I've found myself in this situation once before, and I really don't want to end up there again. Hopefully things will come together very soon and I can get back on with the project. I'll keep you posted.
In the meantime, I've been thinking about e-books. I read an interesting post from Carol recently, which mentioned the fact that you can download a sample of the book onto your kindle, or kobo or whatever to get a taste. I've done this myself in the past, although I still haven't got around to reading it yet! I'd rather forgotten about this useful aspect of e-books.
Sometimes in a bookshop you can read a bit, and decided immediately whether it's grabbing you or not but having the luxury of reading a sample in the comfort of your own home (or wherever you are travelling with your trusty reader!) does come in useful. You can get more of a feel for the book when you've got a bigger sample to try. The other benefit is that you can try authors you might not normally gravitate towards in a book shop. For free! And of course, should you find that you can't wait to read on, with a few buttons pressed, the whole book is sat there waiting for you.
I have to admit the ease with which e-books can be purchased is both useful and possibly dangerous. Impulse buying has a free reign in these situations I find!
As mentioned, I do have an e-reader but I'm not a great user of it - at the moment. I love the feel of a 'real' book in my hands. I love going to library and coming out with a little pile of goodies to start working through and I would absolutely hate to see the demise of the real book, the bookshop or libraries. Any loss of these would be tragic. But I can see the advantages and it's useful to be reminded of some of them from time to time.
