Books, Part 2

A second part to last night’s entry: books as gifts. Some people might think of getting a book as a gift about as exciting as when you’re a kid and you get clothes as a gift (the dreaded sound of fabric moving around inside a wrapped gift box), but as an adult, getting a good book can actually be a very sweet thing. Or at least a very intimate thing. Yes, of course, like Jamal’s unexpected gift at an unexpected time in Finding Forrester, the gift of a rare or old book that you’re already quite familiar with is a great thing. And as you hold those delicately bound pages in your hands and run your fingers over a well-worn cover, you can think back on how much the content of those pages mean to you and you can imagine how many other people were able to enjoy the same experience each in their own way, at their own time through the book you’re now holding. The book is no longer just a bunch of pages with a story. It’s an historical artifact that carries not only the story within its pages, but the story of it’s own life as it passes from owner to owner.

But a book doesn’t have to be rare or old or even hardcover to be a great gift. If it’s something you’ve already mentioned before, when someone gives you a book, it shows that he remembers. He noticed. Whether it be a passing statement of “oh, I want to read that new book that just came out,” or a long diatribe on the wonders of a particular series: “God, I remember how much I loved the Chronicles of Narnia and got lost within it’s pages for hours…” He was paying attention and that’s what’s special. But that’s true for any gift, I suppose.

However, if it’s a book your gift-giver has chosen for you, loves himself and just insists that you read it, no matter how skeptical you are, you should embrace it and realize that if your gift-giver is as much a lover of books as you are, this gift is not just a $5 paperback (or the $25 hardcover, for those who are extravagant). It’s an attempt to give part of himself. He wants to share the experience you can get from reading those few hundred pages because it was special to him and he wants it to be special to you and he wants to have been the one who made that experience possible. (In some ways, it’s really quite sexual.) And if you love that book just as much as he does, you can keep it on your shelf and it will be a constant reminder of who brought you to that little sliver of experience that’s shaped you somehow, much like how that person probably went on to shape you and influence your life in other ways. For better or for worse.

A guy I was once involved with on and off for years during a very critical portion of my developmental years gave me two books: a copy of Cat’s Cradle that was never returned to whatever public library it came from and a copy of A Clockwork Orange (store purchased, I believe). Now, if you’ve read either one of these books, you can imagine how disturbing, or at least eye-opening, they might be for, say, a 13 to 15-year-old girl. And their darkness and strangeness captured that relationship pretty well and in the same way that relationship opened up my eyes to many things as a young woman, those books were the beginning of a serious trek onto more Vonnegut, more dark humor, more dark subject matter, more dark experiences… just more. I have to say that period of my life shaped me in a lot of ways today, but ironically enough, while I have copies of those books sitting on my shelf right now (right next to each other), they are not the original ones I received as gifts so many years ago. Instead, they have been lost in the constant moving around since then, from dorm room to dorm room, from apartment to apartment, and have been replaced with fresh copies from the store without the inscriptions in the inside covers to mock me. Those books have been lost along the way in the same way that boy/man was lost along the way, but the experiences still hold on somehow. If they didn’t, why would I be telling this story in the first place? I rarely ever look at those books compared to all of my other ones, but they’re always there, kept safe and sound as a key part of the background of my home and my life.

So, next time someone buys you a mass market paperback, don’t think of it as a cheap gift or some kind of reading assignment, but as a gift of potential experience passed from your gift-giver to you so that you might share something special. Just between the two of you.

Books

When I was at Princeton last month, I went into a local bookstore in search of the Lemony Snicket books and wandered into the used books section. Have you ever noticed when you walk into a used book store, there’s this “old book smell” that hits you? Sounds kind gross, but it’s strangely satisfying and exciting. There’s a used books shop I usually go to where I live, but there was something special about this bookstore in downtown Princeton. Maybe it’s my bias for all things old and East Coast, but that scent reminded me of the basement of my old piano teacher’s house. In that basement of Mr. B’s where I would have my hour-long lesson every week and re-discover my love for that instrument and for classical music in general, where I would be reminded that discipline and practice are not only essential, but could be enjoyable as well, there were shelves and shelves full of old books. And usually, I would browse collections of satirical comic strips that I had never seen or heard of before or skim through page after page of poetry and literature while I waited for my turn at the piano. And that room, as I remember it now, was filled with the scent of well-read, well-loved books.

As much of a technophile as I am, I will admit that I don’t think I’ll ever switch to ebooks. Aside from the fact that I can take a book anywhere and read it anytime without the aid of a computer or other secondary device, there is something to be said about the physical artifact of books. I’m the kind of person that almost always buys a copy of a book I want to read and keeps it on my shelf for years and years to come so that I can have it as a reminder of the joy and experiences (no matter how vicarious) it gave me and to come back to it time and time again. I have no qualms about reading a book over and over again and I’ve still got my old middle school and high school copies of everything from The Outsiders to Childhood’s End to Invisible Man. And as I look back at those books, I can’t imagine wanting to live in a world with only ebooks. Maybe I’m stuck in an old paradigm, maybe I’m too attached to the physical, but I can’t help enjoying the deeper memories associated with those books, re-reading handwritten inscriptions inside an old paperback or remembering when I was obsessed with Vonnegut and would carry around The Sirens of Titan or Mother Night and get lost within the pages. I’m a sucker for it all and while I suppose there will probably come a time where ebooks will become the standard, where we will let go of the burden of paper and print, but I’m not so sure we should.

(And by the way, no matter how old you are, you should pick up the Lemony Snicket books. Although filled with a series of unfortunate events, they’re still lovely.)

Keeping current

My friend and I were talking about how some people have a real Passion for Technology (note the cheesy capitalization). And in general, there are just people out there who want as much information as possible all the time. Cannot get enough. Always want to know what the new thing is, what’s going on, who’s doing what. And I don’t mean in terms of gossip– God knows that a lot of the time, I could not care less about what people I know are up to. No, I mean, to always be aware of current events, current technologies, everything about the current big thing and what’s going to be the next big thing. And this passion usually extends beyond the tech stuff– it goes to politics and social issues and pop culture. It’s a need to be engaged in the world, even if it’s by sitting in front of your computer and surfing the Web all day.

In a lot of ways, I’m certainly this kind of person (of course, everyone has areas of the world that she could not care less about). I thought of this as I was going through my Bloglines subscriptions and realized that even though I probably already spend way too much time in front of a computer as it is, I want to subscribe to more and more feeds. I am compelled to do it. I can’t help but want to click on every little checkbox so that suddenly, I’ll get a constant feed of what’s posted on some news site or on the blog of somebody I don’t even know. I’m always trying to keep up with the news, tech or otherwise, and whenever people are talking about something relatively interesting (which is, I know, a subjective thing), whether it be a new movie out or the Arab-Israeli conflict, I try to at least listen, if not be involved in the conversation. And this is usually the quality I look for in other people, in friends and coworkers and otherwise, and I usually know pretty quickly it’s not going to work out if somebody glazes over during involved or esoteric conversations. I mean, even when a conversation goes beyond my level of expertise on the topic (which is certainly not unusual), I’m still eager to listen and learn.

But in some ways, with information becoming so accessible in this computer age (again, a cheesy phrase), I think those who aren’t actively seeking to keep up-to-date and informed are going to be quickly left behind. With email, the Internet, television, and more, with personalized information services and so much content coming from so many different places, we’re all trying to drink from the firehose– and I can’t help but think that soon, evolution will re-wire our brains so that we will be able to take it all in. And those who do it first will be able to emerge from the cave first. Just look at how geeks rule the world now. They (we, whatever) were the first ones to latch onto the computer era and in the end, those who can make sense of all this tech stuff (and do it in just the right ways) can move to the front of the pack.

Every day, human beings are developing the ability to process more information in a shorter amount of time. Today’s teenagers are already doing it– they can watch tv, listen to music, talk on the phone, and do their homework all at the same time. Granted, a lot of them aren’t actually doing any one of those things all that well, but a lot of them are getting along just fine and are changing the way we all work and live. Keeping up-to-date is more important than ever. I work with college students everyday and every year, I get older and the kids (ahem, sorry students) stay the same age. And so, the world may have one time thought me young, but even as an (almost) twenty-five year old, I find myself having to reinvent myself all the time. Challenging, but how exciting too!

Save a life. Give blood.

I donated blood today– I’m a universal donor. They call me up all the time because of shortages. I hope the bruise on my arm doesn’t get too big. Seriously people, look how small my arm is. You have to be careful with that big needle.

Every time I donate blood, I think about how far we’ve come in terms of all different kinds of technology, but we still rely on the general goodwill of people to provide life-saving blood. Amazing! And in this day and age, I’m sure finding healthy donors is only getting harder. Consider how many people get nervous around needles or simply don’t want to give up their time and energy in the first place. And then current regulations keep a lot of people from donating even if they want to– like if you’ve ever even seen Africa on a map or heard of a man having sex with another man, you’re SOL. Frankly, I think many of those regulations are a little over the top, but even with those restrictions, we still manage to provide life-saving blood products to over four million Americans each year. Amazing!

And as far as I can tell, there’s no all-encompassing organization that manages the nation’s blood supply. Yes, the blood supply is certainly highly regulated at various levels, but there’s no end-all be-all national blood center. Just community blood centers that are networked together through a few large national blood suppliers. We rely on the work of good people all around the country. And the US blood supply is one of the safest in the world. Incredible!

Save a life. Give blood. Find a blood center near you: America’s Blood Centers.

Interviewing

Here’s an interesting blurb on interviewing. My favorite bit is: “Even though work history doesn’t correlate with job performance, being a lying sack of shit almost certainly does.” It’s true– and a ridiculous number of people lie on resumes, job applications and even applications for school. Part of me thinks it’s because when the dot.com boom hit, startups were hiring so quickly left and right that employers weren’t doing all the follow-up they might normally do. No real checking references, employment history, education, etc. They just needed bodies. So, people began padding their resumes– i.e., flat out lying– because in most cases, employers wouldn’t check and they wouldn’t get caught.

Just look at the difference between interviewing with a larger, more established company and interviewing with a startup. When you interview for the former, you’ve usually got a first round phone interview and then if you make it past that, you get a full day of structured interviewing with different people in different job functions at the company. And when interviewing for a technical position, you’re usually asked to jump through some pretty standard technical hoops, such as “implement a binary search in the language of your choice.” Your answer doesn’t always have to be perfect, but it’s a good way to weed out people who just don’t know what they’re talking about or who are flat out lying about their qualifications.

Startups have changed a lot since I was doing lots of interviewing with them circa 2000 and the startups that survive usually do a better screening process anyway, but lots of them have a much more unstructured, perhaps even completely haphazard interviewing setup. It’s a lot more touchy-feely. You come in, you talk about your feelings and your ideal work environment, and use lots of buzz words. It’s a lot more about “can I work with this person?” than “can this person do the job?” Which kind of makes sense since with only six people in your little startup, you’re probably going to be around each other a lot and compatibility becomes a big factor. Of course, with only six people in your little startup, everyone’s going to need to pull their weight and if you’re only interviewing based on compatibility, you’re going to end up with some people who really aren’t qualified to be doing what they’re doing. And that’s probably a big part of why only like 15% of startups are at all successful.