My Weblog

Something Old, Something New

Things right now are, well, not normal. We’re in the midst of the first pandemic since the H1N1 Pandemic of 2009—and the first pandemic of the Social Media Era. (Facebook launched in 2004 and Twitter in 2006.) While social media has been valuable for getting important information about COVID-19 to the public, it has also amplified the speed at which misinformation and speculation spread in ways unimaginable even in 2009. As a result, people are afraid—afraid of getting sick, afraid of dying, afraid of losing friends and loved ones, afraid of losing their homes as livelihoods, and afraid of losing their way of life.

Although the feeling of fear is universal, the way people cope with fear is not. Some people lash out, others withdraw. Some seek out new ways to deal with a new reality (Virtual church services, anyone?) while others turn to familiarities from the past to help them navigate unfamiliar ground. Still others combine the old comforts with new methods. For example, the age-old practice of reading aloud was paired with the new technology of live-streaming audio and video to recreate the childhood joy of being read to. Probably the most viral (no pun intended) instance of this is Levar Burton taking Neil Gaiman up on his offer of the use of his stories to produce Twitter livestreams of Levar Burton Reads. (Friday at 6 pm Pacific/9 pm Eastern for adults.)

Me, I’m turning to old favorites to help me cope with a world I can’t control. (Although, come to think of it, I’m using new technology to do so, so I guess I’m in the hybrid coping camp.) I’m re-binge-watching Agatha Christie’s Marple and Agatha Christie’s Poirot on Hulu and BritBox. I know how each episode ends but the known outcome is what makes them comforting.

How about you? How are you coping? By reading? By being read to? Watching film adaptations of books? Writing your own works, pieces that deal with—or resist—the times? Comment on the blog or join the discussion on Facebook or Twitter.

What I Learned from a Computer Crisis

By Joanna Campbell Slan for Femmes Fatales

As with most crises, this one began simply enough. My AOL inbox showed 20,000+ messages. The number had built up over time. In a surge of energy, I decided to clean out the inbox. Four hours later, I’d winnowed the mess down to 3,000+ emails. Some of you might have even gotten an email from me, because if I had any questions about whether an email had been responded to, I sent a new email to double-check.

That night, I went to bed feeling incredibly organized. Yes, I was taming my email habit at last. My friend Marla had shown me how to use the rules function. Aaron, my computer guru, told me how to block offending domains. The number in my inbox had shrunken considerably. The leftovers could be dealt with the next morning. All was well in my soul.

Alas.

The next day, I opened my computer to find…40,000+ emails. I called Aaron. He did a remote session (oh, the computer gods have ways of controlling our machines from afar!), and reset the AOL account. He deduced that AOL wanted to save all my emails for 30 days. When I tried to destroy them, AOL thoughtfully replaced all of them. We thought we had the problem fixed, although Aaron’s last pronouncement proved prescient, “I hate AOL.”

“You told me that.”

“Yeah, well, I’ll say it again. I hate AOL. You get what you pay for.”

“Right, but I still use that account. I've had it for ages. Mainly for sites that force me to sign up or for when I make purchases.”

“Yeah, but I’m just sayin’…I hate AOL.”

“Got it."

Later that day, a warning popped up in the lower right hand corner of my screen. It told me that I was running out of disk space. I hit the Crap Cleaner button. I did the Malware cleaning. Usually that’s all I need to do. Of course, cleaning the disk space is a hassle because as you do, you clean out all the “cookies,” which are really bread crumbs that lead you back to places you’ve been. When the cookies are gone, you have to manually re-enter passwords. A pain in the backside. However, I was being a good little scout. I did it. And I kept writing on my newest Kiki book and a short story.

The next day…Armageddon. AOL decided I could NOT do without the emails I’d deleted and repopulated them AGAIN. I now had 220,000+ emails in my inbox. I also had 50,000+ emails in my trash folder. I couldn’t send or receive any emails. A big yellow caution sign covered my enterprise server, the joannaslan.com site.

So I decided to take out the trash (in the computer). I needed to hurry because I was catching a plane up to DC. From there I was flying to Seattle, Washington, for a family wedding. I hit the right buttons. Hit them again. Nothing happened.

In a panic I called Aaron.

As it happened, between the emails in my inbox and the emails in my trash, I’d used up ALL the available space on my computer. In fact, between the manuscripts on my laptop, the photos, the covers, and everything else, I’d used up 60% of my disk space. My emails ate the rest, the remaining 30%.

Fortunately, there was a fix. I could physically drop off my computer with Aaron, and he could install a bigger hard drive. A much, much bigger hard drive. So I did.

Now my computer is slicker than owl snot. (As if I’d know how slick owl snot is!) And faster than a speeding bullet. (Ditto.) Aaron kindly worked overtime to get the machine back to me. Between his efforts and the wedding and traveling, I took a semi-forced vacation from my laptop. Yesterday I actually floated around in my son’s pool for an hour. It was heaven, watching the clouds float overhead in a blue, blue sky. Here in Winter Park, Florida, the temperature soared into the 90s, and the water was perfect! I actually fell asleep while drifting in the plastic doughnut.

And you know what? Despite the hassle, and the cost, and the exasperation…I’m kinda/sorta glad this happened. I now have more storage space. I feel refreshed. I really needed to take a break from technology. My mind feels much clearer, and I'm ready to get back to work.

What did I learn from all this?

• I'm recommitted to cleaning my email inbox more frequently--and immediately dumping the "trash."
• I'm going to be more pro-active about using external back-up drives. I'll keep one up in DC at our business and one in Florida.
• I'll be putting more of my finished manuscripts in the cloud from now on as a way to keep things organized and to better manage storage.
• I'll always get the largest hard drive I can afford. When we bought this new laptop, it never occurred to us to see if we could get a bigger hard drive. This one is four times the size I had.
• I'm so glad I keep a little notebook with all my passwords written down. Another computer guru, not Aaron, told me that he spends a lot of his time working with people who put all their passwords on their computer only to have a computer problem and lose all access.
• I need to take a break from my computer once in a while. It's positively addicting. I need to clear my thinking and detach.
• I really appreciate Aaron. He's a girl's best friend when it comes to my computer. Everyone needs a computer whiz as a pal.

Oh... and Aaron still hates AOL.

Confessions of a Facebook Slut

By Elaine Viets

"Do you get proposals of marriage on Facebook?" I asked Jessica. She's thirty-something, cute and curly-haired. Looked like a love object to me.
"No," Jessica said. "Who's proposing to you?"

"A man in his sixties said he fell in love with my 'beautiful smile' and called me his 'angel.'"
Jessica snorted. "Doesn't know you, does he?"
"Nope. The last person to call me 'Angel' was my grandfather and I was six years old. I also get proposals from men in foreign countries. Much younger men. I figure they've missed the fact that I'm already married, or they're desperate for an American wife.
"I also get the conversationalists. After I friend these men they send me messages that say, 'Hi.' Just 'hi.' I don't know how to respond to that, so I don't. 'Hello, dear' is another conversation killer in my Facebook.

"In July, I got an early morning 'hello' from General David William. When I checked back, Facebook said his message 'has been temporarily removed because the sender's account requires verification.' Since there was no photo of the man, I suspect the general was a fake friend.
"It's not just men. I friended some woman who wanted me to go to the post office and pick up a thousand dollars for her. I could keep the money, too, if I wrote her a check first. She seemed to have trust issues, and we'd only been friends for a day."
"Do you vet the people who want to friend you?" Jessica asked. "Or do you just accept everyone?"
"I'm a very friendly person," I said.
"You're a Facebook slut," Jessica said.

It hurt when she said it. I just wanted to be popular, and everyone seemed so nice. I liked looking at my page and seeing I had hundreds of friends. It made me feel good.

"You have to be careful," Jessica said. "When someone sends you a friend request, first check how many mutual friends you have. If you have lots, that's a good sign. Next, check their other friends. If it's an older man and his friends are all attractive young women, don't friend him. If a woman who wants to be your friend has a page with only photos of herself and she's not wearing a lot of clothes, she's selling something all right – and you don't want it.

"Check for rants: If you see political cartoons that offend you, and reams of praise for candidates you think drag their knuckles, don't friend those people. You'll be unfriending them soon.
"Beware of long pro-Second Amendment diatribes, especially with photos of your possible friend stroking a weapon that looks like one featured in a GUNMAN KILLS 21 PEOPLE AT MOVIE story.

"Other warning signs: Facebook pages that mention Jehovah, Lucifer, time shares, 'my country' and 'big government.'
"Requests for Facebook pages that start out with two or three good posts, then suddenly stop. Those pages have probably been hacked.
"Facebook pages that show you nothing and say you'll have to friend that person to read the page. Don't do it. Got it?"
Oh, yes. I'm now reformed, and extremely careful who I friend.
I have 1,044 friends at https://www.facebook.com/ElaineVietsMysteryWriter/
I like each and every one of you. And 2,076 people Like me. Really Like me.
I like it like that.


Brain Storm is on sale as a trade paperback, audio and e-book amzn.to/2awPsIe

Win an autographed hardcover of Elaine’s seventh Dead-End Job mystery, Clubbed to Death. http://elaineviets.com/index.php?id=contests

Machines are taking over!

by Kris Neri

Not to get too political, but, for the most part, I don’t believe in the death penalty, primarily because of the possibility of investigative, prosecutorial, or jury error. However, I would happily make an exception for whoever invented those interactive voice response systems.

You know what they are — they’re the machine-voice systems that takes us through a variety of menu choices, responding to the answers we provide, which virtually every major corporation uses for its customer service and tech support lines these days.

I recognize that these systems are quite a technological advancement — after all, we’re talking to a machine, and it’s responding. And there’s no question that some technological advances we’ve seen have dramatically improved our lives. But others only seem to extract a heavy toll in my opinion. I put the interactive voice response systems in the latter category. I considered them one of the petty tyrannies of modern life — “petty” because dealing with these menus aren’t life-threatening after all, we just feel like pulling the plug while interacting with them, and “tyrannies” because, given enough interaction, these tedious conversations do feel like torture. Besides, it’s pretty high-handed to foist these systems on customers in the name of customer service.

I should know. I’ve logged lots of time in conversation with these machine-voices lately, with two different companies.

A persistent problem developed with the On Demand portion of our satellite TV service, provided by Dish Network. 

I have to say Dish’s machine-voice menu isn’t the most terrible that I’ve dealt with. Oh, sure, it still requires moving through multiple menu levels before it’s possible to get to a live person. And when I have reached someone live in any of the first half-dozen or so calls, that person never knew why we were getting that particular error message, and led me through lots of pointless procedures that never solved the problem. Eventually though, I managed to secure the name of a department that might be able to help me. I actually felt like a detective while working my way through the Dish Network culture, trying to find the one department that might have an answer for me. You’d almost think they didn’t want their customers to have that information.

Eventually, I did reach someone who told me it was a system-wide problem that they were working on, and they expected to have it fixed in the near future. Sure enough, about a week of that call, it was fixed. But you’d think if it was system-wide, it should have been that hard to secure a useful answer prior to that.

That’s actually pretty good customer service in 21^st century corporate America. Also, by comparison, it proved to be much easier to solve than our other techno problem. 

We have also been suffering from major slowdowns and daylong outages of our DSL broadband service from Century Link. Nobody actually needs On Demand satellite TV, though we do like it. But most of us do require Internet service. Since I teach online writing classes for the UCLA Extension School’s Writers’ Program, I’m AWOL on my classes if I can’t get online. I could always go to my bookstore or a coffee shop, and work from those places, but I find both options too distracting. I get more work done faster if I can do it from home. That’s become mostly impossible lately, however.

The worst parts of my internet outages is that to find some answers, I have to continually interact with a machine-voice menu system, and Century Link’s is particularly challenging, goes on forever, and then, despite promises I’ve reached from various live and machine-people, my service never improved. That meant I had to keep calling. One thing I find particularly curious about it is that Machine-Guy always asks for my account number, often at least twice. But then, when I finally reach a live person, one of the first things that person asks me for — after my first name, so we can form a warm, personal connection — is for my account number. Can’t Machine Guy pass that on? Maybe he keeps asking because he forgets. Machine-Dude, pay attention!

Machine Guy’s continual demands for the account number can’t possibly be a delaying tactic, right? An intentional annoyance designed to make us get fed up and go away before we reach a live voice? They couldn’t possibly be that cynical, could they?

It used to be easier to skip ahead in these conversations with the various Machine-Guys and Machine-Gals that exist in corporate systems. Lots of people discovered that if you keep hitting “0” on the phone dial, you had a better chance of being switched quicker to a live person.

But they’re on to us now. Century Link’s system is anyway. Their Machine-Guy says, “I’ll be happy to transfer you, but first I need to get more information." Then he asks a variety of other questions, including a request for my account number. Again. His voice might be well modulated and polite, but all I hear is, “Nah-nah, I won’t let you talk to anyone.”

I can’t actually give the live people much higher marks at Century Link. Even after hours of trying, the tech support people were rarely able to reverse my outages. And the local service people sometimes forgot to respond to the service calls the tech support folks set up, even though they required me to stay home for four-hour stretches. During which I usually had no Internet coverage. Oops!

In my bookseller mode, I recently placed an order for greeting cards from the Leanin’ Tree company, a new vendor for us. To my surprise when I called to talk to a rep, their phone was answered by a live and unusually helpful receptionist. When the rep didn’t immediately answer her phone, the receptionist tried to find her first, before sending me onto her voicemail, which she clearly regarded as a last resort. And the rep called me back within minutes of leaving my voicemail message. All of this made me want to do business with their company.

Why don’t more corporations see the kind of mileage they’d get from distinguishing themselves by actually giving good, immediate, personalized service, rather than scheming for ways to make their service less accessible?

Getting back to my broadband…as if this writing, it’s back to its formerly decent level of service. The final repairman told me our cable at the hub was so badly cracked it rarely made contact. He also regarded the port we were connected to as iffy. The new cable and a different port cleared the problem up. The curious part is that the first repairman told me the same thing, about the cable anyway. He said he changed it out. The answer became clearer when the final guy added that he gave me a brand new cable, refusing to reuse an old one. Was that what happened? Did the first guy replace a cracked cable with another cracked cable because the company discouraged them from using new parts? Isn’t that part of what I’m paying for?

I’m thrilled to have my service back, of course. After almost nine years with this provider, I didn’t want to have to go through the bother of switching. Especially since I installed another modem when things went south, which proved to be unnecessary since the problems were on their end. I didn’t want the expense of a second new modem, which I’d need if I went to another carrier.

I seriously considered it, though. Just so I wouldn’t have to talk to the same Machine-Guy anymore because our relationship had irrevocably broken down, worse even than my DSL service. I wonder if a new Machine-Person would have asked for something other than my account number. 

Which of the petty tyrannies of modern life do you hate the most?

Leave a comment and you may win a copy of one of my Tracy Eaton mysteries, Dem Bones’ Revenge. I’ll randomly choose one person out of those leaving comments.

It's what's for dinner

by Kris Neri

Beef – it’s what’s for dinner. That’s been the slogan of the Cattleman’s Association for ages.

Fine. If it’s for dinner, what do you do with it?

I’m not picking on beef. I feel the same way about chicken, pork, vegetables, or everything else. Surely I can’t be alone in this regard. More often than not, I simply don’t have any idea what to make for dinner.

My husband Joe and I go shopping most weeks, and often more than once. We buy food. Only somehow we never seem to have any ingredients to make anything. Most days I stare into the freezer or pantry, absolutely devoid of any ideas other than how easy it would be to order a pizza or pick up a rotisserie chicken.

Don’t get me wrong. I like cooking. I find it creative and relaxing. When I’m in the mood for it, anyway. But somehow that mood only strikes on special occasions, or on Sundays, our day off, when Joe and I cook together. On the average weeknight, I can’t seem to think of anything to make other than things I’ve made thousands of times, which bore me silly at this point.

I know I could plan it out in advance, so I’d never have to be at a loss. I have a friend who does that. Every other week, she works out all the meals she’ll want to make over the next couple of weeks, and lists every single ingredient she’ll need, which she then heads out to buy. She doesn’t like it especially, but she considers her level of planning a better choice than the random approach I bring to my own meal-making.

I could plan as she does, too, of course. But I never will. I could say that I want to be more spontaneous, but that isn’t the truth. I just think there are simply two kinds of people in this world: the kind who plan for two weeks of meals, and the kind who like to stand before the pantry whining that there’s nothing there, but who are secretly relieved to have avoided all that planning.

I could shuck off the cooking onto Joe more often, too. He can somehow find ingredients in our house that I failed to notice. But he typically works later at our bookstore than I do, so if I foist it off onto him, it means eating more creative meals, but later than I like them. Nothing is ever simple.

Since we’re newly in spring, I took the trouble to make something unique yesterday, which I’ve called Extra Creamy Leek & Asparagus soup. I thought about how I could create a different variation on a standard cream of asparagus soup, thought about what I’d need, and since I found almost none of it in our house, I made a special shopping trip for it.

Here’s the recipe:

1 bundle of asparagus, cut into 1-inch piece
1 large or 2 small leeks, sliced (white part only)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, chopped
5 large garlic cloves (or less, to taste)
4-6 cups vegetable or chicken broth
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
salt and pepper
1 cup milk, at room temperature
¼ teaspoon dried thyme
1 small package cream cheese
2 ounces grated Parmesan cheese

Rinse and cut up asparagus spears, discarding the tougher, fibrous bottoms of the spears. Rinse leeks really well, and slice the white part into 1/4 inch disks. Heat oil in a pot, and sauté onion and garlic until tender. Add asparagus and leeks and sauté until they are tender. Remove from heat.

In another pan, heat butter. Add flour and stir to blend. Add salt and pepper. Whisk in milk to blend well. Stir until it thickens into a sauce. Cut one small package of cream cheese into pieces, and stir those into the sauce until well blended.

If you have an immersion hand blender (boat motor), puree the vegetables, reserving the asparagus tips. If you don’t have a boat motor, transfer the sautéed veggies, apart from the tips, to a blender and process until smooth. Combine with the sauce, and return asparagus tips to the soup. Sprinkle with grated Parmesan cheese. Serve with crusty bread.

Yum. Was that ever good!

The trouble with cooking, though, is that no matter how much effort you put into it yesterday, today you just have to do it again. And today, I’m as stumped as ever.

How about you? What are you making? If it’s restaurant reservations, I just might follow your lead.

Privacy — it isn’t what it used to be

by Kris Neri

Privacy — what a quaint concept, one that has largely gone out of fashion. At the time I wrote this a couple of weeks ago, I had just gone to see the movie IRON LADY. While Margaret Thatcher’s politics aren’t mine, I did recognize that there were admirable aspects to her character, even if I disagreed with many of her choices. What struck me most strongly, though, was the divide between her private feelings and her public face.

We’ve largely lost that divide, for better or worse. Today we let everything hang out. Not that I’m necessarily promoting stiff upper lips. Still, while it’s good that people don’t have to suffer in silence now, that we can turn to others for help and advice in dark times, perhaps we’ve gone too far. Do we really have to post every personal sensation on Facebook and Twitter?

I’m not sure whether cell phones started the privacy decline, or if it would have happened without them. Working in retail as I do, I see lots of cell phone intrusions. I’m happy to report that many of our customers do issue a polite “Excuse me,” to us and other customers in the store and go outside to conduct their conversation. Sure, they’re usually shouting out there, since cell phone reception combined with the normal sounds of outdoor spaces, usually results in greater volume. But at least they’re not shouting in our bookstore. Others aren’t as polite. They answer right there, and conduct their book browsing with the help of some unknown person. 

That behavior isn’t just limited to bookstores, either. Once while I stood in line at the grocery store, the man behind me called someone and read all the tabloid covers to that person while we waited.

“Dude,” I wanted to say, “you need a life.” One that didn't involve a cell phone. But I was trying to give him his personal space, even if he didn’t seem to need it.

Recently, I experienced an odd intrusion from the extended non-privacy sphere. Let me explain. We put Google Ads on our bookstore’s website to create an additional source of revenue. It hasn’t worked that well. Since the word “books” is repeated throughout the website, it has mostly generated book-related ads. Some for all the many subsidy publishing companies mushrooming today, and others for our competitors, which are supposed to be blocked but aren’t consistently. You might say that since I invited the ads in, I’m responsible for my own challenges in this area, and that’s nothing I haven’t thought of myself.

But I hadn’t expected one bizarre aspect. The Google ads are accessed by a user name related to the store. While signed OUT of that account, but still in the same computer, I recently conducted a personal Google search among household décor suppliers. I wanted to identify the style of kitchen faucet we have, which came with the house, so I could search for a replacement part.

Bingo! Only moments later, faucet ads appeared on our bookstore’s ads. Coincidence? To test my dawning  theory, while still signed out of the account associated with the ads, I performed a few more deliberate searches, for clothes, shoes, furniture, kitchen gadgets. Sure enough, all of those products and advertisers also showed up in our ads.

It gave me an icky feeling, though. On one hand, I now have a tool to better control the ads that pop up  on my bookstore’s website, even if it does seem a bit convoluted to perform seemingly unrelated searches from another account for products that don’t really interest me. But it also makes me feel weird and watched when I realize the extent to which we’re being electronically monitored.

Remember when we thought Big Brother would be the government? Turns out we were wrong.

I’m happy to share some of my thoughts and aspects of my life with others. Including this either creepy or clever technique for influencing the content of Internet ads. But I’d like to reserve other aspects for my personal use. For a while longer anyway. There was a time when we never would have thought we’d be forever shouting personal messages into unwired phones. Who knows where else we’re headed in this brave new world.

Do you lament the decline of privacy, or have you failed to notice its passing?

What's in your wallet?

By Kris Neri

THE ARTIST’S WAY by Julia Cameron, along with some of her other books, have been incredibly influential in my life and have spurred my writing career. In case you’re unfamiliar with her work, I like to describe THE ARTIST’S WAY and some of the others as do-it-yourself therapy for artists. I probably do THE ARTIST’S WAY again every couple of years.

I say “do it” rather than “read it” because, although it is a book, THE ARTIST’S WAY, along with others of Julia’s titles, present a program of multi-week creativity-enhancing lessons and exercises, which have probably been successful in increasing the creativity of millions of struggling artists.

Actually, while Julia Cameron’s books are marketed to artists, I’ve been the bookseller at two of her conferences, and I’ve met loads of her devoted fans who don’t consider themselves as artists of any kind, but who regard THE ARTIST’S WAY as do-it-yourself therapy for everyone, who’ve made, not artistic growth, but life-growth, using Julia’s lessons and exercises.

With all that said, while I’ve made such artistic strides thanks to her books, I haven’t found her some of her recent books quite as stirring as her earlier ones. I’ve read them all, but they haven’t had such a profound impact on me.

Until now. With THE PROSPEROUS HEART: CREATING A LIFE OF “ENOUGH,” which she wrote with Emma Lively, Julia Cameron has once again captured the stirring, life-changing lessons and exercises of her earlier works.

Some of the tools used in THE PROSPEROUS HEART will be familiar ones to her readers, such as the morning pages, which instructs those following the exercises to write three solid pages of stream-of-conscious writing as soon as they wake up, and the recommended weekly walks. But other tools, such as counting every penny in and out, and the time outs are different.

At first glance, this doesn’t seem like a book that should have a stirring impact on me. Sure, like lots of people, I don’t have as much money as I’d like. But I’m not a shopaholic — sometimes it seems as if I was born without the shopping gene, since it’s usually my least favorite activity. No smoke coming off my credit cards!

So it might seem strange that a book that helps people to manage their finances and stop over-shopping and running up debt they can’t afford should have make such a strong impression on me, but it did. That’s because, according to Cameron, prosperity isn’t a financial issue, but a spiritual one. She maintains that the opposite of prosperity isn’t poverty, but anxiety. It’s the fear of not having enough that makes us feel the desperation for more.

She shows her readers how to recognize the abundance they already have their lives, but which probably goes unnoticed in their quest for whatever magic number they think will satisfy them. She points out that the magic number rarely does satisfy. Other exercises easily help readers to bring more fulfilling prosperity into their lives. For instance, in one exercise, she instructs the reader to list five things they’d like, which they can’t afford — and then encourages them to search for some small step they could take in each of those areas.

When I did the exercise, I listed five large things I’d like, but when I didn’t immediately think of five small steps I could take toward each one of them, I poo-pooed the exercise as ineffective, at least for me. And yet, within hours I did think of small steps I could take, and each one proved to be an inspired choice and wholly satisfying.

But as with all her do-it-yourself lessons & exercises books, my gains greatly exceeded her intended subject matter. While THE ARTIST’S WAY and some other titles, including THE RIGHT TO WRITE and others, did help me to enhance my creativity, THE PROSPEROUS HEART made me to appreciate the level of abundance I already enjoy and aided me in bringing more prosperity into my life — my greatest gains exceeded the financial realm, and helped me to make life-improvements in areas that seemed to have nothing to do with money.

The book’s voice — Cameron’s voice, to those who have had the good fortune to have heard her — at times quirky, at other times stern, but always confident in the efficacy of the lessons she has to offer — will comfort those who’ve derived much from her books in the past, but should also prove welcoming to Cameron newbies. For those of you who might be shopoholics, I’m sure you’d derive even more than I did. If THE PROSPEROUS HEART offers you half of what it gave me, you’ll find it worth the time, money and personal energy you’ll invest in it.