job posting

My Corporate Masters are looking for a bilingual Product Manager (English/Korean, we have a large team there so fluency in both languages is a big deal). offices on the waterfront in Seattle.

feel free to put interested parties in contact with me for details.

[30 days of books] triple play

15. Do you recommend books to other people? If you could force everyone you know to read one book, what would it be?

as i have grown older, mostly only when i'm asked to do so. but then i do so with gusto. and often as not, follow it by handing you the relevant book.

force everyone to read one book? see previous "as i have grown older"...i understand that what i like is not what you like. what gets me to think more deeply about a subject may have no effect on you. i can't even say that "likes book foo, dislikes book bar" is a rule of thumb for people i want to associate with. (seriously, mimerki doesn't like Jane Eyre. but she's still awesome. i assume that others like me in spite of my tepid response to Jane Austen.)

16. Adaptation: What book would you most like to see made into a film? Do you like to read the book first or see the film? Any books you have read after seeing the film version?

i remember being horribly disappointed when i saw the film version of The Black Stallion because it had changed so many things from the book, and my mom patiently trying to explain adaptation to mini-me. i think the first time i appreciated the adapted film and the book as related entities to be judged on their own merits was The Hunt for Red October. still my knee-jerk reaction is that i don't care to have a favorite "ruined" by someone else's imagination, and i hate how many people i have met who watch the Harry Potter films instead of reading the books. OTOH, i always like to see a favored book's audience expand.

i guess i would like to see Bad Monkeys or The Mirage made into a film because i want matt_ruff to get a dumptruck full of Hollywood money.

if something i haven't read is being made into a film that looks interesting, i don't rush to read it first. more often than not, that will lead to me quibbling with the adaptation. if i see the film and then read the book, i usually can enjoy both more although sometimes it stifles my imagination to have visual templates for characters and locations. i read The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen after i saw the film, and it made the film look even worse. i started reading Hellboy after the film, and it made me appreciate Del Toro's adaptation work (i liked the film to begin with, in spite of the mysteriously fireproof clothing). and rewatching is full of cookies for people who have read the comics.

17. What is the most difficult book you’ve ever read?
vague superlatives. stop that, anonymous question writer.

perhaps the answer is Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan. it certainly has stuck with me since i read it, and i've meant to write about it several times, but it hasn't resolved into a shape that i could put into words.

i think part of what causes me trouble with the book is that it delivered a literary fiction experience that i would not have chosen for myself - i'm never going to pick up Push - because i don't find that sort of misery entertaining. it's not that i can't accept bad or emotionally complex things happening to characters - i'm often resistant to too-pat happy endings - but Tender Morsels left me feeling (please forgive me but i'm not coming up with a better turn of phrase) screwed over.

this is a story about a rape and abuse survivor who is unlike any of the survivors i know. i realize that every survivor is different, and i don't presume to judge. but my first huge difficulty with the book is that Our Heroine decides that she really really wants to have her abuser's baby. i can see how she's trying to produce a pure relationship, and that hiding the pregnancy in order to go to term is in itself an assertion of control...i just can't swallow it without choking. a lot of the book is like that for me.

yet i'm not willing to say that it is a "bad" book. that's difficult too. (and i'm perfectly willing to say that i think well-written and popular books like Wicked and Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell are bad.)


30 questions