I just finished listening to the audio edition of The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, read by the author. It is a set of vignettes of semi-autobiographical childhood memories. Ms. Cisneros’ lyrical prose is beautiful, but this was not my type of book.
In my previous entry, I made reference to a book that I’d read in high school, but I have no idea of the title or author. Well, I’m pleased to say that I have at least one reader of this blog. A reader named Kristie emailed me to suggest that the book might be Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank. After a little research, I’m pleased to find that this is indeed the book. I intend to get it from the library or buy a copy at the earliest opportunity and re-read it. It should be interesting to compare a fresh read to what I remember of it. Thanks, Kristie!
My online friend Rafe Colburn challenged me to pick up the book thread. Here we go…
Total number of books I’ve owned: Since I have a Ph.D. in literature, I’d have to estimate thousands. A couple of years ago I gave away almost all of my grad school books, probably several hundred. I’m a purger, so I generallly get rid of books unless I know I’ll need them again for some specific reason.
We currently have a few hundred books (or maybe a couple thousand; it’s hard to estimate) in the house, but most of those are from Katie’s graduate work in English education and religious studies, and Hannah and Samuel have a large library of children’s and young adult books. There are only a few dozen books in the house that I would identify as belonging only to me, mostly language reference (mostly German) and programming books.
Last book I bought: Well, just this morning I ordered four novels off of Amazon, but three of those were for Katie, and the other was a pre-order of the next Harry Potter book. Although I will read the HP book, I pre-ordered it at Hannah’s request. She’ll get first dibs on it.
I’ve recently become an avid patron of the Pflugerville library, so I don’t buy so many books for myself these days (and I only ordered the three books for Katie because they aren’t in the library). However, a couple of weeks ago I bought ChiRunning at the local Barnes and Noble, since the library doesn’t have it.
Last book I read: I’m currently listening to The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros and reading The Prodigal Spy by Joseph Kanon. I’m also reading ChiRunning on and off.
Last book I finished: Yesterday I completed the audio edition of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon.
Some books that mean a lot to me (everyone else listed five; I changed that to ‘some’), in no particular order:
Five People I’d like to do this as well: Since I’m a Z-list blogger, I don’t know of any other bloggers who 1.) haven’t already probably received the challenge, and 2.) read my site to find out that I’ve challenged them. However, if one of my (presumed) handful of readers publishes your own book inventory based on reading mine, please let me know. At least I’ll know I have a reader that way.
This is a photo of me from last weekend at my sister’s ranch. I’m now using this photo as my laptop’s desktop background in order to intimidate my co-workers.
For the record, I didn’t just pose with the shotgun. I shot and killed at least two water snakes in my sister’s tanks (that’s ‘ponds’ for most people) while we were fishing.
I just finished listening to the audio edition of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon.
The novel is narrated by a 15-year-old boy with autism or Asperberger Syndrome. His difficulty understanding other people’s emotions is a powerful literary device for viewing the messy emotional lives of the people around him. I enjoyed this book very much and highly recommend it.
We spent Memorial Day weekend on my sister Andrea’s new ranch south of San Antonio, doing all kinds of things we don’t get to do much: riding horses and ATVs, shooting guns, cooking over a camp fire. I’ve posted a bunch of photos from our weekend on my web site. Mosey on over and check them out.
Steve over at theSneeze.com has a new rant about The Wiggles. Steve is funny, as usual, but while I was reading his post, it hit me that I wasn’t familiar with the details he was ranting about. Praise the Lord! It’s been at least a year since The Wiggles has played in our house. Not to mention such other grating early-childhood TV shows, such as the Teletubbies and Elmo.
No, our kids have finally moved on. Granted, they’ve moved on to some Disney Channel fare of equally questionable quality, but nothing is as painful as repeated preschool shows such as The Wiggles.
Joey deVilla has a good blog post about crunch mode, which he defines as “working extra hours each day for extended periods in order to meet a (usually arbitrary and unrealistic) deadline.”
I agree completely with Joey that extended crunch mode is counter-productive. As work hours increase, productivity decreases, and at some point, you’re making so many errors that it becomes counter-productive.
The issue of work hours almost always comes up in some form when I interview for jobs. My stock answer is: software development is a cyclical enterprise. I understand that there are periods when much greater effort is necessary, and I’m willing to put in that periodic work.
And as a manager myself, I tell my team members that if they have to be in crunch mode more than periodically, then it’s a management failure.
I usually welcome this topic in a job interview, because the interviewer’s attitude toward crunch mode tells me a lot about the culture of the company and whether I want to work there. Thankfully, I’ve had the opportunity to work in several companies where management essentially agrees with me about the dubious value of perpetual crunch mode.
