Creekland :grouphug: As someone who has cleaned a rental property that was trashed by a tenant I know a bit of your frustration. Especially since we had been nice and understanding to the tenant. Dh and I decided as we filled a couple of boxes of industrial garbage bags that we were done with being landlords. We were lucky that the property was able to be striped down and cleaned up enough to be sold. :grouphug:

I haven't read a book by King in years. I used to enjoy his books and then there was the one about the dog. I haven't read one since. I recently saw 11/22/62 on one of our lists, maybe time travel. Somewhere unexpected. I just discovered that there are a whole lot of Fool's Gold books. https://www.goodreads.com/series/47858-fool-s-gold. I am still enjoying them but I will be at this longer than expected.

Both teens if left to their own devices drift to a wake up of around 11. Last spring we needed to move ourselves back to a wake up time of 6 am for a couple of months. It was especially brutal because they had been doing 11am est and two weeks later 6am gmt. They have purposely kept things to 8:30 to 9:30 most days in self defence now that life has returned to normal. ;) They can get up early relatively easy if needed now.

My kids liked Muzzy also. BBC has some websites geared to littes I think. Lots of cartoons etc can be watched in other languages on youtube. Mom or Dad actively teaching things like counting in the foreign language is good too.

I found thishttp://www.scholastic.com/tbw/bookAlikeSearch.do?Ntk=TBW_BookAlike7_SI&workId=1275204&gradeOffset=0#cart/cleanupat a Scholastic website to find out grade level. I have been playing with it. Apparently Agatha Christie and James Herriot are grade 7. I was a bit surprised that Hunger Games is grade 5. I know it wasn't a difficult read but didn't quite expect that. :lol: It does explain why all the kids were reading it before the movie came out. Hunger Games is depressing and over 400 pages so not a great choice. I am not sure how she will be using this book for her English qualifications, does the actual reading of the book give her credit? Fwiw dd has been reading Harry Potter's and Agatha Christie books in her foreign languages to increase her reading speed. Because she knows the story they are intuitive and she picks up the vocabulary quicker.

My son did them at about that age and loved them. We did Chemistry early also (9th grade) and he remembered a lot. We did some of the Georgia Public Broadcasting chemistry in between.

Julia, I never welcomed you back last week so :grouphug:. I am so glad that our little part of this huge forum is a place where we can find comfort when our world becomes painful. Dd and I have read most of the Tasha Alexander books. They vary in quality imo but are enjoyable. Some of storylines that might not be enjoyable right now. Another series you might enjoy are C.S. Harris and her Sebastian St. Cyr. Regency Mysteries. What Angels Fear is the first one. These need to be read in order, missing one would probably be O.K. as long as what you have is in order. The stories all take place in one year so they have an underlying continuing storyline. These are not fluffy but good. Goodreads kept recommending Tasha Alexander when I was reading the St. Cyr books......

idnib :grouphug: I have been having problems posting today. I finished The Duke's Disaster which is the first in a new series by Grace Burrows. It was good and a bit different than the normal historical romance but a portion of that difference is a trigger for some, r#pe scene. The next in the series is due out soon.

on my kindle fire also eta. That time I managed to post something.

I am very glad that Great Girl made it home. I also feel tremendous sympathy for The Boy and poison ivy around the eyes. I once had poison ivy on my earlobes...I had an ear infection and didn't scrub there after knowing I had been exposed. The eyes must be worse and the ears were pretty miserable! I have made progress on spelling my name. Thus far... S....Sister of the Bride by Susan Mallery, a Fool's Gold story, which I really enjoyed. A....Armada by Ernest Cline N....No Good Duke Goes Unpunished by Sarah MacLean, Rule of Scoundrels series, good. :) D.... not completed....Duke's Disaster by Grace Burrowes, BF loved it R....not completed...Raven Black by Ann Cleeves, good so far A....Almost Perfect by Susan Mallery, Fool's Gold again,read several of these this week Now for my reading plans for the next week, I have several more Fool's Gold books downloaded and I also have several more of the Ann Cleeves Shetland books so I plan to be busy!

I finally finished Armada by Ernest Cline this morning. It took me a week to read this book compared to Ready Player One (his first book) which I did my best to read in one sitting. That statement says it all. The book was fine but the story a bit familiar and like a movie. It was a let down after his first book. Please note I started and finished several books while reading a bit of this one each day..... Here is a review that echoes my feelings pretty well.http://www.dallasnews.com/lifestyles/books/20150724-science-fiction-review-armadaby-ernest-cline.ece I will say I think a teenager might really like the book, especially one who doesn't know all the old video games. At some point I will check it out and see if either dc reads it. This book concentrated on a couple of video games that I am not sure if even exist and no desire to google. Mentions of Dungeons and Dragons but not back to back trip through my past. Essentially a teenage gamer discovers that his obsession with a video game qualifies him to help save the world....the game was a training module.

http://www.amazon.com/German-Quickly-Grammar-Reading/dp/0820467596/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1439590273&sr=1-3&keywords=april+wilson Dd used that book as part of her study for the SAT subject exam. Not necessarily recommending it for the exam but for general study she really liked it.

My kids loved the books!

I am hindered by not being able to multiquote. I have already lost one post so I am determined! Welcome Mommymilkies! Glad to see you back. :) Jenn, Glad you are enjoying the book. The politics of a British village are hard work for an outsider (me), especially someone who normally also has an opinion (also me), I have to think very hard before I speak. It really restricts me. :lol: As I remember that book was very accurate, lots of teeth sucking going on. A term everyone here uses for disapproval being shown but not really expressed verbally. You know they don't like it..... but no one is willing to say and perhaps let you know their solution for the problem. Somewhere I read that the author lives in a small village in the Midlands and is actually on the PCC so she knows what she is talking about. Interesting historical tidbit I picked up at a lecture on WWI tonight.....Do you know where the phrase "to chat" originated? Chats are/were what lice/nits were called in those days. All the trench solders had them and carried a small candle. When they had a break in fighting they would light the candle and go up and down the seams of each others uniforms. The heat from the flame popped the lice eggs and they would be free for a couple days. Obviously they have conversation while chatting, this originated the term. Our chat board has a whole new meaning now. Kareni, Before I forget I am glad you are enjoying the Scarlett Bernard series. I also enjoyed the articles about the Shanna books. If they were a newish genre that explains alot. My mom was and still is a serious Harlequin reader. I had free range of those and I suspect she thought they were a version of Harlequin Historical. She dislikes historicals but would buy them for me at our used book store. She leaned towards Charlotte Lamb, Janet Daily, and Violet Winsper which definitely weren't the same level.

Happy Birthday!

I probably shouldn't like a complaint post so :grouphug:. Glad you have a computer.

Welcome Sapientia! It will be lovely to have a grown-up dd join us. Like others I am looking forward to reading about your literary experiences. I will admit I am hoping you share a bit of your life as a Maths major also. My dd is planning to get a Maths degree also. Teacherzee, thanks for the update. I am glad to hear some of your difficulties seem to be being addressed. I hope tomorrow brings a computer to your new desk. :) ETA. Thanks for the great links Kareni. I really enjoyed the 15 enchanting books onehttp://www.bustle.com/articles/84676-15-books-as-enchanting-as-the-harry-potter-series-since-youve-already-read-them-a-million. Definitely a stack builder. :lol:

I had to be very careful checking things out of my library because the librarian had serious standards but between my mom and sister-in-law I pretty much read what I wanted. I was welcome to what they had. I loved Kathleen Woodweis and had my own copy of Shanna....bought with babysitting money. I read Valley of the Dolls too. I got more eyebrow raising info from their magazines than their books. Lol Redbook etc had some really illuminating articles. Yeah Jenn!!!! Glad you were able to get the overdrive books sorted. It is so easy. The Courtney Milan is a good one I think. I managed to check Raven Black out from a library in hardcover recently. It is sitting by my bed unread. I need to read it soon. We are spending a copy of nights by the sea and I just brought my kindles.

We are at this stage also but haven't bought more than jeans. A friend with a really tall husband told me Land's End.

Praying

I have been going through my stacks and what I have on hold and can spell my name. What a relief. :lol: It's a fun challenge, thanks Robin. There is no way that I am capable of doing the book cover display. Wish I could. I finished reading the first book in Susan Mallory's Fool's Gold series. Really enjoyed it, Teacherzee and someone else reads these. I started reading Armada. This is the new book by the author of Ready Player One. I am only a chapter in but so far it is a keeper. I found the opening paragraph of Ready Player One to be really compelling. I had to keep going. This one doesn't pull me the same way but is interesting thus far. Teacherzee--Good luck on your first day! :)

I had In the Bleak Midwinter in the stack a few months ago but didn't have a chance to read it. I know I found it on a list so your recommendation means I will figure out where I found it and read it!

I have posted recently about enjoying a mystery a few months ago by Judith Cutler and decided to check out the first one in another of her series called Life Sentence. It was good but not quite the average police procedural mystery. It had more depth or it might just have spoke to me and my life somewhat more clearly than most other books of that type. The main character was a 50ish female Cheif Superintendent in the Kent police force who is being forced to retire in order to care for her elderly parents. That part of the story was very depressing. Because of her impending retirement she is stepping away from her usual role in the department and takes over trying to solve a cold case of a woman who has never been identified after being beaten into a vegetative state. Her attackers have never been found. I guess the whole book is a bit depressing when I read what I just wrote. It does have good (happier) parts. She finds romance..... The crimes are solved in an interesting way but this isn't very fluffy. I did like it enough to check the next one out. :lol: In part I want Jenn and Jane to be warned that this definitely isn't Miss Marple. Not has gritty as some but a bit grim.

I have had this site bookmarked for ageshttp://bsapp.com/forensics_illustrated/. It looks great. Dd ended up using a Coursera class from a University in Singapore for her main forensics study. She really enjoyed the class. Not sure when it will be offered again.

:grouphug: praying