We are looking forward to the Aggieamy Family's arrival also! On the book front I finished Only Beloved by Mary Balogh. I think it will be the last of the Survivor's Club series because they are all now married. Sniff, sniff, I have really enjoyed this series.https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26067987-only-beloved I just started the Madwoman Upstairs which Onceuponatime recommended. So far it's great but at 10 pages who knows? But since I abandoned a cozy this morning at about ten pages maybe ten pages says a great deal! ;) I have also listened my way into the third in the Jim Butcher series. I like listening to ghem. My overdrive has several as audiobooks, I hope they are all there.

So far I have been hanging onto to the Usbourne books that are for younger children including the science ones because ladybugs will hopefully continue to eat aphids. Etc. We really connected with the Usbourne books and not the DK and Kingfisher. Magic Tree House and Magic School Bus were saved because they were loved. In my spring cleaning of books tons went, 6 good size boxes. I kept all the Sonlight just because I still have my schedules, I can't seem to part with them, although they are out of the binders and rubber banded to save space.

I am not surprised that often either which is generally why I like a bit of humour or romance with my mysteries. It's nice when an author manages to be a bit unpredictable.

I have finished a couple of books. The first was Clawback by JA Jance. I am finally caught up with that series. One of my reading goals for this year is to complete reading several of the series that I have started. Sort of a stack tidying project. The other book was November 9 by Colleen Hoover. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25111004-november-9. It is a New Adult book which is a genre Kareni and Teacherzee introduced me to last year. The basic story is very sweet and hugely romantic imo. A young woman with burn scars meets her dream guy the day she is packing to move from LA to New York. Instant attraction and they agree to meet same day same place fo the next five years until they are 23 (perceived age to settle down) with no contact in between. Yes, we have all watched the movie. ;) This book has a huge plot twist that I didn't see coming....

We are glad to have you here too! We really do love new people. Not all of us have been on BaW for years. While Dh bought my first copy of WTM when the book first came out I didn't join the online community for several years. It took me a couple more years to join this group. This is my fourth year. Many of is aren't very active on the board as a whole which probably accounts for some of our closeness. I think it is probably easier to start BaW midyear when things have calmed down a bit from the ten plus pages we tend to generate at the start of the year although we probably tend to have more personal conversations now. Please excuse us, we really aren't trying to leave anyone out of the conversation. Multiquote is hard for me. I tend to mess up with the editing and ruin my whole post. Notice I didn't edit this time. The theory is simple, click the multi quote button at the bottom of the posts you want to reply to. When you get to the end of the thread there should be another button that now says, reply to x number of posts. Click it and wait a few seconds. The reply box should now contain all the posts you selected in order. Glad to hear you arrived safely. I hope you have a lovely holiday complete with good weather. If you are near a Marks and Spencer this weekend make sure to look at the Dine in for Two special. Great value and generally plenty for three. I just missed Jenn last winter! Hopefully I will get to meet one of my friends from BaW soon! On a side note, I have received many lectures on internet safety from the dc's because I do have a close real life friend I met through WTM. Our families are quite close but they can't believe I took them to meet people I met on the internet and hope to do it again! :lol:

We generally stay in B and B Hotels in France (these are also in other countries) when we want something inexpensivehttp://www.hotel-bb.com/en/home.htm. The four person rooms have a queen size bed downstairs and two singles up in the loft. It works well, the dc's set up dvds upstairs. ;) The rooms are a tight fit and the bathroom is small but we generally spend about 50 euro on them. Generally thet are located slightly off the main drag but by a hypermarket so it is really easy to buy a breakfast of fresh baked goods to eat in the room. The desk clerks we have encountered are not overly bilingual so if you don't speak French have a phase book. Only staffed until 7 pm I think then you check in using a machine that looks rather like a bank fast teller. We normally have reservations so we get four person room but we know people who commonly use them without.

Glad that your weekend went well. Congratulations to the new college graduate! :) I can't believe I haven't heard of your new mystery find before. They sound great! I managed to check the first one out via overdrive already. My stack is getting absolutely huge.

Sorry double post.

I just finished Antonia Frazer's Tartan Tragedyhttps://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3076063-tartan-tragedy so I can return it to the library later today. It wasn't nearly as good as the other two in the series that I have read. Convoluted chaos in 200 pages! Look alike dogs amid lots of over the top characters made this one a bit much. I am continuing the series simply because I started with a latest one and really enjoyed it. I already watched the next book accidentally on the DVD (first episode) of the 80's mystery series so that could make it a boring read. Iam planning to leave my DVD's alone until I finish reading the books!

For me 9:30 am was an hour ago. Not sure exactly what I was doing at exactly that moment. I have done two loads of laundry which I am about to put on the line. Tidied the kitchen after last night's tv viewing snacks. Had two cups of tea and finished a book so I can return it on today's library trip. I have also caught up on my websites. Kids were up and online, getting ready to start school. Dh had started his work day. Works from home. During term time dd has an art class on a Thursday morning. Otherwise typical.

Pagoo by Holling, an all time favourite. Beautiful illustrations which can be turned into a great science unit study. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/937198.Pagoo. Make sure to look at the illustrations in the first review.

VC , I wish I could be there when you land with a box of Jaffa Cakes for the wee girl. Safe journey. Onceuponatime, :grouphug: I hope you feel much better after your surgery. Stacia, Congratulations to you Dd! Another High School graduate. :) Dd's diploma arrived the other day from our umbrella school. It's dated the 25th so it will be a few more days before she officially graduates. I also wanted to chime in and say how grateful I am to have found all of you. This thread means so much to me. I did finish the latest in a cozy series which I have read sporadically for many years, Hannah Swenson and the Wedding Cake Murderhttps://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25621455-wedding-cake-murder?ac=1&from_search=true by Joanne Fluke. Lots of recipes but the ones in her books never seem to work that well for my but I faithfully bookmarked my way through until I remembered that fact, they sound good..... I have missed the last few in this series but it wasn't really a problem storyline wise. It was a fun cozy with Hannah appearing on a Food Network Best Baker show. Light which I needed.

I am thrilled to report that I am finally done with The Werewolf of Bamberghttps://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25149799-the-werewolf-of-bamberg. The book seemed like it was never going to end. I have really enjoyed the Hangman's Daughter series but this one was just too long, around 600 pages.

I read the first one a couple of years ago and enjoyed it. I have started Fool Moon at least three times and read a few pages but never bothered to click on it again on my kindle. I am 2 hours into the book and enjoying it. Not sure what my problem was other than the opening scene wasz a bit blah. It is rare for me to read a series out of order. When I do it it generally a mistake or I can't get thee start of the series.

The food is lovely, thats a great way to compensate for the uncomfortable bits! I am sure I will keep listening to these but I think the listening part makes them grittier. ;( I am used to reading fast through uncomfortable bits in my books. Audiobooks go rather slowly through them. This series isn't available in book form on my overdrive I have to stick with the audiobooks. Next up on my listening list is probably a Jim Butcher paranormal that I have abandoned many times. It is such a popular paranormal series that I know I should love it but I can't seem to focus on it. Going to try the audiobook out. VC, Safe travels. I hope you find the perfect companion book.

Stacia I am so impressed! Dh uses Youtube etc to solve so many of our repair problems. I am impressed everytime he fixes something....I didn't marry him expecting home repairs. Mel, Just wanted to say welcome back. We've missed you. I liked the new Faith Hunter too. For my Mediterranean book I have been listening to the first Inspector Montebello mystery https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/163166.The_Shape_of_Water The Shape of Water. I have wanted to read these for awhile because the tv show looked good but I have never managed to watch more than a few minutes of it. I am not sure how I feel about the book....it's a bit gritty. I only have about an hour left. I also finished Quiet as a Nun the first Jemima Shore mystery and have started the second in the series. Planning to continue the series and discovered that the series was also a tv show in the 80's which is available on dvd. I ordered the complete series this morning to quilt with. My main reading this week was Patricia Briggs Mercy Thompson series. I finished the published ones this week. It was fun to just immerse myself in the series. I am still reading Werewolf of Bamburg by Oliver Potzsch. It's long. I was really struggling with it but hit 50 percent this morning and it is going better now. I really enjoyed the first books in the series so hate to give up.

They live in your account with Amazon. I drove my first kindle reader (second generation one so ancient now)a bit nuts and eventually dh took it away and reset it an archived the 3000+ mainly free books I had on it. Most of the were sorted into/onto bookshelves which probably didn't help. I downloaded everything that had ever interested me in the free section, it was my tv watching entertainment for a couple of months. The complete Bobbsey Twins just because they were handy, kids too old at that point, etc. I have all the classics I could find. Free fluff, some of it confuses things because I try to check it out of the library. So the answer is they can hold many books. Realistically I try and keep readers below 300 now. The battery lasts much longer. I can read for roughly 20 hours (total guess to be honest) without charging. I charge my reader every other week. If I download several that seems to mean a bit more frequent charging. I keep the wifi off unless I need it. My fires are different because that is what I go online with. If I spend a couple of hours online during the day and read at night my kindle needs to be charged the next day. I recently decreased the books actually on it to around 30 but several pdf etc. charge is holding longer. Hope this helps. I will post more later.

Congratulations!!!!

Congratulations!!!!

Idnib, Happy Belated Birthday to your dd!!!

I just went and reserved the Dark Redemption because these must be really good! :lol: ;) You do know the author has several other books...... :grouphug: I hated to like your post. You deserve a peaceful relaxing weekend. I understand appliance failure too well. My oven gave up last week with a partially cooked roast dinner inside. We came home and dinner wasn't ready but the house smelled great and everyone was so hungry. I cut everything in small pieces and stir fried it with BBQ sauce. It was different! :lol:

I now have an opinion, sort of ;) , on the Clep verses AP in terms of difficulty. We had ds take the Clep back in January to see if he was ready for the AP (self studied Calc via online Coursera and MIT) so we would know how much more he needed to do. He prepped a couple of days with REA and did the big Clep book exam and got and 80. To be honest his prep wasn't going as well as the score indicates..... For the AP we need the high score for admission purposes so not looking for a 3 and credit. He relaxed after the Clep and had to cram his serious review into a couple of days. He hates using a graphing calculator so had to master that again. He had thought he could get away with not using it. But discovered from his first practice score that the calculator was the only way to get enough points for a hopefully high score. Topics are on the AB that aren't on the Clep but the Clep had some the AB didn't so that part kind of equals out. The big thing is the graphing calculator I think. Totally depends on how proficient and attached your dd is with that. For the Clep you must use an on screen calculator. The Clep has one huge advantage in terms of being able to take it whenever your dd is ready!

We considered a home where a murder/suicide had taken place many years ago. It was a new build dicounted because of the circumstances. Big news item in our area. We knew going in what the situation was and may have bought it if it's location hadn't added a half hour onto dh's commute. Btw it sold pretty quickly....we actually had an advanced viewing because of a friend in that neighbourhood.

The thin workbooks are Key to.....http://www.amazon.com/Key-Algebra-Books-thru-10/dp/155953088X. These are what I was getting ready to post. Really good.

Angel...I am still thinking about your historical list. I second several of Rose's suggestions, especially People of the Book. Now for some more general ideas. I really enjoyed Simon Winchester's Proffessor and the Madman. While that probably shouldn't be a top 20 read through history you might want to consider one of his others, maybe The Map that changed the World. I am pretty sure Jenn has read it recently. It is one of those on my list. Now for the Tudors, I love that time period but most (probably all) of the books I can remember reading have explicit scenes. Two books that I am planning to try soon are Bess of Hardwick by Mary S. Lovell https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/306403.Bess_of_Hardwick?ac=1&from_search=true and Antonia Fraser's The Wives of Henry the Eighth https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/530793.The_Wives_of_Henry_VIII?. Bess is sitting on my nightstand because it is going to be my Dusty for bingo. A museum shop purchase which was inspired because Bess was an incredible woman. Her start in lfe was relatively humble but some consider her to have been Elizabeth I's best friend. She married four times well. She was Mary's jailer but also a close friend as evidenced by beautiful gifts from Mary at Hardwick Hall. She eventually married one of the wealthiest men in England and built Chatsworth. Her children married incredibly well. She created a dynasty...... Antonia Fraser is an author I just discovered. I am currently reading her Jemima Shore mystery series (too modern for this project) but she is also the author of several historical biographies which look incredible. I hope to read some of those in the fall. If the Henry one doesn't appeal maybe one of the others will. For one last time period which I know you would enjoy you might like a local(for me) series about the Scrooby Pilgrims (Mayflower).http://www.mayflowermaid.com/home....couldn't find any good reviews so I linked her website. I haven't read these either but I did just put the first one, The Mayflower Maid on hold. I promise to read it in the next couple of months. One of my friends loved these. They are sold in the gift shop at Gainsborough Hall which was visited by Henry VIII. You can veiw his and Catherine Howard's bedrooms when you visit. ;)