I passed the halfway point in Vita Nostra and am totally enthralled. It is very different but I am so curious to find out what happens! I thought The Scar was the second part and was planning to read it soon. I think I am glad to know that I will reach the end with this book because I thought there was an untranslated part three too! 🤣 I just picked up the third Murderbot. I love this series! I tried to read Senlin Ascends when it first came out but only read a few pages. It was one of those that needed to go back to the library and you now have me wondering if I should try again.... Hugs regarding the sciatica. I know how much it hurts! I am sure you have tried everything but a very flat pillow and lying flat on my back helped me sleep, sort of........ So how was Mrs. Piggle Wiggle? We read all the Boxcar Children by the original author.....first eleven I think..... he enjoyed every single one but hated the new author. I almost hate to admit this but I know I liked one of the new Lord Peter’s quite a bit.😉

The Number Devil is fun and I believe it covers probability. Can’t remember how old they were. We loved the Murderous Math books too!

So far he tracks with my DS........Have you already read Mrs. Piggle Wiggle?

@Robin M Wishing you a safe flight! Have a great time at the party!

Just wanted to say Dad’s are parents who sometimes are lacking full information. So yes, you fill them in! When Dd was born I took care of 90% of her needs. My husband spent time with her each day and because his office was by a babies r us bought many of her supplies on his own. So he knew she preferred green beans etc. but rarely fed her those green beans. When I was hospitalized unexpectedly for 3months while pregnant with Ds he took full charge and even took Dd 18mo to work with him......clients wives graciously played with her during meetings!🥰. I have to say Dd and I had a really hard time adjusting to my being in charge again.......a first I was only better a stories and she demanded Dh for everything else. I had a newborn too! It isn’t easy hearing your child say they want Daddy NOW!

I ended up reading The Au Pair yesterday and found it to be a page turner. It also read very quickly but I was up very late finishing it! I actually started it because I needed to do something with a few minutes that I needed to wait for my husband said he needed to get ready to go out and I thought I might very well read a few pages and be able to return the book. He was longer than the promised few minutes and I had gotten far enough to need to continue. The first couple of chapters were not the best but after that the book’s gothic elements come together with the mansion on the cliffs taking on it’s own life with a village mythology that says the twin children born there do not survive.......the village wisdom said perhaps one or both of the twins is a “sprite” or changeling 🤔 The circumstances surrounding their birth feel odd. Unanswered questions and quite a tangle. The book switches between the present day search by one of the twins to learn why their mother is only holding one unidentified baby in a photo taken after their birth and flashbacks that are narrated by the family’s au pair covering the months leading up to the birth. Every time I thought I had it figured out, I didn’t.😂 Update on Goodreads exclusive shelves.......this book was not able to be put both on my read shelf and the Brit Tripping Ideas shelf so Brit Tripping ideas is just a shelf again. I think I need my read shelf to be accurate fo my tracking of challenges. This book was mainly set in Norfolk with trips to London and Leeds(Yorkshire). in my effort to decrease the stack(library trip planned for today) I also read a few pages of Vita Nostra since I no longer knew why I had checked it out. It appears to be a keeper..........Ukrainian translation, which I am not sure I have read before, plus an awesome cover. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3972188-vita-nostra. Something I read in the reviews calls it a dark Harry Potter........ I noticed our BaWer @Angelaboord gave it 5* and a great review....that tag is missing her photo so I may have the wrong one but see no other.......

It may very well be a test where the prep isn’t laid out beyond a couple of old exams. The German one is like that also, well there is an REA book that you can sometimes find for outrageous sums on the used market but I was also told it was not much help for the current exam. Dd did French, Latin, and German via self study. Her highest scores were in French and Latin which have review materials. Her German score was far lower but still would be considered passing. She felt that the German exam was probably designed more for people who either participate in the German language clubs or are have travelled more extensively in Germany than she has because what she was missing was more practical knowledge. FWIW Two of the recommended curriculums by College Board on the website for the Latin SAT were Cambridge and Wheelocks. Dd had completed Wheelocks and went through the REA. She had also been through Cambridge but felt the vocabulary in the Wheelocks the more helpful. I think it is probably a question of how well the vocabulary matches.

Yep either a reread for the plane or something fluffy. I try to have several choices on my Kindle always........also try and start the book before........ I am finally almost done with my Inspector Gamache Reread. I have Glass Houses ready to start and Overdrive predicts that I will have my hold on the new book within the next two weeks. I may wait and read the last two back to back. Since I am not listening to Gamache I went back to Rivers of London and the Most current Peter Grant. I am enjoying it but VERY grateful for my recent series reread. I suspect I would be really lost otherwise. Books.....still working on Inspector Chen and reading the second Inspector Rebus for my Scotland challenge. Not loving the Rebus, Hide and Seek is centered on the 90’s drug culture in Edinburgh which is blah.......but I loved the first and plan to read the third, so on with the second! Last week I read the first two Murderbot books by Martha Wells. Really enjoyed them, both Dd and I are waiting for the third.......I also read the second in the Isabel Dalhousie by Alexander McCall Smith. Friends, Lovers, and Chocolate was a lovely read, I like Isabel. 😉 A couple of the books that I have in the stack for this week are The Au Pair (believe @Mothersweets mentionedthis one last week) and The Gown(the making of Elizabeth 2’s wedding gown).

I think she was doing two languages but at the start was not seeking a diploma. She now is I believe. I just looked and found this. http://www.open.ac.uk/courses/modules/l195. Pretty sure you pay by the module, and this appears to be one module. I can talk to Dh because he has researched OU in great detail. 😂

Maybe Duolingo and Practice Makes Perfect books for the basis. This is what my Dd did for French. I know Open University has Italian and do know of a homeschooler who did some with them. My village has an Italian Club....something like that might work for practice.

I have to agree.

How close would you actually be to where this man lives?

I had no idea I could have more exclusive shelves........wondering if I should make the Brit Trip Ideas an exclusive in order to make it easier to find. I played with it quite a bit to get it as high up on my shelf list as it is. ETA It worked, they still say read etc. directly under the book but the shelf is now easy to find. Thank you! OK, Like many of you I love children’s books and I also have a huge soft spot for donkeys. A fun quilt pattern was released yesterday that is a Wonky Donkey apparently after the book. Well, Dd and I decided we needed the pattern called Hee Haw and that has been purchased and downloaded (designed by a homeschool mom btw 😍) and I just learned about the book......oh my, so much fun. About to go searching for my own copy! You guys all need to watch the YouTube in this article https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/10/the-wonky-donkey-viral-video-of-grandmother-makes-picture-book-a-bestseller It’s sold a whole lotta books. The illustrater did this https://www.wonkydonkeybook.com/. I loved learning about her process. And finally, the blog post that started it all! http://frame.bloglovin.com/?post=6834816725&blog=14978159&frame_type=none. As some of you know Dh and I take some of my quilts on photo shots. I love the idea of taking one to the visit the Donkey sanctuary that Dd and I visit most summers.......

I love a somewhat open floor plan as I hate being stuck in the kitchen while everyone else is having fun in the main part of the house. It truly makes cooking which I used to enjoy feel like way too much work. My mess may be isolated but so am I..........I will never buy a house where the kitchen isn’t somewhat connected to the rest of the house again. Maybe a large kitchen with a huge dining area which I had in one house would be OK..........

This looks like an interesting series. I haven’t had a chance to look for it yet but I will later tonight. I hope you feel better soon! I am pretty sure there are a couple set in warmer weather..........but that series does love big blizzards! One thing about reading a series like Claire Ferguson and Gamache back to back is I get tired of some of the charming bits that are repeated every single book........like she is a woman Reverend and how Three Pines isn’t really there, per maps! I am now on The Great Reckoning which is actually one of my favorites but is concentrating on the map part. I stopped listening today just to take a break from the map bit. At the same time this is the book with the stained glass windows which I find fascinating. I adore church windows!

Great news about your mom! You can have 4 exclusive shelves on Goodreads and only 3 are assigned so I added an abandoned as my fourth. Go in to the edit function on bookshelves.... I only use abandoned if I have read a chapter so know I am not interested now or know I never want to read that book. That shelf has mixed connotations but definitely makes me think before starting the book again. I have thought about separating them but have delayed due to the second shelf not being able to be exclusive..... I tend to just put books back in want to read if they simply needed to be returned to a library etc..... I love being able to sort my bookshelves on Goodreads and am rather obsessed with them/it.

Grrrrrr.....sending hugs. I am irritated currently by a couple of people who have always loved giving me useless parenting advice myself! I am too nice to reply with what I honestly think about their parenting abilities with their own kids so it is always special when they tell me what I am doing wrong!

I hope your mother recovers quickly and is able to go home! The Namesake looks interesting so looking forward to the review......... I always have many books being read at the same time especially if you look at my current books on Goodreads!😳. I had over 20 up there the other day which may be a record! Most of those books are simply in the stack with a page or two read and given sort of a proceed thumbs up, they go onto Goodreads so they get counted if I finish them at a time when I can’t instantly enter them as read. I tend to remember that I finished when I look at it in currently reading so they all go up once every week or so. I sort of depend on Goodreads to keep me from reading duplicates now that I read so many on Overdrive and don’t look at the covers as much. I tend to remember covers not titles! I think my limit for books that I am actually reading faithfully is around 6. They need to all have very different settings/genres or I can’t keep them straight. Normally when I am doing my multiple book juggling act one of the books sort of calls to me to finish it and a cascading effect happens where I just start reading to finish them one at a time in rapid order of how close to the end I am! So I guess I am not actually good at multiple books because I do single one out eventually! Currently I have a book of Miss Marple shorts, a Qiu Xialong (China) police procedural set in China, a Gamache (Canada)audiobook, and a Murderbot (Sci Fi) all seriously in progress. I also have the current Theological Reads books in progress (there just hasn’t been much) which brings me up to six.

Totally agree with everyone else. You need to find something new for her to do today that she will enjoy today, the math game is aa great idea. I always used two curriculums and one would simply disappear for a while if something about it was causing frustration. CLE simply moves to the background and and perhaps something different takes its place. If you can find something else that introduces short division like a library book great, but go back to the CLE without drama when the time feels right......for us it was normally two or so.

Thank you Tuesday.......We believe it is contained to that card. A couple of lingering concerns but think we are fine.

@tuesdayschild Glad you were able to find some authors to try on Overdrive. I know I have read Dee Henderson but do not particularly remember any titles. When my kids were were little I had a monthly subscription to Love Inspired Suspense and I believe she was one of the frequent authors in that line. I have been having computer problems all day long that went way beyond the forums. Apparently it had more to do with iPads, because only my family’s iPads had the issues........We now have a new router......one of our credit cards was hacked last night so it’s been stressful around our household! Books, I have abandoned a few but seem to have settled on All Systems Red which is the first in the Murderbot series. My Dd read it over the weekend and really liked it. I have also started a Qiu Xialong for February’s Detective Challenge. I am not far in A Case of Two Cities so no reviews yet! For my Louise Penny audiobookathon I am on The Nature of the Beast which is one of the books in this series that I would consider a favorite. So enjoying......

Sending Hugs, we don’t do Facebook. My family lacks a filter irl and I cannot imagine them on Facebook at me daily. Honestly be grateful the filter is there in person and block his Facebook comments.

Not sure what I thought about Lake Silence the first time through but I really liked my reread of it. I was honestly surprised how much I enjoyed it considering Meg wasn’t in it. With Wild Country I was confused for quite awhile because I didn’t catch on that it was parallel for an embarrassingly long time. I was happy to be reading about those characters who were already familiar and liked a great many things about the book. I do wonder if I would have enjoyed it without the recent reread.

I love Faith Hunter’s Soulwood Series and am looking forward to reading the new release. I am wondering if I should try and do a reread but I think I have enough of rereads in progress! I am so glad you enjoyed Evelyn Hardcastle! I normally get a bit bored with time loop books but really enjoyed that one. I waited to post until I was done with Wild Country.....with no real time to reflect I found it to be a page turner but was a bit irritated that it runs parallel to events that we already know about in the world of The Others as opposed to moving forward with the storyline. I agree there were many characters which made keeping who was who strait a bit tough.....too many J characters! Now I have to admit I still gave it a five but thought it wasn’t as good as Lake Silence. The next time I do a reread I will read it before Lake Silence as I think it belong there. Yes, you can read one road at a time and Gloucester is on the Fosse Road. I tried to keep o list on Goodreads of ideas for the different counties which is on a bookshelf https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/51042385?shelf=brit-tripping-ideas. You should be able to sort. Let me know if you have other questions.

My device that these would be on isn’t availiable ...... separate account for the kids but probably 8 years ago most of the series published by Stratemeyer were availiable for free on Kindle, so quite convenient. I can’t remember which ones were winners with my kids but I “bought” a whole lot of them at the free price! Here is a link with all of the pen names http://seriesbooks.info/syndicat.html. I believe I found some other non Stratemeyer books published in the same era by following the books people also bought links. Pretty sure Tom Swift was a good one......