I had planned to include that Urban Shaman by CE Murphy reminded me of Kevin Hearne's Iron Druid series. In a side by side comparison they are not that alike but the style of the characters and the Celtic god character are very similar. Since many of you are Hearne fans.......

:grouphug: Robin, both an IRS audit and a cold in the same week. Yuk! You deserve a day or two of curling up with a few fun books!!! Loved the book forecast......Urban Shaman is done. I can try and go back to sleep now.

Just checked that one out too! Can't resist gargoyles. :lol:

I also have a library paperback of "The Queen's Bastard" by C.E. Murphy. Pretty sure it is the first in a different series. Have you read that one?

We write them. Over the years we have stopped sending them to a few people who seemed to feel burdened by them because they and their children do not write them.

The paperback is in my stack......not sure why I requested it but it must have been recommended somewhere.

I finished "The Golem and the Jinni" and enjoyed it quite a bit. I liked the way it all came together in the end. It was not at all what I expected from the description but satisfying none the less. It is going to disappear from my kindle in a couple of hours if wifi is on so relief at being done pretty high too! I am looking forward to getting back to "Frankenstein " now in order to compare with the Golem. :lol: Before I do that I have a CE Murphy called "Urban Shaman" that was recommended here to try. In 36 hours it will disappear.....

Hi, this is Dd. Some of them are more along the lines of very creepy. I don't think they're above Dracula and Frankenstein. But there aren't any monsters. The Hawthorne isn't at all scary though. I think you'll be all right.

Stacia -- Looking forward to your review of " Clockwork Scarab". Sounds like a good one. I have never won a book either so it sounds like fun. Congratulations!

:grouphug:

Floridamom -- Just watched Thug notes :lol: Stacia -- I have been looking at some of the Goodreads revolt info. Not the book just googling. I had no clue. I just go in and log my books, use the lists, read reviews. I also read about the qualifications for a successful write in vote for the goodreads awards. They have to be published in 2013, be on your read shelf, and rated highly by many good reads readers. I had thought Angelmaker would be a good one since many of us read it and enjoyed it but it was published in 2012. Any other ideas?

It is always so stressful knowing that you can't turn the wifi on. I love ebooks but hate that part!

I only did really well in the mystery/thriller category fot the 2013 Goodreads voting where I had read more than half of them. That probably surprises no one here. :lol: The obvious choice was the Flavia book for me there. I had not read a single fiction one. That I found a bit surprising but I was on waitlists for two of them even before I read the list with another in my stack. I did find a couple more "fun" type of books to request that I am looking forward too.

Voting for your favorite books of 2013 is available now on Goodreads. I just voted and found some interesting books that are not in my stack on the list. Just put some library requests in. :) I thought some of you might enjoy taking a look. Golem and the Jinni is going well. Very curious about how it will all end.

When we moved here at 7 and 9 my dcs no longer enjoyed our neighborhood playground in the US which was recently refurbished. They arrived here and found zip wires, climbing equipment,and huge complicated slides. They still are happy to meet friends at playgrounds and ds is almost 6 feet tall!

In my part of England the gates/styles are maintained by local walking clubs not the landowners. The wild pheasant/bird hunting is owned by people other than the land owner. I think you might be able to hunt on your own land but not sure because some of the birds are released for the season. Paid group hunts. The person that owns the hunting rights for our village owns an area that goes about 3 miles north of us. Fishing rights are owned also. Never heard of deer hunting probably because most are farmed on large estates. People here are honestly significantly more respectful of the footpaths then they would be in the States. I grew up on farms in the US where we did have a significant tourist/trespasser problem. Coming from my background I found the whole thing cringe worthy when we first moved here. It works at least in my little part of the UK. The dogs even off lead are incredibly well behaved if they are on the footpaths. No jumping on people or chasing animals ever seen and we walk several miles a day. The only camping by footpaths involves the children of the landowner. The worst problem I know of is a pony who begs unmercifully so people feed him. He is really fat and the owner is upset. Pony has been moved away from path -- looks quite sad about it too.

We do have washer/dryer combis here. Personally I found that they took way too long to do one small load. About 4 hours. I have also heard they are prone to breaking quicker -- no experience with that. My condenser dryer can be put pretty much anyplace. It is currently in my pantry and working wonderfully. I just moved in to this house and feeling quite relieved. ;)

I finished "Thankless in Death" by JD Robb and it was a very good read. Hard to believe it is number 37 in the series, I know this thanks to Goodreads. I can't believe I have read that many of them but know that I always read them when released. ;) Trying to finish "Frankenstein " and finding it boring. I haven't even reached the monster. Dd assures me it improves. I am plodding along at a chapter or two a day. I also started "Heart sick" by Chelsea Cain which acceptable so I will most likely finish. But I also started "Golem and the Jinni" which after a dozen pages may have me hooked. Will shall see.... I will hopefully join the CS Lewis challenge. Dd has given me a stack to read. She is currently enthralled by Poe. She read the Coursera assignment and appears to be reading everything in the complete Poe book. :lol:

Baby hats and booties is simple patterns. A very upmarket children's store had a tree decorated with them recently. I was tempted and I knit!

I do have a dryer (condenser type) for towels and sheets and a dishwasher. I also have a line for drying(as of our move last week) and several drying racks. I had those in the States too so my preference ), although in the States they were in my basement. ;) I hate to put jeans etc in the dryer, shrinkage. In this village I was a bit odd not to have a line so I finally joined the crowd. :lol: Our area is fortunate because 30 minutes to a large University so plenty of intellectual opportunities. Lot of groups to join for special interests. There are places where these things do not exist in both countries. Like Laura we spend about £100 per week on groceries. I tend to stock up on sale items so my spending can be a bit irregular. To be honest I think the quality of my purchases is higher here because of local butcher etc. We don't eat out frequently but can do the local pub's carvery for £35 without alcohol. Local carry outs cost roughly £15.

I kept my two together for McHenry but have now sort of separated them. McHenry was great. Possibly our best science ever. We used toothpicks and sculpty clay for the molecules. We tried biology together and ds just could not keep up. Currently doing chemistry together but dd is doing Apologia anatomy on her own. They enjoy experiments together so would like to preserve that.

I always have to laugh at the comparison articles, my mom sends me many about what it is like living in the UK(she refuses to visit but I live here). Her paper had a weekly columnist describing her experiences which weren't great. I suspect her poor attitude made her highly unpopular with the people in her village and they let her suffer. Among her many problems were her laundry tabs, they wouldn't dissolve so her clothes stayed dirty. She actually published that we all wear dirty clothing here. Upset my mom greatly. I think she was putting them in the drawer, I put them directly in with the clothing per a nice strangers directions my first day here. Sorry for the rant but she was a huge problem my first couple of years here. I was so happy when she returned to the States and quit writing! :lol: This article was actually pretty fair. We don't live in a particularly posh area but I have to say I just moved out of a recently built "condo"/terrace with a fabulous walk in closet. Of course it was just one for the whole house. Our new place came with a garbage disposal (our first flat had one too). My friend has a great basement. So these things can be found if you really want them.

The Mary Frances knitting book http://maryfrancesbooks.com/ is a filled with fun projects for both knit and crochet if your dd still likes dolls! My dd loved it. It might be available to download for free. Not sure -- the garden one is. Another place to seek hands on help is a local knitting store. They have expert staff (normally) and are generally happy to help as long as you buy your yarn from them.

I need reading material to travel well and having a huge variety available on my kindle has been a huge blessing. I was reluctant at first too but dh pointed out that the books are part of our amazon account and can be reloaded on another kindle. I still take an emergency paperback for take offs and landings. :lol:

JennW and Jane-- Just requested the first Peter Diamond mystery "The Last Detective". Looking forward to trying them.