Various threads

[dolorosa_12]

It's been ages since I posted here, and a lot of stuff has been happening. Consider this a post to catch up on various happenings since ... mid-June.

I've spent most of the past few weekends away: Matthias and I went with my mother for a long weekend to Brighton, where we ate excellent fish, visited the pavilion (absolutely wild, over-the-top design), and went for a long walk along the coastal path. After that all three of us were in London for a couple of days — Matthias to watch cricket with a friend of ours, Mum and I to (bizarrely) hang out in the House of Lords on the invitation of this guy she interviewed for one of her radio programmes. As I said at the time, I've never seen so many elderly current and former barristers arguing over the presence or absence of the word 'technical' in a document.

Then it was back to Cambridge for a few days, Mum returned to Australia, and Matthias and I went to London to watch baseball, and then the weekend after that went to Manchester to watch cricket. (I should say that I'm not in any way into watching sport, but he is, and I go with him to keep him company. My conclusion: I vastly prefer cricket to baseball.) It was my first time in Manchester, and I was very impressed with its cafes, city centre, trams, and museums.

So this weekend is the first time in ages I've felt I had time to catch my breath. It helped that I took Friday off, and Matthias and I went out for a fancy seven-course tasting menu at one of the nicest restaurants in Cambridge. This was to celebrate him finishing his library/information studies degree. I've stuck a little photoset up here on Instagram, which includes a photo of the menu. It was delicious, and a really great thing to do.

Yesterday I caught up with catpuccino, who is one of my oldest friends (we've known each other since high school). She currently lives in London, and came down to visit me, and we sat out by the river and chatted for most of the afternoon. After I'd put her back on the train to London, I went on to meet a friend from my PhD days, who did an MPhil in my former academic department in the same year I began my PhD. She's American and went back to the US to do her PhD, and now has a tenure-track job over there, and is visiting the UK to research some manuscripts and present at the big conference in our field. As often happens when academics and former academics gather, there was a lot of complaining about academia, and particularly at the dire situation for PhD students, and how unethical it is to only support them in seeking non-academic careers as a sort of last-ditch afterthought. I found it interesting that someone who has in every way succeeded in achieving the academic dream (tenure track job one year after completing her PhD) would feel this way, but I suppose it's an encouraging sign that those within academia are coming around to this way of thinking.

Reading-wise it's been a mixture of Hugo finallists (I'm currently reading Mary Robinette Kowal's The Calculating Stars) and library books. Of the latter I read both of Jordanna Max Brodsky's urban fantasy books set in a New York populated by dwindling, forgotten Greek gods, with the focus on a crime-fighting Artemis who finds herself dealing with crimes of a supernatural nature that threaten her divine relatives. It's a cool premise, but unfortunately the execution did not match the quality of that premise, and I was deeply disappointed in this series. I also finally managed to read the last in Stephanie Garber's Caraval series of YA novels, which was much more up my alley (I have a terrible weakness for earnest, courageous, trauma-survivor human heroines and the damaged supernatural boys who love them), but lost me in its final pages with a sadly typical YA novel solution to the dilemma of 'mortal girl, immortal boyfriend, how to show they really love each other?' I love this trope, but I hate the way it's resolved in 95 per cent of instances, and this one was no different. Finally, I read the New Suns anthology of SFF by people of colour, edited by Nisi Shawl. As with all such collections, it was a bit of a mixed bag, and I personally felt that most of the stories were too blunt and obvious in the real-world analogies they were making.

So all in all it's been fairly disappointing in terms of recent reading, save Max Gladstone's incredible space opera Empress of Forever, which was simply wonderful. I'm hoping the quality of my reading material will pick up a bit with the next few books!

I'll leave this post with a link to an interesting new take on the friending meme, findingfriends, which instead of a single post where the friending meme is collected, instead requires posters to copy-paste the questions and make their own personal post with their responses, and then seek out the posts of others who look like people they'd be interested in friending. I'll make my own post there later, and see how things go. If this sounds like something you'd be interested in doing, the link to the community is here:

friending meme.|one of a different sort| THIS WAY

How are you all? Do you have anything interesting going on that you'd like to catch me up about?

Comments

[falena]

Busy social bee you!;) You were missed.

Thanks for the friending community link, I'll have a look.

I look forward to your review of The Calculating Stars, your reviews are so well-written and you always give me food for thought.

I've already added Empress of Forever to my to-read shelf on GR after seeing your rating, because I've always enjoyed every book I started because of you and now I've definitely bumped it up to the top of the list.

[dolorosa_12]

I'm flattered that you trust my judgement on books so much that anything I rate highly is an instant to-read for you! I hope you enjoy Empress of Forever!

I'm really liking The Calculating Stars so far, although I'm not sure I'll review it — I'm tending to keep my thoughts on Hugo finalists in my Hugos discussion posts, so my opinions of the various nominees are only going to come up in response to someone else's comments.

[merit]

I've been a fan of Gladstone for a few years now but alas my library taking their time to approve/disapprove my request for Empress of Forever. They do have The Calculating Stars though there would be a slight wait but hmm. Not sure if that premise is tickling my fancy currently.

urban fantasy books set in a New York populated by dwindling, forgotten Greek gods, with the focus on a crime-fighting Artemis who finds herself dealing with crimes of a supernatural nature that threaten her divine relatives

That is a cool premise. Such a pity it wasn't executed well.

mortal girl, immortal boyfriend, how to show they really love each other? How do you want that trope to go?

[dolorosa_12]

The Calculating Stars reminds me of a science fictional slant on the real-world experiences of the women in Hidden Figures, so if you liked the latter you'll probably like the former. It's a shame you haven't got your hands on Empress of Forever yet, as it is excellent! Are you planning to read Gladstone's novella co-written with Amal El-Mohtar? That's out tomorrow (at least it is in the UK) and I've been looking forward to it even more than I was Empress of Forever.

mortal girl, immortal boyfriend, how to show they really love each other? How do you want that trope to go?

Bear in mind my response will be a spoiler for the book I was griping about, but since 95 per cent of these stories end in the same way, I guess it's not much of a spoiler?

So, in most of these scenarios, it ends either with the supernatural character giving up his immortality and becoming human, or, more rarely, with the human character becoming immortal (or at least gaining vastly more supernatural powers). What I want is for the two of them to stay the same — a human and an immortal, in love, with all the problems inherent in that scenario, but basically recognising that the reason they are in love with each other is the extreme differences in their circumstances. It's why I'm always requesting human/non-human character pairings in fic exchanges and asking for fic where they both realise the attraction lies in their differences. Sadly, however, most authors don't go this route because they think it's too tragic if one character will age and the other is ageless.

[merit]

I sometimes prefer my SF to be a bit fantastical so anything too RL can sometimes turn me off. I am planning on reading it! I've only read a little bit of Amal El-Mohtar so I'm curious how their styles will work together. I've started reading acknowledgements more and it is sometimes interesting to see which author is friends with other authors.

Haha no worries, that was kind of what I expected to happen based on your comments. I dislike, severely, characters who lose magical powers at the end of the grand adventure (since it so often tends to happen to women). Plus I do like a bit of tragedy.

[dolorosa_12]

If I'm reading physical books, I always skip to the acknowledgements first for exactly that reason. I generally know vaguely who is friends with whom because I follow a lot of authors on Twitter and it becomes apparent from their interactions, but I found El-Mohtar and Gladstone's friendship really charming, and I get the sense that their novella was an extension and expression of that friendship.

I share your intense dislike of characters (especially women) who lose their powers, especially when it's framed as them needing to settle down and lead 'a normal life' — why can't they have the normal, happy domestic life but with their powers as well, if that's the kind of life they want?

[isis]

Wow, that menu! Those dishes! I just had breakfast but now my taste buds are perked up again.

[dolorosa_12]

It really was excellent, and came with wine pairings, which made the whole thing even better. It's obviously only something to do on very special occasions, but it was very, very delicious.

[naye]

I am a little exhausted just reading your list of things done and seen and people met. Glad you're getting a chance to catch your breath. And that dinner looks like it was absolutely wonderful! My mouth is watering.

[dolorosa_12]

It was pretty exhausting — I'm so relieved to have been able to spend today just hanging out in the house and reading! The meal was really delicious — obviously not something to do all the time, but a great treat for a special occasion.

[corvidology]

You've been busy for all the right fun reasons.

Congrats to Matthias for finishing his degree!

[dolorosa_12]

Absolutely, but it was great to have a break after all that!

It's such a relief that he's finished the degree — it was like this huge weight on his shoulders for so long, and I'm so glad it's finally done!

[corvidology]

You have to have the master's degree here but I didn't think you had to have it in the UK.

[dolorosa_12]

It's not absolutely, set in stone as a requirement (I don't have one, and I have a job title that has 'librarian' in it, although I was originally hired to do the same work for less pay and with the job title 'Library Assistant'), and that's partly why Matthias found the whole thing so frustrating. Like me he turned to librarianship after finishing a PhD, so he already had serious experience of postgraduate research, and started off in various cobbled-together, part-time library assistant jobs. On the urging of a manager, he started doing the Master's because at that point the party line at our employer was that it would basically be near-impossible for anyone to get a higher-level library job without the MA.

Then scholarly communication and research support became a thing. Suddenly there was this new, flashy, library-adjacent scholarly communication department, sitting in the library but viewing itself as apart from it — and making a loud point that librarianship degrees did not adequately train librarians in scholarly communication, and only hiring ex-academics with PhDs. Matthias got hired by them for exactly the high-level kind of job he was told he'd only be able to get after he had the librarianship MA. On the strength of his experience doing research support at the scholarly communication department, he was then hired in a more traditional librarian role (again, the kind of job which everyone had insisted you needed the MA to get) before he'd completed the MA. At that point, his will to finish the MA just disappeard, since he didn't enjoy the course, found it not fit for purpose, and had viewed it as an entirely utilitarian thing to get him a high-level librarian job, which he then got without it.

I don't know what it's like in your context, but there has been serious debate in the UK library scene over the past couple of years as to whether the MA is necessary (or indeed useful in terms of the content it covers). People with the degree obviously feel very defensive about it, since they worked hard for it, and may value the professional standing and formal recognition of expertise they feel it denotes. People without it feel frustrated, especially if they've worked in libraries for years in paraprofessional roles and feel they have the requisite skills, but are being passed over for opportunities because their applications for jobs are rejected due to their lack of MA degree. And librarians are rightly resentful of those like Matthias and me who sail into their profession on the strength of 'research experience' in a completely unrelated field, which is valued more than a supposedly relevant professional qualification, especially in library jobs with a strong research support component.

[corvidology]

It's exactly the same discussion that's going on in the US.

Still, having an MA and/or a PhD has always been acceptable as a substitute if you're a subject librarian at an academic institution where having an advanced degree in the relevant area is always going to make you better at your job. The ARLs in that case will usually accept a relevant degree + library experience instead of the MLiS.

[dolorosa_12]

His PhD is sort of vaguely relevant to the subject (more important is that he is a native speaker of the language of the collection he has to manage, but his library is odd in that regard), but mine absolutely isn't. I have a PhD in medieval Irish literature, and I teach academic and research skills, and do research support, for a STEM subject library! I was hired not on the strength of relevant subject knowledge, but rather because I had a lot of experience teaching in a university, and had worked as a library assistant as a weekend job for several years. They cared much more about having someone who would be confident teaching and was comfortable learning unfamiliar software quickly and independently (plus lots of experience working on an enquiry desk) than subject-specific knowledge or librarianship MA. I was very lucky in that regard.

[corvidology]

With relevant library experience that might possibly happen here but it would be unlikely, at least at the American Research Libraries, the highest tier.

This is secondhand knowledge for me though so if I get a chance I'll ask a subject librarian. :D