Now I know you've heard me say this before, but I will say it again--I am going to try and not buy any more books for the rest of the summer. Whew. Said it. Now I will add a little fine print. I do have a few gift cards still from my birthday, which I am trying to milk for all their worth, so if it becomes unbearable I will allow myself a purchase using gift card money. The thing is I need to get serious about paying off the last chunk of credit card debt that has been weighing me down for a few years now. Luckily I have only one credit card, so things should be manageable, but you know how it goes. You make your payment, then you buy a few things, you get slapped with that interest fee and you end up back where you started and never seem to make any progress. I was doing really well and paid it off by about a third but I have gotten stuck again, so it's time to get serious and finish it off once and for all, even if it means during the next year all extra cash goes towards the Bill rather than other nice things I would rather have.
My main downfall is books. I bet you're surprised? Okay, maybe not. But this will give me ample opportunity to get down to reading all those books I've been buying over the last few months. This is the last really serious stack, which I meant to share weeks ago, but I never got around to posting about. Library books are completely acceptable, but visits to my own shelves are preferable. And one of these might just be my next great read!
Shame, Karin Alvtegen - A Swedish crime writer who has been compared to Ruth Rendell.
My Soul to Take, Yrsa Sigurdardottir - I enjoyed her first mystery featuring Thora Gudmunsdottir, a lawyer in Iceland. She's a very real and likeable heroine.
Sweet Thursday, John Steinbeck - I AM going to read Steinbeck this year, I am! This is supposed to be a continuation of Cannery Row.
Frozen Sun, Stan Jones - This is set in Alaska, may be perfect reading for August when I am sure it will be insufferably hot here.
Trace of Smoke, Rebecca Cantrell - This is a Hannah Vogel mystery set in Weimar Berlin. She has a new book coming out soon, too.
August Folly, Angela Thirkell - Her Barsetshire novels are gentle reads and I am always in the market for those. For some reason the Moyer Bell editions of these books, at least the earlier titles in the series, are hard to come by. So when I spotted this one as being in stock at Amazon, into the basket it went.
The Road to Jerusalem, Jan Guillou - I have been eyeing this one since it came out in cloth but made myself wait until it came out in paper. Don't ask me why a book about the Crusades appeals, but it does. What can I say? Guillou is another Swedish author by the way.
Salvage, Robert Edric - When Litlove wrote about this one earlier in the spring it sounded really good, if in a dystopian sort of way.
So now I have a nice (fairly) new pile of books to choose from (as well as all the rest of the piles), and surely this will keep me busy for the foreseeable future. Now if I could just find a way not to be tempted by what everyone else is reading! Impossible I'm sure, but I will start a list and simply keep adding to it.
By the way, many thanks for all the kind words about my sampler. It's one of my favorite designs, so I was pleased to get it framed in order to properly display it. And I'm well into my next project, which I will share soon!
Edited: Computer Advice Please? I'm not sure what happened exactly, but I have some sort of malicious virus or something on my computer. It is in the form of web pages being hijacked--I do a search, find what I want, click, but am redirected elsewhere! This is happening primarily on IE, which I don't use, but others in my household do. I prefer Mozilla--far fewer problems. The thing is occasionally I will search on Mozilla, and notice out of the blue a new tab will open with a web page I didn't ask for. I do have McAfee Security System on my computer. I've run it and it cannot find any problems. Then I downloaded AdAware by Lavasoft and it also tells me my computer is clean. So then I turned to Microsoft and ditto. I have three different programs telling me none of my programs are infected, but I am still having problems with IE. I find this completely annoying and am sending the Evil Eye to the little S*** who did this. I still believe there is a very special level in Dante's hell for spammers and people who do these sorts of malicious things to unsuspecting computer users. So, any advice?