[church mouse]

Since I came across the site some years ago, Luzme.com has been the foundation for my e-book buying. My personal “Watchlist” on there has gradually grown to something approaching 150 books. My email notification is set at £4.00, so I get told when the price of a book on my Watchlist has fallen below that figure on a seller's site (over time I have learnt that invariably it will be either Amazon or Google Play, or both). Just because the price drops does not mean I will immediately buy the book, but every month or so I allow myself a splurge; buying a selection of those books which have fallen below £4.00 plus one of the more expensive ones whose price just never seems to move – I visit my Watchlist each day just to see whether any of my longstanding, pricey books is showing any movement at all. If a book drops below £3.00, then I may snap it up immediately (Umberto Eco's “The Name Of The Rose” just dropped to £2.62).

There has been an order, a structure, a method to my ebook habit for these last few years with Luzme. On Sunday the site went down and today is day 3 with no Watchlist. This morning I did receive a price drop email (the aforesaid offering from Umberto Eco) so perhaps all is not lost, but my equilibrium is disturbed.

I “googled” this morning for UK alternatives to what Luzme offers and there appear to be none. Am I truly facing a future of having to manually search ebook seller sites each day to see if a book I am interested in has dropped in price?

There is a nagging, little voice in my head, which volume is increasing by the hour, reminding me that I never kept a backup of my Watchlist (in effect, my wish list of books to buy).

I have convinced myself that Rachel (who runs the site) has merely gone away on holiday and, whilst away, there has been some server crash, or other such semi-disastrous, technical failure which can easily been resolved on her return.

So my prayer this morning is “Rachel, enjoy the sun and the sand, but come home soon, I need you!”