencer_Fleming Ethel, not sure if you are checking in this week because of your move but in googling for Amy I just learned that Julia Spencer Fleming's husband recently passed away. Cancer. :( We have discussed the next book in the past so wanted to update you since I know you have also been looking forward to it. I hope she does finish the next book.

:grouphug:

I love Aldi! I tend to simply buy whatever I need there. It's the only place I buy pesto, low fat hummus, and artichokes. Sounds odd but we eat quite a bit of all three and they are so much cheaper at Aldi.

I just finished a lovely Flufferton Abbey book by a favorite author Anna Lee Huber. I know I have recommended her Lady Darby series several times in the past. Her latest book titled This Side of Murder https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33019745-this-side-of-murder was just what I needed, a great page turning escape. ;) The setting is a Castle on an island in Poole Harbor. I have googled and National Trust does own an island there but no Castle mentioned, it sounds wonderful and is now on my list! Another island there is up for sale at only 1 million if anyone is interested. ;). Naturally WWI widow Verity has been invited to a house party where all the attendees are surviving members of her husband's battalion. Isolated house parties make for good Flufferton. One important secret is Verity was a member of the secret service herself. Lots of intrigue, murder, and a few great surprises. Totally suitable for our gentle readers so ...... Yes, Amy, you would like it! :). Angel, you would too. Thinking of you and your dd. :grouphug:

:grouphug: to all. I think we need it. I've been doing a bit of BaW accounting because Spooky October is now over although because my Kindle is still filled with choices it may live on for most of November. I read 14 Spooky titles but my definition is probably a bit loose to include anything with a paranormal element. The favorite was probably Fred the Undead Accountant because the were pretty funny. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22081680-the-utterly-uninteresting-and-unadventurous-tales-of-fred-the-vampire-a. I read two in the series. I also finished my birthstone challenge for October. I managed to do both stones by using some books twice. O. The Only Way Out by Susan Mallory P. Proof of Life by JA Nance A Ammie, Come Home by Barbara Michaels L. Don't Let Go by Harlan Cohen and T. The Cat Who Talked to Ghosts by Braun O. The Only Way Out by Mallery U. Undeath and Taxes by Drew Hayes R. A Rougue's Downfall by Balogh M. Stoker's Manuscript by Royce Prouty A. Ammie, Come Home by Michael's L. Proof of Life by Nance I. Immortal by Gene Doucette N Night blind by Ragnar Johansson E. Every Which Way But Dead by Kim Harrison Fastweedpuller, I am impressed that you have read so many of Goodreads best of's. I have only read a couple but am sitting on wait lists for two highly anticipated (by me) books that were on those lists. Totally irritated because it strikes me as unfair to lump books that have been around to six plus months with those that have been released very recently. I don't see how books that most haven't had the opportunity to read deserve to publicly not win an award. Kathy, I don't think I had a chance to say that since you liked Don't Let Go by Cohen you will probably enjoy most of his other stand alones. I actually thought that one wasn't one of his better ones plot wise.

Butter, the pig story was great!

Happy Birthday to Kathy and John!

Here is the link http://www.fabricatwork.com/fabric-at-work-bookcase-quilt-pattern.htm Other helpful links: http://www.dontcallmebetsy.com/2011/04/mini-bookshelf-quilt-tutorial.html http://internationalstashes.blogspot.com/2014/07/jamies-bookcase-quilt-august.html https://www.pinterest.co.uk/rummm44/bookshelf-quilts/?lp=true. Personally I prefer the lighter colored bookcases. And my book tie in......Harry Potter. I going to do plain old books first but this is my dream bookcase quilt! ;)http://www.fandominstitches.com/2015/07/harry-potter-bookcase-quilt-along.html Eta fixed the HP link

I think I will be reading The Zig Zag Girl https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22838934-the-zig-zag-girl?ac=1&from_search=true by Elly Griffith's who is a favorite series author of mine but I haven't read this series yet. It's a book I abandoned at one point so we shall see. I read The Zookeeper's Wife for my Alphabetical by title. Very well done. Oddly, I just bought fabric for the bookshelves yesterday. Seriously, I've been saving strips for books for the past year. I have a free online pattern that looks good if anyone wants the link. I still need more books and in this case I mean fabric ones! :lol: I finished Ammie Come Home a few minutes ago. Enjoyed it.

I loved the doggie sorting link! :) Loesje :grouphug: I was lucky and was never inspected, not required by law to register and since they never registered for school we were lucky. The retired inspector attended our church and we were questioned a lot so I always worried a better would appear. One of my friends had to be each year because of foster parenting. She loves to take pictures of everything and prepared a very long slide show on her lap top each year so the inspector could see everything her kids did. It seemed to work well in terms of her slide show took up a large part of the time allocated for the inspection! I am currently listening to The Sisters Brothers for my western bingo square https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11319473-the-sisters-brothers. It is OK. I am not a fan of Westerns apparently.... :lol: My birthstone challenge for October is almost done. I am currently reading Ammie, Come Home https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/140403.Ammie_Come_Home by Barbara Michaels who is Elizabeth Peters. Very spooky........That will finish Opal! I think I am close on Tourmaline also.

Angel :grouphug: How scary! I hope she continues to improve with the chiro. I did finish the Devotion of Suspect X https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8736719-the-devotion-of-suspect-x which I really enjoyed. I found another translated book by this author and plan to try it soon on audio. I even gave it 5 stars which is saying much considering I disliked the ending. Which leads me to Kareni's link https://bookriot.com/2017/10/24/audiobooks-dont-count/ regarding audio books not counting. I definitely think they do! :). The article did remind me of the fact that I am a very auditory learner. As long as I attended lectures school was easy which might be why I love the audio books so much. The other thing I wanted to mention is how I have ended up using the Good reads rating system. I totally agree that a three is a perfectly good rating but I tend to take the books genre into account. If the book simply does it's job for lack of a better description it gets a three. So a perfectly good cozy that is in no way exceptional....perhaps a decent story but I knew from page 1 who did it a 3. Same book with characters that made me laugh and I didn't know until halfway through a 4. Finally fun story and I wasn't completely sure a 5. Because so many rate so generously on Good reads I hate to bring the average down for a "good read" because unless someone here recommended a book if I check Good reads first I generally only read things that hover around a 4.

Just wanted to second Life of Fred with some other spines. Dd(my oldest) did the advanced Singapore which essentially took care of math through pre calc when combined with Fred. Ds did a mixture of everything but all of Fred. Somewhat topic based combined with his programming. We do own some AoPS but they only dipped in to selected areas and did those their way. Loved Alcumus. Discovered Alec's at some point and both zoomed through that. Both are "fine" with 5's on math APs etc. Did well in competition math. Have math degrees.....not everyone likes the AoPS way. Find something he does enjoy and is willing to complete. Math is fun! :) I never tried Jacobs but did own a few Lials. I tended to buy cheap used. Eta.....you might want to let him go through the Key to Algebra books as stress relief. My kids loved those books because they were write in. They are more prealgebra......

I vote we do that next year! I actually like Rebecca but I like Wuthering Heights too! :lol: On a recent reread of Rebecca I will admit to being a bit bored at the start but still enjoyed the second half. Classic mysteries..... Tey's Daughter of Time maybe? I just saw it on the middle ages link from Erin so it popped into my mind instantly. ;). I love that book! I am currently listening to The Devotion of Suspect X (a Stacia recommendation for x). Very good and a bit different. Our aspiring mystery writers might want to give it a try. All I could think of in one part is this author obviously decided a mother and daughter could not handle a body by themselves! :lol:

Stacia, Congratulations on reading 52! I just finished Bunnicula. Amy, this is for you just in case. Remember I am the one whose child was terrified by Underdog so I feel the need to give you a heads up before you share these with Chews. It's been at least ten years so it was fun to revisit this one and it is very cute. My DS must have been at least 6 when Bf showed up with this series because he remembers reading them to himself. Dh made me pre read them because of the obvious vampire connection.... I would have anyway :) I let them go through simply because they were children of a woman who read an occasional paranormal with slightly scary covers so they knew the basics already. I suspect your guy does because of living with your dd but.... The vampire word is mentioned but things are humorous, they pound at the bunny with a meat steak for instance. Overall it's just a bunny that likes it's vegetables juiced.

These books appear to be very popular! I think I will have the Ripper one quite soon but the wait on Dracula appears to be long. Amy, I forgot to quote. If you haven't figured it out Grace Burrowes is another author you would probably like, slightly more descriptive than Balogh but good stories. Turn pages quickly as needed. Her characters aged all intertwined so I don't try too hard to figure out who is who beyond the main ones! Lol Just so you know there are lots of Bunnicula's. Blushing, I just sourced them all (little letters) for me.

Well, now I feel like reading Bunnicula again. Those books were so much fun!

No Heathrow for us, way too much effort generally but wish we had done it yesterday. Flew out of Manchester. We only had an 8.5 hour flight because of great conditions. That's about all I can handle gracefully. We keep talking about an Australian vacation but just not sure about the flight. Movie wise, along with Baby Driver I also watched a British film called Mindhorn https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lA5njebTiZY that I really liked and a rather odd one called Collossal http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/colossal-2017. I also dosed through the new Beauty and the Beast. Not much reading this time. I just remembered one comment that I have been waiting to make regarding the Cat Who books.....the first three were written several years before the bulk of the series and are a bit different than the rest of the books. The Siamese cats are acquired during these stories so not a main feature in the first book and the location is Downbelow. Back when I was first reading this series the first three were hard to find in my local libraries which was hard to believe because it was a local author. On a recent reread of the first three I was struck by how good the first ones really were. The first time I read them it was an out of order jumble for the first few. :(

Apparently Jenn and I spent yesterday flying on separate flights across the pond, somewhat of a working holiday for everyone in our family. I did manage to watch Baby Driver on the plane and enjoyed it. The picture of Jenn and Loesje is lovely. The BaW meet ups are special. Stacia, what a gorgeous kitty! I have to admit I am looking forward to seeing what she looks like all grown up. Erin, Congratulations on your black out. I am close but not sure I want to read what I need to in order to finish. ;) Obviously Ancients and Sarum is giving me an issue but with over 600 pages read I WILL finish it, hopefully this year. The western and the book with my name seem to be issues for me.....I read a few pages and abandon. I want to finish both the A to Z author and titles a bit more so plan to work on that when I am not doing the birthstones.

Happy Birthday to Emily! I wasn't here at that time but am very grateful for the boards, Thank You! BTW, my baby is 17 also. Hard to believe.

Loesje, That's pretty much the perfect area for a visit with us. Can't wait to meet you! We'll figure the emails out later.

I appear to have read through book 6 in the Kate Daniels series. I appear to have missed book 5 which probably explains why I didn't continue. Out of order tends to stall me, I never know which book to read next! I haven't tried On the Edge yet but suspect I will. ;). I really like The Innkeeper's. Clean Sweep was actually good enough to read in my browser because it wasn't available on kindle. I suspect you would like them. I am on wait lists for the next two. My village library runs three and they are very popular. The library system buys between 12 and 15 copies of books by a variety of authors just for the clubs, which limits the size of the clubs to 12. Generally our head librarian has about five sets waiting for the clubs at our branch. I think they pick from what she has ready. Mainly what I would class as popular fiction but a pretty wide variety. I know they have read everything from Alan Bradley to Sharon Bolton. I think you would enjoy it, maybe find some new author's. Pretty low pressure because the books are handed to you to check out.

I've been having a bit of an Ilona Andrews bookrest. First I read Wildfire which is the third in her Hidden Legacy trilogy https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27422533-wildfire. I hope they continue with some of the other characters in these books. Anyway I liked this one so much and I noticed that someone (Laughing cat I think) had just finished one of the books in her Innkeeper trilogy. I was able to get Clean Sweep and enjoyed it. These have Vampires, werewolves, and other things but are not particularly scary. I also finally got around to reading the right ;) book by Tanya Huff. It was definitely the first in the series that I read in 2000 and loved. It was still quite good.https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/740042.Blood_Price I have already downloaded the second. Loesje and Jenn, What fun. I wish I had been there. I haven't been seeing my hedgehogs. It's been cold and windy. I have a feeling we are going to have to wait for spring. Dd hopes to have hoglets in our garden this summer!

Thanks for the links! Now pondering...... :) Dd read a whole bunch of Sci fi at around 13. I thought she loved Bradbury but after a recent conversation I think it may have been tolerated. Yesterday I spent a lot of time in the car and cleaned up my stack of kindle books. Several spooky books were tried and rejected but that stack was huge! ? I made progress on my birthstone reading with The Only Way Out by Susan Mallery https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/658443.The_Only_Way_Out. It's a rerelease of one from the 90's. I though I loved her fluff but this one was not great at all. I also finished Don't Let Go by Harlan Cohen. I normally love his stand alones and this one started off well. Single cop who never quite recovered from the mysterious death of his twin which was combined with his high school girlfriend's disappearance is informed girlfriend's fingerprints are part of a crime scene. A bit much but done pretty well then things just went all over the place. I swear every idea the author had was incorporated! It's my L, what more can I say!

It made a huge difference when my ds had the flu. Dh and I were still ill when he came down with it. We were miserable but he was scary sick, hallucinations, vomiting etc. and the adults were essentially down. Dreadful situation. Tamiflu and antinausea pills turned things around for him rapidly. Dd was just starting to come down with it so we had her treated also. She started taking Tamiflu when she was simply slightly miserable with a high fever. She never really was sick. If you can get a prescription and can afford to it I would. Dh and I had been ill too long for it to work apparently.

Dd did not do the Spanish Clep but did did do both the French and German. I will share her experiences simply to bump. She took SAT subject exams in both languages a week or so before the Clep, the written version so the listening was different. Dd did receive a high enough score to receive two years credit at some universities. They were accepted for dd. Overall she thought the vocabulary required for the subject exam and Clep were very similar so no problems there. There were several different native speakers and she did have problems with the accents for a couple speakers on each exam. Being a smart test taker who moves forward when they don't know something was important. ;) I don't think REA has a review book for the Spanish Clep but if they do start there. Check your library for SAT subject review books. Also the big Clep exam book will have one so use it with care. ;)