Hey, PilgrimDan!
What are the books you are reading at the moment?
With me it is like this: as soon as I know, there is a book out, that I desperately want/need to read, I'm not able to read anything else until I have read that book. Even when I was still in school. I could not concentrate on reading school books as long as the new book was not read. I'm far from disciplined when books are concerned.


And Nutella:
I usually eat muesli for breakfast, but once in a while when I smell some fresh bread, I crave Nutella on it. But only the original, the other ones don't taste that good. So there is always at least one jar of good Nutella in the house. Restricted to consumption only on weekends.
Or if you manage to eat some in secret. LOL

And Dina: it really feels icky, when a wet cat uses the skin of your calf as a towel, especially when you don't expect her to be in the room. But at least she doesn't smell like a wet dog.

Hey there!!!
I was busy and tired.
To be honest, I'm still busy and tired, but at the moment I'm sitting in front of my second morning coffee. I need that to be able to continue. We are having guests today. It's birthday week. Yay.
Thank God the family will come in the afternoon. Weather prognosis says, it will be sunny then. Or at least not raining, I hope. That's the other side of the coin, if you have a summer birthday. You have to prepare both for outside and for inside. But if you can stay outside, it is great.

We were lucky yesterday. We went to a corn maze with my big daughter and some of her friends for her kid's birthday party. The maze isn't difficult or big, but you have to find the 15 questions hidden everywhere inside and answer them correctly. That's always fun for everyone. Also there is a large playground there with lots of tables and benches, most of them under roofs.
We were there last year, too. And I think we will continue to go there on her birthdays until the kids are too old to have fun there. I saw a maybe 15 year old boy and he didn't look bored. So yes, the future birthday location is secured.

And yuck! I just got touched by a wet cat!!!!

I did kind of a re-read of Peace Talks this week. I didn't have time to read, so I listened to the audio book. Nice.
You can do that while doing boring work like laundry or cleaning. But careful when baking: "did I put in the sugar already or not...?" 

I'm not sure if we will travel somewhere. I have two weeks extra from when I worked so much over time during the beginning of Covid19. Perhaps we will drive to Austria. There is a lake, we like and there's family around. But we will ask our relatives first, because it would be bad, if there was a second lockdown and they wouldn't let us go home again in time. The kids both start at (new) school in September.

I've always pictured him in my head with Elaine. But that would be tragic, too, because if the Elaine=Kumori and Cowl=Justin theory is correct...

Honestly, I don't see him happily ever after. Not everybody finds somebody. Just look around people you know. Friends, colleagues, neighbours, ... Some people never find the partner for life. For different reasons, and they are all different people. Some people found their partner and lost him/her again. Some love without being loved back.

This has been discussed somewhere in a sample chapter thread, but I still feel confused about the vampire baby feeding off its mother. Of course every baby feeds off its mother, but this seemed to imply, he meant the baby's hunger demon. But as I understood, WCV are born human and turn vampire during their first feeding, which is always lethal. If they have true love that first time, they stay human:
 Blood Rites, Inari.
The unborn baby's hunger demon feeding would mean, the demon is active during pregnancy and turns inactive after birth. Doesn't make sense to me.
Maybe this is some mind manipulation, too, I wonder.

Edit: And Harry doesn't ask more about that. I mean, he knows, he was there when Inari almost killed him.
The only reason I can think about now, is that the demon protects itself by hiding inside a baby and toddler, because they don't have a lot of control and therefore it would risk being exposed too early in it's life. So it feeds during pregnancy a lot, so that it can survive until puberty. Hitting puberty it is so starved that it can't be stopped, before it kills.
Also it would be a totally different tone in a story if it showed toddler White Vamps feeding. Ahem.

I thought that disturbing, too. I was hoping it was an early sign of conjuring and shape shifting abilities. And not some children's disease. But it could still be. I'm not giving up hope. Also, I can't imagine, Harry has never heard of that. Except, someone manipulated memories, either Harry's or those of everyone else, so that they told him, it was a disease and not some curse or some new abilities. As to why, I have no idea. Let's wait and see.

OK, maybe one idea: it could be developing a new talent, that would make him more dangerous, if he concentrated too much on it to learn to master it, so some adversary tries to make it appear as something else. Maybe a talent that isn't practiced, withers and dies, or one does never gain control over it.

I was thinking on manipulation of memories that have knowingly occurred in the books until now.
There was the missing blasting rod and therefore fuego in Small Favor through Mab and the memory manipulation by Molly in Changes, so that Harry forgets that he has hired a killer.
I counted only manipulations directly involving Harry.
And there were the mind magic attacks by corpsetaker in dead beat.

This is definitely the better way to do it. It is a single book, divided into 2 parts.

Yes, it doesn't feel finished. Well, because that's because it isn't. But I couldn't have brought myself to not read it, as soon as I had it. I was working the nightshift and I extra went out onto the emergency stairs to get WLAN, so that the book could be delivered. 
But I don't regret reading it.
I'm not sure I want to discuss it yet, so I'm not visiting the spoilers section. Maybe I'll wait until BG drops and after I've read that.
Also I managed to start another book after PT. A good one. Wouldn't be fair toward this book, if I stopped reading again, because my thoughts are with Harry. LOL

Hi, I would have liked to answer, but I discovered the DF very late. About 3 years ago. But I know what you mean. I've experienced a similar thing with another book series. Suddenly you pay attention to different aspects of a known story depending on your own new experiences. And suddenly you like something you didn't like years ago. And on the other hand, things that were very important once, are now almost completely irrelevant.  Priorities have changed, life has changed and it changed you.

That's one thing I like about the books. You can literally see Harry AND Jim age. At almost the same rate. 


Rather funny story is how I finally agreed to read Storm Front. 
It kept popping up on amazon, but I refused to even take a closer look at it for years, because I got a completely wrong impression what it was about. Because of the title and the cover.
And I thought, I just saw it because of books I ordered as presents for others, that I wasn't interested in.
Then came a time, when I didn't have anything interesting and new to read, and Storm Front was cheap as E-book, so I decided to try it, but very very very very sceptical. He had me as soon as Harry vomited into the bucket. LOL