How wonderful!

Me for one......I recently finished Disco for the Departed. I read it for one of my 10x10 which is Asian Detectives. I know others have read some of this series. I plan to try the author’s other series too. So the 10x10’s are one of this year’s challenges that Robin figured out for us. For this one people picked out 10 (or less) categories to read 10 books in. I am loving this one because I get to fit my own personal goals into the BaW group “games”............mine include a Brexit Express like VC, set in Scotland, Nordic Noir, but I also have some personalized ones like finishing 10 of the series I have started titled “last book in”. The books can overlap categories btw so you don’t have to read a100 books to complete the challenge. You could also do 5 in 5 for instance. This is all about BaWers enjoying their reading. I tend to get more out of it if I do the challenges because I stretch myself a bit. To find Robin’s challenges go to her blog “52 books in 52 weeks”. The link is always in her siggy.

Yes, Camilla Lackberg is one of my authors for Nordic Noir. Basically the term as I understand it refers to mysteries set in Scandinavia. It’s a good term to use for googling for more books.😉 It’s one of my areas that I am trying to concentrate on a bit more this year and find a few less well known authors, my problem is I need them translated. I am not a Harry Hole fan and finally gave up on Jo Nesbo. I stopped partway through Girl with a Dragon Tattoo. So popular Nordic Noir may not be my thing.🤔 I do like Indridason in general https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35011768-the-shadow-district who is pretty popular. The Ragner Johansson series https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25067569-snowblind are good. Just started reading the Department Q series https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12575824-the-keeper-of-lost-causesand am really enjoying it. Btw, the CJ Sansom’s with JackBarek are historical chunksters but wonderful if you like Tudor history. He does a great job with lesser known parts of history.....makes it come alive.

🤣 Well there are the books featuring Kate Burkholder https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6115138-sworn-to-silence, Brooklyn in the Bibliophile cozies https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6115138-sworn-to-silence, and Jack Barek https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/138685.Dissolution. Those are some B characters that are favorites........ I really enjoy Julia Spencer Fleming https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/113002.In_the_Bleak_Midwinter?ac=1&from_search=true. She is supposedly working on another in the series finally. C.S. Harris with Sebastian St. Cyr is one of my all time favorite if you like historical mysteries. @Liz CA is currently binge reading those. The latest was recently released and I am waiting for it. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39149.What_Angels_Fear?ac=1&from_search=true Have you tried Nordic Noir? I have found that I like several of those authors and settings.

It turned out beautiful!

So far I like Vera better but reading this series slowly. I love Gamache............just discovered another one is coming this fall. @tuesdayschild How the Heather Looks is sitting on my nightstand too........and has been for over a year. My intentions are clear I just don’t seem to read it!

I am sending hugs and prayers..........so glad you have a respite worker now. That is a positive step. I hope you are able to try one of the drop in yoga classes soon.

Please feel free to join us! This year Robin is featuring a detective each month and has a great assortment if you want to look had her list over at 52 books. Several are new to me and I read a lot of detective fiction. 😉

I have been looking forward to this month’s detective as I have only read one of the Guido Brunetti books (the first) and enjoyed it. I never continued because I was Brit Tripping so it’s sort of fun to be traveling the world a bit more. 😉 I have been trying to plan ahead for the detectives by placing a hold the month before on the detective’s book and my timing was perfect this month, just downloaded my hold before checking in here. Death in a Strange Country has just joined my virtual stack. I am still reading my Expanse book, this one took me awhile to get into but enjoying it now. Persepolis Rising takes place 30 years after the last installment in the series, the characters age and several are either new or playing a larger role. @melmichigan I am looking forward to your reaction when you reach this book! My other book is my audiobook, The Keeper of Lost Causes by Jussi Adler-Olsen. It’s for my Nordic Noir category and I really like it at the halfway point. Planning to read the rest in the series kind of “like”. 😉 It’s book one in a Danish series called Department Q.............the main character is a detective who is sort of a has been......Carl was the leader in a 3 man team that was ambushed on a routine investigation. One member murdered, one a quadriplegic who wants to die, and this character who survived to return to work. No one wants to be his partner. Parliament coincidentally provides a huge amount of funding to form a cold case squad which the police chief wants financially although he doesn’t want his detectives doing the boring work.........Department Q is created with one lone detective and the station’s basement receives a bit of a remodel so they can put Carl away from the main department. When Carl discovers the extent of his funding he demands a car and driver and the new detective team is formed. A rather charming pair.......curious case, although I think I have it solved! I am probably so very wrong!

Oops, sorry. I didn’t click. I could see them and thought it was good.

Maybe some of the individual topics from the Georgia Public Broadcasting course http://www.gpb.org/chemistry-study-of-matter/students/chemistry/semester1 would be useful. You can print the worksheets/note taking but need to buy the answers unless you are in Georgia. I just watched myself and graded.

Wasn’t sure if I could access the BBC stuff from the US. Here is Key Stage 2 https://www.bbc.com/bitesize/subjects/z39d7ty. Easy content but aimed at roughly the 11 to 13 yo group. FYI, KS3 is the next level, then GCSE. I think there are games etc for younger but perhaps they have paired that with the Muzzy subscriptions. You might want to explore a bit more.

Not sure if you are watching in French with English subtitles. Dd used to do that and thought she learned quicker that way.

🤣 Glad I didn’t watch that before bed! Someplace on the web there is probably a a video of me having a sea gull land on my head and stealing the French fry I was in the process of putting in my mouth at Downtown Disney. The dc's were little, the three of us were screaming, and afterwards discovered all the devices pointing at us. That doesn’t look like a British magpie. So interesting......more like a rook with white patches. Huge bird, I guess I would be walking around with eyes on my hat in Australia.

Yeah! You are back......Looking forward to hearing about your trip! Starting with the new avatar.........

@JennW in SoCalGuess what my kids are watching? 😉. Dh actually wants to watch but fell asleep. I will wait for him. Thought I would post this link that came to my email https://veritaspress.com/blog/ten-for-the-beach-a-summer-reading-list-for-students-and-graduates-alike. I need to follow up on a couple of the books that I haven’t read from it....

We had that happen at one of our houses years ago. Every morning when it became fully light a grackle would repeatedly ram one of our widows. He hit hard with no damage to himself but I feared for my window. This went on for months....so no girl😉. We sold the house after a few months so have no idea if he reappeared the next spring. What finally worked was a life size ceramic springer spaniel the bil had given us as a joke. It couldn’t be set up before hand but after the first strike we put it on the dog’s crate (our dog refused to be involved 😂) and would go back to bed in peace. Our dog crawled in bed with me too!

We own the Gnome mobile and have watched in many times. 😎 Just the mention of the music has it playing in my head........

@tuesdayschild Your post is filled with Rabbit Trails! Really fun ones! The Little Grey Men.........how did I not know about this book? It’s Gnomes which are huge family favorite and a bit of a running theme in our family. We give silly gnome presents and I am in the process of finishing a gnome themed table quilt to entertain us all. For inquiring minds The Little Grey Men is being reissued this fall in the US. There is a sequel. The book received a Carnegie award and is on lists for best British Children’s Literature. The author received an MBE https://www.bbsociety.co.uk/bb-biography.php. Basically I am planning to wait for Tuesday to read this then order my own copy. BTW, Grey works for next month's detectives first name, Guido.😉 Now for the Vanishing Lady. That short story is a bit elusive isn’t it? Included in some early books of Poirot shorts but not in others but very familiar with David Suchet’s Poirot episode. I don’t think I have ever read it but I found it in Hercule Poirot: The Short Stories https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16248281-hercule-poirot and will read it. 😂. On hold. It wasn’t In the book of early shorts I read for my Agatha Christie challenge and I feel rather cheated. I may have read it years ago...... The Gnomes in progress and I do know it’s a bit tacky😎 and odd......

Sending hugs............

I really am not judging the actual people by their hats but thanks to my mom’s years of being in Red Hats I do know some of the individual groups tend to be very into the attire. Many of their meetings tend to be about the attire, fashion shows etc. I know they have a great time but this isn’t what I really enjoy.....maybe a meeting a year with stuff to purchase. Other Red Hat are in sweat pants and tend to meet less formally.......breakfast out and a walk through a garden or museum. I am probably someplace in between but if I find myself with an opportunity to choose I will pick the easier dress code for the majority of the meetings. 😂 I have been in lots of woman’s clubs over the years and have dealt with the dress codes, white gloves, etc. Since I appear to have many groups in my area if I do this I will definitely put a bit of effort into finding a good fit for me. I do know from life in England I hate dealing with hats and want to be able to get rid of it when it makes my head hurt. So I am looking for a group where one can show up in a knitted cap or fascinator, comment it’s a bit warm, and stick the thing in my purse........that was what many of my mom’s red hat friends did......

It’s always fun to be back. I had to laugh because yogurt is a problem for us in both the US and UK. Someone’s brand or flavor always disappears when we leave for more than a couple weeks! 😂. Oddly my Dd prefers American brands because there are more smooth flavors in her opinion.

I posted last night so I could find your thread this morning if no one else had posted more detail. My kids did CLEP exams, a whole lot of CLEP exams and received credit. Spanish (Dd did French and German) is a wonderful exam because you can potentially get 12 credits. We were able to get many exam study guides from the library so check there first. REA were the best. We also paid for a month of Instacert for my Ds when he was doing the history exams and he found it really useful. It is a huge bank of test questions on the computer which we did not learn about until the end of our CLEP journey. FYI, My kids were also taking SAT Subject exams at the same time and found that the content on the exams was frequently similar so study material for the Spanish SAT Subject might be really useful...Dd studied for the French SAT but took both exams within the week, same for German. You will also want to get a copy of The Official CLEP Study Guide 2019. It has one copy of each exam and should reflect the current versions . I read that they did some updates to some of the exams last year so I would buy or check out a copy of this to quickly compare to the study guide before they start using the review book. We took the “official” exam the day before the actual to make sure they were ready.

We liked the REA books.

Happy 50th Birthday!🎉🎉🎉 Great birthday present! Yeah, to finishing Peter Zak........I didn’t think of Christie for my Z. As usual I loved looking at your books. Earlier today I finished a really good mystery on audio. All Cry Chaos https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11348411-all-cry-chaos reminded me of the combination of all the Gamache series stuffed in one book. I really loved the main character in a ❤️Gamache way. The storyline was good.......successful Interpol agent with a lovely family (the owns a charming French vineyard), with a habit of relentlessly pursuing cases he probably should close unsolved when gets involved in a fascinating case of a mathematical genius’ murder in The Hague. I loved it but it is definitely dark in places and violent. Unfortunately it is sort of a stand alone with a prequel available which I have not read. It will work for my Brexit Express 10 which is why I read it.....the blurb said Amsterdam.