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Recently Purchased/Borrowed

Drifting South by Charles Davis
This Magnificent Desolation by Thomas O'Malley
And The Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini
The Winter King by Bernard Cornwell
 
Library haul yesterday:
Calling Crow-Paul Clayton
Nuevo Tex-Mex:Festive New Recipes from Just North of the Border-Robb Walsh

Citywide Garage Sales today:
After America: Get Ready for Armegeddon-Mark Stevyn
Jacob's Ladder- Donald McCaig
Blink-Malcom Gladwell
The Little Red Hen(Golden Book)

Not a bad haul for $1.00...
 
I don't buy very many books, but the ones that I have recently have been "Warm Bodies" by Isaac Marion and "H.A.W.X." by David Michaels.
 
A Swarming Of Bees by Theresa Tomlinson on Kindle,historical mystery set in the 7th century in Whitby where Hild is Abbess.

Tried to order Secrets Of The Sea House by Elisabeth Gifford from local library but the librarian couldn't even find it on Amazon! I checked online later and there it is on Amazon!
 
The Death Relic, Chris Kuzneski. Apparently this is his 7th book, first time I've ever come across him. It's a team of two adventurers on different quests.
 
Now reading Red Winter by Dan Smith,an excellent thriller set in war-torn 1920s Russia. I read The Child Thief by Smith last year and it was easily the best thriller that I read in '12.
Added Timelike Infinity by Stephen Baxter (sci-fi) to my Kindle.
 
Recently purchased:

Apocalypse Cows, by Michael Logan

Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children, by Ransom Riggs

One of these days I will actually read some of these books and not just buy them.
 
Edge of Dark Water - Joe Lansdale
$2.99 kindle download!
I have heard great things about this author. Anyone read him?
 
sparkchaser said:
Feuersteine und Hühnergötter

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Huhasdfj (AKA 'Chickend Gods' in English) are stones with holes in (I looked it up)

And we get them here too and was finally motivated to look up HOW the hole gets in the stone:

http://mezzamay.blogspot.com/2011/05/stones-with-holes-chicken-gods.html

What's that all about, I thought? I translated a German Wikipedia article about it. The translation was a little unclear at points but I think the gist of it is that along the coast in Northern Germany, people would collect these stones with a hole in them as a kind of talisman to ward off evil. They would be hung in stables and animal enclosures. Usually the stones and the also the holes would be quite a bit bigger than the ones I collected.

It seems this tradition stems from Slavic folklore. Kikimora was a domestic spirit that caused trouble if you didn't run an orderly peasant household. I suppose she was a kind of gremlin. If you left your sewing and spinning things out overnight, she would tangle up your thread. She would wake the children at night. She would hide small household items and break dishes as a punishment to lazy housekeepers. If you did not protect your chickens with a talisman of the "Chicken God", she would upset the chickens, pluck out their feathers and in some cases steal them. A "Chicken God" talisman would consist of either a broken piece of pot, a stone with a hole in it or a baste shoe (woven peasant shoe).

Then I discovered from this article that in the UK we also have a name for these stones with holes in them... we call them "Hag Stones", "Witches Stones" or "Adder Stones". We also believed they possessed magical properties that would protect both man and beast from witch craft, disease and the evil eye. It was also thought that hanging one of these stones over your bed at night would protect you from "Hag-riding" which was a kind of nightmare where you awoke unable to move, as if a witch was sitting on your chest (now known as sleep paralysis).

I especially like the idea that we hung them in our stables to protect the horses from being ridden by hags at night!
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Yup lol that is in the blog post I quoted above :)

I should go down to the beach and see if I can find some more. I have one piece at home that looks like a piece of swiss cheese!
 
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