aI have had A Small Death in a Great Glen A.D. Scott for the past couple of months and it somehow turned into a sip read for my Scotland 10 category. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7217221-a-small-death-in-the-great-glen. It sounds like a easy atmospheric mystery, let’s get a feel for life in the Scottish Highlands post WWII. I believe @Robin M found it for me on one of her lists back in the planning process for 2019 and others were interested in this book. @aggieamy I think you were one of the interested and I don’t really think you will like this but I could be wrong! Well...........this isn’t gentle, it has many triggers. The main character is a victim of spousal abuse. There is bigotry towards the Polish and Italian refugees who settle in the village. There is pedophilia, and finally a sweet little boy is the victim. It actually is probably really real.. It did meander through the story which is how it turned into a sip read........I think my library has the second book in this series and I probably will be setting it on the nightstand in a couple of months but this isn’t gentle. I also finished my official Romance for the challenge. I went with one titled Bad Bachelor by Stephanie London who also writes Historicals that I have enjoyed. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36270620-bad-bachelor. It was a fun quick read with adult content. One might say it had some timely content regarding the power of internet apps to ruin someone’s reputation....... I also finished the second in a paranormal series by Maria Vale. A Wolf Apart was not as good as the first book in the series. I actually requested my library buy this book and am a bit embarrassed if I am honest. It was blah....lots of angst and adult content. The first book was a bit different and highly appealing because it wasn’t a typical werewolf story. I know @Kareni has read the first one in the series but not sure if she read this one. It did win some reader awards and made some of the lists so I may be the only disappointed reader!

My son, who is my kid who loves programming, would say there is something wrong if you can’t find it for free on the internet in terms of coding etc. The online coding community seems to be a pretty nice place in terms of helping others learn. That being said they are both applying to graduate CS programs on bothe sides of the Atlantic right now and my daughter was asked to prove she knew a variety of languages and a few other skills that were not apparent on her transcript by one program..... FYI, this was one in England. The quickest and easiest way was a variety of MOOC’s with completion certificates that we paid a small amount for. Sometimes certificates are useful. 😀 Edx had the most availiable and cheapest ones I believe. Also at the start of my son’s coding “career”, he was a 12 yo making basic games and putting them out to be played mainly by his friends, he wanted to be a game programmer. Then he learned that you normally only get to do a very small piece of the game. For he that spoiled it and he moved on to other things. 😂

Saylor offers several classes for free which my kids have found useful. https://learn.saylor.org/course/index.php?categoryid=9. Maybe he could take a look at these and discover something he is interested in and try the class or at least explore some of the readings.

Yeah to finding your missing books! 😀 I finished relistening to The Others series earlier today and am now waiting for the new release! Totally enjoyed them again! Back to listening to Louise Penny before I read the new release.......after I finish a Patricia Briggs that finally appeared in my account. I also finished Of Blood and Bone by Nora Roberts this evening. I am going to be honest and say I liked Year One far better. This one had a great ending but didn’t hold my attention as well as it should have.......I still gave it 4* but it came very close to 3*.......It works for my book chain and I plan to read her Shelter in Place soon for the next book in my chain. I have several romances checked out so off to pick which one to actually read next!

I think my skimming technique was hugely developed by all the reading aloud I did with the kids! I used to read for about 4 hours each day if it was all added together. My eyes were always a few sentences ahead of the words and I edited away....understandable vocabulary to them if I wanted to keep moving, anything someone would find upsetting that probably wasn’t required, and a million other things I fixed without consciously fixing after awhile. This leads me to the fact that I fix everything I read out loud..... I have to refuse to publically read things like the Bible because I change the wording without thinking about it. The stress of worrying I will change the wording is more than I can handle.....it really isn’t the reading.........

I see the movie, I think that is why I have such a hard time seeing my books turned to movies. They are never right! I found the articles interesting because one said that no one could describe their character’s nose when they saw movies in their head which seemed to be a judgement on the movie quality which cracked me up. I couldn’t describe most people’s noses that I see most days unless they are really distinctive so I consider that to be a really poor test of how good my visual movie is!

I would guess ear infection involving eustachian tubes.

He probably should be looking at getting an undergraduate certificate in programming or IT per Dh who has been working with my kids on planning their degrees, both in Cybersecurity. He does know of the boot camps and has heard good things in terms of learning to program with a live instructor. I think it depends on what works best for your son’s learning style.....lots of inexpensive and free online classes out there. Personally we are pro math background as I think it makes it easier. We have had this discussion with several programmers that we know who have years of experience and successful careers. The ones who don’t have the math background seem to wish they had one....wish they could have a do over and take the Calculus etc.

Just a bit of a warning as it is modern day Edinburgh and I have great 😉hope for romance for the main character but ........ I think some adult content may eventually happen in later books but this one tends to refer to things in terms of the ethics. The main character is the editor of a Philosophy Journal so ethics and her submissions are mentioned. I liked it because I found the world quite comfy and I fell easily into it, rather like a Stevenson...easy read. I hope you will like it! ETA.....in case of audio, I think one of the articles she ponders might be sensitive. I have no idea! I have never read a Ladies Detective Agency (saw an episode of the show once.....) and actually thought 44Scotland Street was in my series......I checked, they are separate.🤣. This one talks about music and the love of music. She also goes to watch a visiting orchestra that is on tour......that instantly made me think of my friend Jenn! This wasn’t the most thrilling of mysteries and the there was a bit near the end which is odd......it was fairly meandering with a main character I liked a lot. There is an ending that seemed real.......

Jenn, I finished The Sunday Philosopy Club earlier today and really thought it felt quite accurate for Edinburgh. Not sure if you have already read these or not.......you may very well have been one of the people recommending them......but if you haven’t tried them I think you would like them. For purposes of a definite ongoing romantic storyline (I cheated and read several descriptions ahead) I think these require in order reading.

Still listening my way through The Others, only two more to go and then I will be ready for the new book! The Sunday Philosophy Club https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15904.The_Sunday_Philosophy_Club is a book that has been recommended to me for years, I have checked it out many times........I have never actually looked at a single page of it before. 😍Oh my! I am in love with this series, it isn’t perfectly lovely like a DE Stevenson, but it is a good read at 60%. I actually checked the next one out already. My Scottish reading shelf for the 10’s is why I finally opened this book........thanks Robin! Now back to the Good Housekeeping top 20 romances.....I haven’t read the 2 1/2 books @Kareni is missing either!

I have only read 10 of the books in the Good Housekeeping Top 20 link.......I need to add some of these to my hold’s list.😉

First, going to be honest and say I adore hedgehogs but ........I would really think about this because I would think if it was easy I would know lots of people in England with hedgehogs as pets. I know someone who has taken injured ones to the vet but no one with a hedgehog for a pet and catching one would not be hard because we sometimes save them from themselves, they fall off curbs and get trapped in roads and need to get scooped up in shopping bags to be emptied in a safe spot......I love hedgehogs and honestly can’t imagine one as a pet beyond making one really comfortable in my garden. I am a former parrot owner so am willing to do exotics but cannot imagine I would get much sleep with one in the house. They wander around their area all night. They make nests under things like leaves and eat the rabbit’s food, dig a bit in the garden......

Another moving to England funny......kids get invited to a friend’s house and I actually know where the road is, so I just ask for the house number. So I take off for 165 X Road.......she didn’t tell me that she lived in 4 blocks of houses that were numbered as built. Her house was between 235 and 450. Absolutely no order and I was embarrassed to call. We drove around looking at everyone’s car and eventually decided to knock on a door with a silver Ford Focus in the driveway......there were four driveway’s with that car. Her address was not easily displayed.....we did find it right before we actually knocked. There are lots of older neighborhoods with addresses totally out of order......I actually like hearing the white door with roses or similar. 😂

When we moved to England we printed maps from Google for every important place we had to go over the next couple of weeks, things like how to get to our flat from the airport, the bank from our flat etc...... So we get off the plane with two exhausted kids, collect our luggage which is now everything we own, and get in the rental car. We have several drive around the roundabout 10 times while I try to read the directions and make them fit where we are.....finally give up and just read signs as there are newly added roundabouts and after over an hour can see the building across a small lake but the road, something lane does not exist. We know it’s our building as it’s new with 7 stories and is still the only building that tall in that area. We drive between two roundabouts 15 or so minutes. There are two roads into a huge estate (subdivision) that don’t appear to have anything to do with our house and are really narrow and some bike/walking trails (really nice trails)........finally we turn on one of the narrow roads with cars all over and find ourselves in a huge rabbit warren of turns......none of this is on my map btw. Eventually we park in front of our building....real estate guy could not believe google had us on those BIKE paths. The rest of the directions were fine after we got out on the main road or at least not bike paths with pretty names. 😂 Then we bought a gps which drove us in a circle around downtown Sheffield’s one way streets for an hour and loved dirt roads/paths...

Hugs and praying you don’t catch the cold!

Good article and it perfectly describes my kids, boy and girl, heading into the same demanding career field. She is so much more intense about her classes etc.

Totally agree on the dystopian novels....There are so many out there and dystopian seems to be crossing over into my definition of urban fantasy. I like those as long as most of my favorites stay alive. I really enjoyed Trail of Lightning. Nora Roberts new Of Blood and Bone is going to be read soon.......I keep hesitating because of my relisten of The Others series, not sure that I won’t confuse things. @Mothersweets I keep getting signed out too. I was off for a few hours this morning.

I seriously thought about abandoning Melmoth by Sarah Perry https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36628420-melmoth and read a few more pages that were interesting so I continued........I probably should have quit! Reading it was a bit of a roller coaster and it didn’t end satisfying so I gave it 2*. The reviews on Goodreads are overall great. It is supposed to be a modern Gothic set in Prague with Melmoth the Watcher, watching. I will say Melmoth, the woman who denied Jesus at resurrection and forever wanders as a witness to evil, was creepy. The jackdaws were so overdone, they were always looking through windows etc. I am pleased because it actually works for two of 10 catagories .......Brexit Express and Robin’s Sound of Silence because of Cobblestone Streets. I don’t plan to use it for both but until I replace the Cobblestone it will be recorded there.

Same for me.......I am sending hugs and prayers too!

Hugs to everyone waiting for results.......

A couple other of common favorite Flufferton authors Mary Balogh and Mary Jo Putney.......hopefully you will be able to find one of these on Overdrive . Glad you enjoyed it! I really liked the book but ended up more luke warm on the recent miniseries......I don’t think we ever finished it. Part of my family’s desire to watch was much of it was apparently filmed in a village where my kids have done bell ringing. Honestly we didn’t recognize a thing beyond York! We gave up on the scenery and eventually it was deleted.........obviously I knew the story and I think Dd has read it too. 😀birthday’s do get easier as kids get older. Glad you will be able to sit back and enjoy it. So the new Flavia is done and when I went to Goodreads to mark it as read I discovered my upsetting bit was sitting there in the book description. Too bad I didn’t read that! It was a finger in the wedding cake......I still would have read the book but probably would have been happier knowing beforehand!

I have no problem moving a book to my abandoned shelf on Goodreads most of the time. Sometimes I put them back to want to read if I wasn’t in the right mood or had time to read a particular book.

We tended to watch boxed sets of oldies like Lost in Space at that age. The kids were laughing yesterday that the only live TV they ever watched growing up were cooking shows (Bake Off that a pp mentioned and the BBC Masterchef) and game shows. University challenge appears to be on YouTube and was a huge favorite. My kids also loved a game show called Pointless, where you try for the least common right answer, also British and on You tube.

Robin, A great thread with fun links. I am planning to spell Chen Cao this month. I also plan to read one of the books starring one of my favorite fictional detectives but may end up doing that in March due to availability. I am on number 4, A Tale of Two Cities. Currently reading my book starring last month’s Detective, Hecule Poirot, A Peril at End House. As I am attempting to reread Christie in publication order I decided to wait for a Poirot for the Detective Challenge. This is another Christie where my memory is not overly clear......My memory is that this one is simply OK so it will be interesting to see how I feel at the end. I started the new Flavia by Alan Bradley. My daughter is reading it too and we seem to be going through it at the same pace, rather slow. The Golden Tresses of the Dead has so far managed to make it difficult to fall back to sleep. I generally have a somewhat gentle book to read a few pages of in the middle of the night going and thought this book would do at 3am since I already had it up on my reader. An event in chapter 2 or 3 made me have to get up and make a cup of tea in order to go back to sleep.....I switched back to Poirot too. 😂 I don’t want to do spoilers but read the first part when you have a half hour or so to get beyond something I found ridiculous but icky at the same time if you are a fan. Finally I have Sarah Perry’s Melmoth. I am 25% of the way through and am seriously considering abandoning it. It started well but seems to have stalled. I really want to read this now I have started because it is set in Prague so far.......one of my 10’s is the Brexit Express. I would love to have the Czech Republic for one of my 10 non UK EU countries. Still listening to The Others series by Anne Bishop. @tuesdayschild Happy Birthday to both of your children! My mom birthday was also on the 16th. @Kareni The bottom two links aren’t working for me. Going back to read the first ones! Thank you!