As my editor keeps reminding me, I have three books out, or about to be out: LIFE SENTENCES, the hardcover, goes on sale March 7, but yesterday saw the release of the mass market paperback of ANOTHER THING TO FALL, while WHAT THE DEAD KNOW has been released as a gorgeous trade paperback. Yep, that’s a whole lotta Lippman.
And, serendipitously, the terrific writer John Connolly has made WHAT THE DEAD KNOW his book club selection this month. The conversation is just getting under way <a href=” http://www.johnconnollybooks.com/forum/index.php?topic=6072.0″>here</a>. You have to register to participate, but it’s worth it. The conversation is on a pretty high level. However, be aware that there are spoilers galore; this is very much a forum for people who have read the book.
As for French flaps, a joke I can’t stop making: Those are simply paperbacks with “folded” covers, which create the same sensation as a hardcover with a removable cover.
In an interview yesterday, I was asked how I felt about being reviewed. It’s a tough question, even on book #15. And it makes me want to ask people here if, in their jobs, their is something comparable to being the book-a-year writer whose performance reviews are oh-so-public? Do the teachers here read their student evaluations? How many people here even have regular performance reviews? In twenty years as a journalist, I believe I had three.
The John Connolly discussion/book club is a real find. Many thanks for the link!
I have performance reviews twice a year. I had one boss who started every review with “you make mistakes”- finally I told her- “so does everyone else including you”. Her review with another staff member always including screaming arguments that we could all hear. Good times!
I always felt “performance review” was corporate-speak for “we must justify not giving you a raise.”
I once refused to sign one of my evaluations because it said I had a bad temper. And to be fair to the boss in that situation, one of the nicest men I had ever known, I had gotten angry (ONCE!) and used foul language. But I had grown up in a newsroom where this was encouraged. I told him I just couldn’t sign a document that made me look mentally unstable.
For me, the Regular Performance Review record is: twenty two years and four months, and zero reviews. It is sometimes disorienting; during slow times, one can become a little too self-concious (not to say “worried”). The industry we’re in seems always to be 180 degrees out of phase with the general economy (right now we’re going great guns), so that as a younger man, it never bothered me much when the occasional tumbleweed blew through here, since other opportunities existed. The reassurance within that assumption fades, though, as one gets older…(!)
I often say that one of the drawbacks of freelancing is that the only feedback I get tends to be negative, but I don’t miss those annual performance reviews at all. Not only did I get them, I had to do them for the people who reported to me — and one horrible year, we did the 360 process, where all your peers evaluate you and you evaluate everyone else. Theoretically anonymous, but in a 25-person office with an executive staff of six, “anonymous” is a joke.
I have five brothers and sisters. I need no additional criticism.
So glad to see that someone else got written up for “temper”. I was surpervising 16 tellers and in my performance review I was put on some 90 day check up for getting ticked off with a teller who accepted delivery of a jar of honey through the drive up pressure device. Yep. It broke. I didn’t sign the review either and they had taken me out to a restaurant so I wouldn’t “create a scene”. Yikes. I don’t miss that stuff.
I need to know more about this honey. Did she ask for it? Did the depositor say: “Hey, may I send some honey through.”
Back in my early days, when I worked in a truly competitive news town, I was left alone in the police press room during one of the annual Fiesta parades because my competitors had these big chunky portable phones — or maybe it was walkie talkies — and could stay in touch with their bosses. So I was sitting there by my lonesome when I heard a call to a major interstate exchange for a “molasses” situation. I checked with the Fire Department to see if this was some jargon I didn’t know. Nope, an 18-wheeler had just lost its entire load of molasses on I-10. I drove over and got a pretty good bright while my friends at the parade (and they were good friends, actually) missed it.
“I need to know more about this honey.”
Now, you see, I read that and my mind assumed it was a typo and Roberta meant a jar of MONEY! Like a bunch of coins. So now I want to know as well! Money or honey?
–Marjorie
Meanwhile, on the (ostensible) topic of this blog, memory:
I just learned a Rodgers & Hart song that, as of a week ago, I had never even heard. And to test my memory, I’m going to see if I can type the lyrics in full:
Look at yourself
If you had a sense of humor
You would laugh to be beat the band
Look at yourself
Do you still believe the rumor
That romance is simply grand
Since you took it right
On the chin
You have lost that bright
Toothpaste grin.
My mind is all a jumble.
I sit around and sadly mumble.
Fools rush in
So here I am
Awfully glad to be unhappy
I can’t win
So here I am
Awfully glad to be unhappy*
Unrequited love’s a bore
And I’ve got it pretty bad
But for someone you adore
It’s a pleasure to be sad
Like a straying baby lamb
With no mammy and no pappy
I’m so unhappy!
But oh so glad.
*My hunch is that I miffed this line.
I did and the other line of this ilk and it’s “I can’t win, BUT here I am”
Still, doesn’t this mean my memory’s not as awful as I think? And I learned the notes, too. That is, my brain knows them, although my voice is having trouble producing them.
“Still, doesn’t this mean my memory’s not as awful as I think? And I learned the notes, too”
This reminds me of the episode of Cheers wherein Coach utilizes the mnemonic of singing to remember a geography lesson (sing the name “Albania” and it will come back to you)
“You border on the….A-dri-atic…”
Your memory is fine!
No way could I do that.
Even in sixth grade I couldn’t memorize the Morse Code nor memorize anything in high school chemistry.
This is excellent.
Kathy D.