Rivers of London is a police prodecural/murder mystery series but with Magic! Not terribly murdery and the narrator is the best I’ve ever heard, he does all the voices and accents. Does have brief sex-ish bits in the first, and more in the 2nd books. Much less as the series goes on.
The Murderbot Diaries contains significantly less murdering than one might expect based on the name (and zero sex). Space Adventures of “a human-bot construct who has disables its governor module”. I find the series to be that wonderful balance between A Good Romp but with Underlying Themes if one wishes to consider such things. Reader is good, but no one holds a candle to the Rivers of London reader.
ETA: Murderbot has a fair amount of murdering, ymmv
Murderbot is my favorite! I thought the same thing, then I started listening to the first book again, and toward the end there is some extended murdering/body descriptions so I sort of felt like I should retract that statement lol. I had completely forgotten about that part.
Is a Roomba or similar vacuum worth it? I have two dogs and holy crap the animal hair, it is ridiculous. Will a Roomba (or similar) solve that problem, or not? Will it clog.
And if so, what do you recommend. The price range seems to be $300 - $1200, which is huge.
Get a pet rated one. That’s going to put you probably in the 600-800 range if you don’t go for all the extra bells and whistles. My pet rated one is over a decade old, so it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles, and yet it gets the dog hair out of the floor like a champ.
Yes it’s worth it if you have hard floors. We have a self emptying one with a bunch of bells and whistles. We got it because we had a bunch of best buy gift cards from buying appliances so it was free to us. It really keeps our house a lot cleaner.
I loved mine in my apartment and pre toddler life. So 3-4 years old. But it will force tidiness on you. It will eat phone cords and cat toys. Cereal has it now, not sure if they are using it, because her kids are theoretically big enough to pick up their things.
I think @MonkeyJenga had a big discussion about and purchase of one recently
I love my Neato (pet version). I’m on my third one, a D4. Worth getting Asurion insurance for it though, I got it for this one and every time there’s an issue I just pack it up and they send it back good as new. Even though each one has had issues after a while, I still think it’s totally worth it and I love pressing a button and coming back to clean floors! It’s really amazing how much stuff is picked up even when the floors aren’t visibly dirty.
I’ve had a deebot n something or other for 4 years now. Have had to replace the battery once ($20) and it works great for all the random dust/hair and dirt that gets tracked in. It is not fancy and just bounces around the downstairs sucking up crud. We do ocassionally have to save it from the clutches of the random phone cables on the ground, but otherwise it just does it’s thing. Was about $250 new. We do need to empty the canister every time it runs and we aim for a weekly scrub of the mesh filter. I turn it upside down and clean out the roller brush and swipey brushes once a year with the little tool they supplied. Have not replaced the brushes yet even they say you should.
Definitely worth it, at least as someone who just wouldn’t vacuum without one (okay, I’d vacuum, but probably only once a season or if someone was on the way over).
Mine are Roombas, probably ~15 years old… ~10 of those have been with me and battery replacements have been necessary (some brush replacements too courtesy mostly of my hair slicing them up), but I didn’t pay anything like hundreds for them so I can’t recommend them at those prices. In my case I got a ‘nonfunctional’ pair off ebay intending to let one of my outreach camps use the chassis/motors as a basis for baby battlebots, but after a cleaning and a reset they vacuumed fine so I ended up keeping them.
If you are considering a Roomba, their cliff sensors don’t seem to like black carpet which is why mine have foil over their sensors (all of my throw rugs have black lines/squares on them) and I just block off the stairs. The upstairs one has only taken a few headers.
Whichever one you get, I would recommend one that has mapping. Mine goes back and forth in neat little lines and if it runs out of charge, it’ll go back to the base and then come back and pick up where it left off. I know newer Roombas do this but older ones didn’t. Otherwise they just randomly bounce around until they run out of battery!
I ordered a Shark yesterday. Once I saw the one that had mopping ability also, I was sold - clean up the hair AND the mucky pawprints? I’m in.
My main floor has been decluttered to the point where I won’t have to pick up for the vacuum to run, I would have had to a month ago. The vacuum is my reward for getting the house de-crapped enough that it makes sense to have it
