Mostly books
Looking back at what I've read recently, I've actually read two non-fiction books in the same month. That's probably a record for me as I'm primarily interested in novels. But I read book reviews, and I'm Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen by Sylvie Simmons sounded intriguing. I discovered him when I was in 7th or 8th grade. My mother got me a book of Judy Collins' songs. I only knew her from singing "Both Sides Now," but I worked my way through the songbook.
I found that the ones I liked the best were by this same guy, Leonard Cohen. (The songs were "Suzanne," "The Story of Isaac," "Sisters of Mercy," and "Dress Rehearsal Rag.") As an adult, I found his albums but, frankly, the man doesn't really have a voice. I was pleased when Jennifer Warnes, one of his back up singers, put out her own album of his songs. She sings much better.
The reason I was so keen to read the biography was that I have always been drawn to the religious, specifically Catholic, imagery in many of his songs. He has a whole song about Joan of Arc, and he references her in at least one other song. From his name, I assumed he was Jewish in background, and Cohens are the traditional priestly clan. I knew he was Canadian, and my early childhood in upstate New York included several trips to Quebec, always stopping at St. Anne de Beaupres. (I will never forget one evening, my family participating in this living rosary procession that was being conducted outside -- some place with fountains. The man leading the procession - I don't remember if he was a priest or not -- insisted on two of my brothers taking part, being candle-bearers, despite their not being French-speakers. To compensate for this, the man walked backwards in front of them, motioning them where to go and what he wanted them to do. My devilish brothers let this man walk backwards right into a fountain. But I digress.) I was curious where he stood on the religious observance spectrum.
So I found out that Cohen was indeed raised Jewish - his maternal grandfather was a rabbi. They had an Irish Catholic servant when he was young who would take him around to churches, so that was probably where he picked up the Catholic stuff. And in adulthood, he got into zen Buddhism and became a Buddhist monk. For a while.
The library also had multiple copies of the new Stephen King, Doctor Sleep, a sequel to The Shining. This book is a testament to the value of AA as much as anything. I enjoyed it; King hasn't lost his touch. But I can't help wondering, yet again, why Tim Powers has never gotten the same number of readers as King. They are definitely swimming in the same pool, but Powers dares to go a little deeper than King.
Our area has a yearly read-along, the Silicon Valley Reads program. Each summer/fall, a book or set of related books is suggested to be read by those interested in participating. There are discussions and talks in various libraries in the areas about the books. The hubby and I went to one when the topic was a couple of books on Islam. I had bought/read The Muslim Next Door, by an American Muslim woman. She came and spoke at our local library.
This year the theme seems to be how modern technology is impacting our daily lives. I have already read the novel, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, by Robin Sloan. It's marketed as mimetic fiction, but it's fantasy. It was interesting, but somewhat forgettable, involving plots and a secret society trying to discover secrets in obscure books.
I have a hold at the library on the non-fiction one, which has not come in yet. That one is on hold the Internet is destroying our brains, or something like that.
Speaking of books about plots and secret societies and obscure books, I had cast covetous eyes on Deborah Harkness' A Discovery of Witches. I like witch fic, what can I say? I'd seen it in bookstores and at the library for months and months, occasionally picking it up to look at it but never taking the plunge and buying it or checking it out of the library. I finally did. I enjoyed it. It's about an academic in Oxford, Diana Bishop, who is a descendant of powerful witches but who doesn't seem to have much magic herself. You know how these things go - of course, she really does. She hooks up with a gorgeous, powerful vampire -- got to have one of those these days, y'know. I was rather disappointed when I realized at the end that it was book 1 of a trilogy. But hey, it was a library book - I hadn't paid anything and they would probably get the next. Well, not only does my local library have volume 2 (it's the All Souls Trilogy for the set, I believe -- book 2 is called something like Shadow of Night), it has it on CD. So I've been listening to book 2 in my car when I drive. It's 20 discs, so I was not able to finish it in the 3-week checkout period. Fortunately I was able to renew it. (The last book on CD I hadn't finished in 3 weeks was Jim Butcher's Cold Days. That had a hold on it so I couldn't renew it.) I hope they get the third book on CD as well.
I picked up another book last week at the library which also looked like a witches-in-academia (a new sub-genre!) thing, but it quickly turned into something else and I did not enjoy it so I stopped reading it.
I've been loving Seanan McGuire's Incryptid books. I read #2, Midnight Blue-Light Special. I love this woman. She posts short fiction in the same universe on her website so her fans can download it. She even has it in different formats like epub and mobi to make it very convenient to put it on your ereader. The stories are about other family members, like the grandparents when they were young. Lots of fun and free. I enjoyed reading her Velveteen stories (which she was actually putting on her LJ) and now those are available as actual ebooks.
Other than books, we had a crisis at work. The one and only engineer in our group quit. We run around the clock. We now at least have 4 techs, 1 for each 12-hour, 3-day/4-day shift (although the latest is not up to speed), but it's just us and the manager now. He's not real hands-on with the tools. When I came into the group, there were 2 tools up and running, both brand X. The manager had purchased a third, a brand Y, but it wasn't running yet. Shortly after I started, he hired an engineer who used to work at company Y so he knew the new tool and could set up the production recipes. Then the boss bought (one at a time), 3 tools by brand Z. We had to get rid of one of the original tools, but we now have 5 big tools, 3 different manufacturers, all running production plus we get constant engineering requests for recipes (often for just one wafer -- like they know it has a problem and they want us to write a mapping recipe so they can determine if the problem is bad enough to scrap the wafer) on tools Y and Z.
At least my boss got a req approved for a replacement. (The company was having an early retirement incentive program to cut down on personnel - a lot of those people are not being replaced.) We are interviewing. I've seen 3 candidates so far. I can't judge their technical expertise - I'm just there to let the boss know if I think we techs would be comfortable working with the person. So far I haven't seen a problem with that. All the candidates are Chinese, which is not a surprise, considering where we are. (My boss is from China.) One of the other techs is Mexican American - she's bilingual, Spanish-English, and the other two are both from India -- so none of us speak Chinese. The first guy, it was just an informal thing - I don't remember if I saw his resume. The second one was a formal interview with a schedule set by HR. He's in Oregon and wants to move to this area -- he used to live here. His wife is finishing her grad degree at UC Davis and wants to get a job in the Bay area. He is currently a production engineer in a wafer fab -- he doesn't know our tools, but he should have a grasp on what the job would entail. (This place is a sweatshop. They work everyone hard. I swear, many of the engineers roll out of bed and immediately check their email. I get emails from them at 6 in the morning. This is not a place for the type of Ph.D. who never got out of the grad student mentality.) So I'd be fine with him.
The last candidate, I looked at her resume and thought it was unreadable. Her education was all in China. (The other guy got his undergrad degree in China and M.S. down in San Diego.) It read like she had just used a dictionary to translate. It had bullet points that said things like, "be minister for universality." All of her bullets started with "be." I think she was trying to say she had some leadership position, maybe at the university, but I really could not parse her language.
I totally missed that she was (or had been - hard to tell from her resume) an applications engineer at the company which made our brand Y tool - and she had worked on it. I took a closer look at her resume before the interview and saw that. I talked with the boss, telling him that I was concerned about her ability to communicate in English - none of us techs speak Chinese. But an applications engineer for that tool would be heaven -- it's obsolete so getting support from the company might not be doable. My boss said that she was actually on the team that first installed our tool, and he thought she was better at the recipe set up than the guy whose job she's interviewing.
You can imagine how delighted I was to find that, while she is a little hesitant in English, she is perfectly understandable. We had no problem talking together -- and that is the sort of thing which would improve with time. If they hire her and I don't understand her email, I can always just ask her to clarify. (And I got the impression that she was interested in this area because she wants to find a man. She was asking about housing costs. She'd love to live in San Francisco but doesn't think she could afford to. I said that Fremont, where we work, has BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit - our version of a subway) that runs to San Francisco so she could go there easily and live in a cheaper area.
So the boss asked for my feedback on the three candidates. I said she would be my top choice, and I'm sure the other techs (who didn't meet any because the interviews all happened on my shift) would be more than happy to have an engineer with expertise on a tool that we feel a little shaky on. (Recipe set up on the 3 brand Z tools is much easier. Brand Y is faster running the recipes, but it's very different.) Not having an engineer who knows the tools is like working without a safety net. We're on our own and out of luck if we can't solve our own problems.
So that's where I've been lately. Time to go back to my books.
I found that the ones I liked the best were by this same guy, Leonard Cohen. (The songs were "Suzanne," "The Story of Isaac," "Sisters of Mercy," and "Dress Rehearsal Rag.") As an adult, I found his albums but, frankly, the man doesn't really have a voice. I was pleased when Jennifer Warnes, one of his back up singers, put out her own album of his songs. She sings much better.
The reason I was so keen to read the biography was that I have always been drawn to the religious, specifically Catholic, imagery in many of his songs. He has a whole song about Joan of Arc, and he references her in at least one other song. From his name, I assumed he was Jewish in background, and Cohens are the traditional priestly clan. I knew he was Canadian, and my early childhood in upstate New York included several trips to Quebec, always stopping at St. Anne de Beaupres. (I will never forget one evening, my family participating in this living rosary procession that was being conducted outside -- some place with fountains. The man leading the procession - I don't remember if he was a priest or not -- insisted on two of my brothers taking part, being candle-bearers, despite their not being French-speakers. To compensate for this, the man walked backwards in front of them, motioning them where to go and what he wanted them to do. My devilish brothers let this man walk backwards right into a fountain. But I digress.) I was curious where he stood on the religious observance spectrum.
So I found out that Cohen was indeed raised Jewish - his maternal grandfather was a rabbi. They had an Irish Catholic servant when he was young who would take him around to churches, so that was probably where he picked up the Catholic stuff. And in adulthood, he got into zen Buddhism and became a Buddhist monk. For a while.
The library also had multiple copies of the new Stephen King, Doctor Sleep, a sequel to The Shining. This book is a testament to the value of AA as much as anything. I enjoyed it; King hasn't lost his touch. But I can't help wondering, yet again, why Tim Powers has never gotten the same number of readers as King. They are definitely swimming in the same pool, but Powers dares to go a little deeper than King.
Our area has a yearly read-along, the Silicon Valley Reads program. Each summer/fall, a book or set of related books is suggested to be read by those interested in participating. There are discussions and talks in various libraries in the areas about the books. The hubby and I went to one when the topic was a couple of books on Islam. I had bought/read The Muslim Next Door, by an American Muslim woman. She came and spoke at our local library.
This year the theme seems to be how modern technology is impacting our daily lives. I have already read the novel, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, by Robin Sloan. It's marketed as mimetic fiction, but it's fantasy. It was interesting, but somewhat forgettable, involving plots and a secret society trying to discover secrets in obscure books.
I have a hold at the library on the non-fiction one, which has not come in yet. That one is on hold the Internet is destroying our brains, or something like that.
Speaking of books about plots and secret societies and obscure books, I had cast covetous eyes on Deborah Harkness' A Discovery of Witches. I like witch fic, what can I say? I'd seen it in bookstores and at the library for months and months, occasionally picking it up to look at it but never taking the plunge and buying it or checking it out of the library. I finally did. I enjoyed it. It's about an academic in Oxford, Diana Bishop, who is a descendant of powerful witches but who doesn't seem to have much magic herself. You know how these things go - of course, she really does. She hooks up with a gorgeous, powerful vampire -- got to have one of those these days, y'know. I was rather disappointed when I realized at the end that it was book 1 of a trilogy. But hey, it was a library book - I hadn't paid anything and they would probably get the next. Well, not only does my local library have volume 2 (it's the All Souls Trilogy for the set, I believe -- book 2 is called something like Shadow of Night), it has it on CD. So I've been listening to book 2 in my car when I drive. It's 20 discs, so I was not able to finish it in the 3-week checkout period. Fortunately I was able to renew it. (The last book on CD I hadn't finished in 3 weeks was Jim Butcher's Cold Days. That had a hold on it so I couldn't renew it.) I hope they get the third book on CD as well.
I picked up another book last week at the library which also looked like a witches-in-academia (a new sub-genre!) thing, but it quickly turned into something else and I did not enjoy it so I stopped reading it.
I've been loving Seanan McGuire's Incryptid books. I read #2, Midnight Blue-Light Special. I love this woman. She posts short fiction in the same universe on her website so her fans can download it. She even has it in different formats like epub and mobi to make it very convenient to put it on your ereader. The stories are about other family members, like the grandparents when they were young. Lots of fun and free. I enjoyed reading her Velveteen stories (which she was actually putting on her LJ) and now those are available as actual ebooks.
Other than books, we had a crisis at work. The one and only engineer in our group quit. We run around the clock. We now at least have 4 techs, 1 for each 12-hour, 3-day/4-day shift (although the latest is not up to speed), but it's just us and the manager now. He's not real hands-on with the tools. When I came into the group, there were 2 tools up and running, both brand X. The manager had purchased a third, a brand Y, but it wasn't running yet. Shortly after I started, he hired an engineer who used to work at company Y so he knew the new tool and could set up the production recipes. Then the boss bought (one at a time), 3 tools by brand Z. We had to get rid of one of the original tools, but we now have 5 big tools, 3 different manufacturers, all running production plus we get constant engineering requests for recipes (often for just one wafer -- like they know it has a problem and they want us to write a mapping recipe so they can determine if the problem is bad enough to scrap the wafer) on tools Y and Z.
At least my boss got a req approved for a replacement. (The company was having an early retirement incentive program to cut down on personnel - a lot of those people are not being replaced.) We are interviewing. I've seen 3 candidates so far. I can't judge their technical expertise - I'm just there to let the boss know if I think we techs would be comfortable working with the person. So far I haven't seen a problem with that. All the candidates are Chinese, which is not a surprise, considering where we are. (My boss is from China.) One of the other techs is Mexican American - she's bilingual, Spanish-English, and the other two are both from India -- so none of us speak Chinese. The first guy, it was just an informal thing - I don't remember if I saw his resume. The second one was a formal interview with a schedule set by HR. He's in Oregon and wants to move to this area -- he used to live here. His wife is finishing her grad degree at UC Davis and wants to get a job in the Bay area. He is currently a production engineer in a wafer fab -- he doesn't know our tools, but he should have a grasp on what the job would entail. (This place is a sweatshop. They work everyone hard. I swear, many of the engineers roll out of bed and immediately check their email. I get emails from them at 6 in the morning. This is not a place for the type of Ph.D. who never got out of the grad student mentality.) So I'd be fine with him.
The last candidate, I looked at her resume and thought it was unreadable. Her education was all in China. (The other guy got his undergrad degree in China and M.S. down in San Diego.) It read like she had just used a dictionary to translate. It had bullet points that said things like, "be minister for universality." All of her bullets started with "be." I think she was trying to say she had some leadership position, maybe at the university, but I really could not parse her language.
I totally missed that she was (or had been - hard to tell from her resume) an applications engineer at the company which made our brand Y tool - and she had worked on it. I took a closer look at her resume before the interview and saw that. I talked with the boss, telling him that I was concerned about her ability to communicate in English - none of us techs speak Chinese. But an applications engineer for that tool would be heaven -- it's obsolete so getting support from the company might not be doable. My boss said that she was actually on the team that first installed our tool, and he thought she was better at the recipe set up than the guy whose job she's interviewing.
You can imagine how delighted I was to find that, while she is a little hesitant in English, she is perfectly understandable. We had no problem talking together -- and that is the sort of thing which would improve with time. If they hire her and I don't understand her email, I can always just ask her to clarify. (And I got the impression that she was interested in this area because she wants to find a man. She was asking about housing costs. She'd love to live in San Francisco but doesn't think she could afford to. I said that Fremont, where we work, has BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit - our version of a subway) that runs to San Francisco so she could go there easily and live in a cheaper area.
So the boss asked for my feedback on the three candidates. I said she would be my top choice, and I'm sure the other techs (who didn't meet any because the interviews all happened on my shift) would be more than happy to have an engineer with expertise on a tool that we feel a little shaky on. (Recipe set up on the 3 brand Z tools is much easier. Brand Y is faster running the recipes, but it's very different.) Not having an engineer who knows the tools is like working without a safety net. We're on our own and out of luck if we can't solve our own problems.
So that's where I've been lately. Time to go back to my books.