Diary #838

I’m not sure why Amazon decided people who send gifts from others’ wishlists don’t need to be thanked, but that’s exactly what it has done. It used to be possible to send a sender a “Thank You” email, which may be superfluous if the sender and recipient know each other in real life, but is very important to those of us who receive gifts from those who admire our work online. For several years now, though, I had noticed that though it was still possible to send such a message, the gift sender rarely received it. Then some months ago I realized it was no longer possible to even send one; when I got three anniversary gifts recently, I decided to dig through the “wishlist help” to see if they’d merely hidden the function in some submenu somewhere. But no; I soon found a clear statement that it was not possible to send it at all. So I really hope the readers who sent me a DVD of Sinners, a collection of four Kurt Vonnegut novels, and The Lensman Anthology, all see this and accept my thanks…