by Sheryl Sandberg
Ms. Sanberg has been an exec with Google and is now at Facebook. She talks very frankly about the challenges and options women face in the workplace. She is very honest about sharing her own decisions and challenges.
As a person who worked to advance women in the workplace 30 years ago I am sad that we have made such little progress. However having said that I think she gives women a very clear picture of what they can face and what they can do to try to have things their way.
One thing I found very unfortunate, she talks about the tech workplaces where it seems to be that people will work 12 hour days or more. She admits she started leaving work at 5:30 p.m. to be able to have dinner with her kids. She worried about what people would think of her doing this, my question is, why didn't she do more to change the corporate culture and stop this nonsense. She would be in a position to do this.
Thursday, 25 July 2013
Sunday, 21 July 2013
The Year of the Flood
by Margaret Atwood
This is the sequel to Oryx and Crake. This story in part takes up where the first one left off, but also includes some history parallel with the first book. I found this book read more easily than the first one but I found the numerous characters and the fact that they bounce around between being renegades and "compound inhabitants" very hard to follow at times.
As the book starts the "Waterless Flood" (the plague that has decimated humanity) has occurred and it appears that only two women have survived. One, an employee of a Spa and another a dancer/prostitute in a club who had been in regularly sactioned quarantine to make sure she was not diseased. I can't remember how it was that the Spa woman survived and her colleagues/clients didn't.
Both women are running low on supplies and fear they may starve. The second woman is able to reach a friend of hers who was out in the desert working on an art installation and her friend comes and rescues her... now there are three.
As the book proceeds we jump back in time to pre-plague earth and meet a group of people called God's Gardeners. This group is trying to live a vegan, low consumption life style and warning of the dangers of eating meat, consumption etc. Each day of the year they pray to a saint or saints for support and guidance. The presence of religion/deity is even more prevalent in this book than in the first one. The Gardeners have their feast days, rituals, songs, "sayings". Can you be environmentally conscious without turning it into a religion? Of course, they are threatening to the establishment and are attacked at times.
Toby, the Spa Lady and Ren the dancer were former members of God's Gardeners but left for separate reasons. Ren and Amanda meet some boys they knew from the Gardeners. These boys are "kidnapped" by some bad guys "painballers" who also survived. Ren and Amanda go seeking more food and also to track the boys with dire condquences for Amanda, she becomes the painballers prisoner.
Ren eventually meets up with Toby and they reunite with some of the Gardeners. Ren and Toby set off to rescue Amanada and arrive on the scene of the painballers and Amanda at the same time as Snowman. Ren is happy to see Snowman because she has been in love with him and had had a relationship with him in the past.
As this book ends we realize that the future implied in the first book may not be as bleak as we feared.
The third book is coming out next month. I will be curious to see what direction Atwood takes civilization in.
This is the sequel to Oryx and Crake. This story in part takes up where the first one left off, but also includes some history parallel with the first book. I found this book read more easily than the first one but I found the numerous characters and the fact that they bounce around between being renegades and "compound inhabitants" very hard to follow at times.
As the book starts the "Waterless Flood" (the plague that has decimated humanity) has occurred and it appears that only two women have survived. One, an employee of a Spa and another a dancer/prostitute in a club who had been in regularly sactioned quarantine to make sure she was not diseased. I can't remember how it was that the Spa woman survived and her colleagues/clients didn't.
Both women are running low on supplies and fear they may starve. The second woman is able to reach a friend of hers who was out in the desert working on an art installation and her friend comes and rescues her... now there are three.
As the book proceeds we jump back in time to pre-plague earth and meet a group of people called God's Gardeners. This group is trying to live a vegan, low consumption life style and warning of the dangers of eating meat, consumption etc. Each day of the year they pray to a saint or saints for support and guidance. The presence of religion/deity is even more prevalent in this book than in the first one. The Gardeners have their feast days, rituals, songs, "sayings". Can you be environmentally conscious without turning it into a religion? Of course, they are threatening to the establishment and are attacked at times.
Toby, the Spa Lady and Ren the dancer were former members of God's Gardeners but left for separate reasons. Ren and Amanda meet some boys they knew from the Gardeners. These boys are "kidnapped" by some bad guys "painballers" who also survived. Ren and Amanda go seeking more food and also to track the boys with dire condquences for Amanda, she becomes the painballers prisoner.
Ren eventually meets up with Toby and they reunite with some of the Gardeners. Ren and Toby set off to rescue Amanada and arrive on the scene of the painballers and Amanda at the same time as Snowman. Ren is happy to see Snowman because she has been in love with him and had had a relationship with him in the past.
As this book ends we realize that the future implied in the first book may not be as bleak as we feared.
The third book is coming out next month. I will be curious to see what direction Atwood takes civilization in.
Oryx and Crake
by Margaret Atwood
The thrid book in Atwood's trilogy is being published soon so I thought I would reread the first two books. This is the first book.
Review from Publishers Weekly,
"Atwood has visited the future before, in her dystopian novel, The Handmaid's Tale. In her latest, the future is even bleaker. The triple whammy of runaway social inequality, genetic technology and catastrophic climate change, has finally culminated in some apocalyptic event. As Jimmy, apparently the last human being on earth, makes his way back to the RejoovenEsencecompound for supplies, the reader is transported backwards toward that cataclysmic event, its full dimensions gradually revealed. Jimmy grew up in a world split between corporate compounds (gated communities metastasized into city-states) and pleeblands (unsafe, populous and polluted urban centers). His best friend was "Crake," the name originally his handle in an interactive Net game, Extinctathon. Even Jimmy's mother-who ran off and joined an ecology guerrilla group when Jimmy was an adolescent-respected Crake, already a budding genius. The two friends first encountered Oryx on the Net; she was the eight-year-old star of a pedophilic film on a site called HottTotts. Oryx's story is a counterpoint to Jimmy and Crake's affluent adolescence. She was sold by her Southeast Asian parents, taken to the city and eventually made into a sex "pixie" in some distant country. Jimmy meets Oryx much later-after college, after Crake gets Jimmy a job with ReJoovenEsence. Crake is designing the Crakers-a new, multicolored placid race of human beings, smelling vaguely of citron. He's procured Oryx to be his personal assistant. She teaches the Crakers how to cope in the world and goes out on secret missions. The mystery on which this riveting, disturbing tale hinges is how Crake and Oryx and civilization vanished, and how Jimmy-who also calls himself "the Snowman," after that other rare, hunted specimen, the Abominable Snowman-survived. Chesterton once wrote of the "thousand romances that lie secreted in The Origin of Species." Atwood has extracted one of the most hair-raising of them, and one of the most brilliant."
I found this book a rather hard slog this time, I don't remember what my impressions were the first time. I knew things ended badly so maybe it was the impending doom that made it so hard to read. At the end of the book Snowman, who seems to have an affection for the Crakes, is very ill. He stumbles upon three humans is thinking about killing them.... what will he do?
The story, beside its obvious warnings about overconsumption, pollution and genetic modification gone wild, also raises questions about whether it is possible to engineer out greed, anger, lust and other negative bad emotions and what would result. The Crakes are healthy and apparently happy but can they adjust to change it need be, can they defend themselves if they have to? They seem to simple to be able to survive any physical threats. Crake is their creator and they seem to "worship" him as a result as his initial instructions/training to them came via him. Do human creatures need a creator for guidance? consolation? Why did Crake unleash the plague on the human population? Did he intend for the only survivors to be the Crakes? Did he plan to live to lead them/care for them? He was going to businesses for funds to find the answer for immortality. I am sure the business people who gave him money were assuming it would bring their own immortality, not the creation of a new race and the eradication of the human race.
The thrid book in Atwood's trilogy is being published soon so I thought I would reread the first two books. This is the first book.
Review from Publishers Weekly,
"Atwood has visited the future before, in her dystopian novel, The Handmaid's Tale. In her latest, the future is even bleaker. The triple whammy of runaway social inequality, genetic technology and catastrophic climate change, has finally culminated in some apocalyptic event. As Jimmy, apparently the last human being on earth, makes his way back to the RejoovenEsencecompound for supplies, the reader is transported backwards toward that cataclysmic event, its full dimensions gradually revealed. Jimmy grew up in a world split between corporate compounds (gated communities metastasized into city-states) and pleeblands (unsafe, populous and polluted urban centers). His best friend was "Crake," the name originally his handle in an interactive Net game, Extinctathon. Even Jimmy's mother-who ran off and joined an ecology guerrilla group when Jimmy was an adolescent-respected Crake, already a budding genius. The two friends first encountered Oryx on the Net; she was the eight-year-old star of a pedophilic film on a site called HottTotts. Oryx's story is a counterpoint to Jimmy and Crake's affluent adolescence. She was sold by her Southeast Asian parents, taken to the city and eventually made into a sex "pixie" in some distant country. Jimmy meets Oryx much later-after college, after Crake gets Jimmy a job with ReJoovenEsence. Crake is designing the Crakers-a new, multicolored placid race of human beings, smelling vaguely of citron. He's procured Oryx to be his personal assistant. She teaches the Crakers how to cope in the world and goes out on secret missions. The mystery on which this riveting, disturbing tale hinges is how Crake and Oryx and civilization vanished, and how Jimmy-who also calls himself "the Snowman," after that other rare, hunted specimen, the Abominable Snowman-survived. Chesterton once wrote of the "thousand romances that lie secreted in The Origin of Species." Atwood has extracted one of the most hair-raising of them, and one of the most brilliant."
I found this book a rather hard slog this time, I don't remember what my impressions were the first time. I knew things ended badly so maybe it was the impending doom that made it so hard to read. At the end of the book Snowman, who seems to have an affection for the Crakes, is very ill. He stumbles upon three humans is thinking about killing them.... what will he do?
The story, beside its obvious warnings about overconsumption, pollution and genetic modification gone wild, also raises questions about whether it is possible to engineer out greed, anger, lust and other negative bad emotions and what would result. The Crakes are healthy and apparently happy but can they adjust to change it need be, can they defend themselves if they have to? They seem to simple to be able to survive any physical threats. Crake is their creator and they seem to "worship" him as a result as his initial instructions/training to them came via him. Do human creatures need a creator for guidance? consolation? Why did Crake unleash the plague on the human population? Did he intend for the only survivors to be the Crakes? Did he plan to live to lead them/care for them? He was going to businesses for funds to find the answer for immortality. I am sure the business people who gave him money were assuming it would bring their own immortality, not the creation of a new race and the eradication of the human race.
Monday, 15 July 2013
The Cruellest Month
by Louise Penny
This is the third book in the series about Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. The story is again set in the little town of Three Pines Quebec, with the "usual" cast of quirky characters.
In this story a woman dies while at a Seance, at a house in the village many consider evil or haunted. Her face has a look of sheer terror. Initially the "witch" who had reluctantly agreed to do the seance is suspected, especially when it turns out that she was a classmate of the murdered woman and did not disclose this.
In addition to this murder there is a side plot in which some of Gamache's colleagues appear to be plotting against him and using newspaper articles implying illegal things about Gamache and his family in an effort to discredit him.
When the news attacks on his family escalate Gamache meets with his superiors and resigns. But, then he goes back and solves the crime... so he didn't really resign, and he finds out that the person plotting against him is a man who was his best friend as a child and his supervisor. I am not really sure that I buy the reason why the supervisor turned against Gamache.
As always a great read but it was a bit heavy with the conspiracy against Gamache.
This is the third book in the series about Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. The story is again set in the little town of Three Pines Quebec, with the "usual" cast of quirky characters.
In this story a woman dies while at a Seance, at a house in the village many consider evil or haunted. Her face has a look of sheer terror. Initially the "witch" who had reluctantly agreed to do the seance is suspected, especially when it turns out that she was a classmate of the murdered woman and did not disclose this.
In addition to this murder there is a side plot in which some of Gamache's colleagues appear to be plotting against him and using newspaper articles implying illegal things about Gamache and his family in an effort to discredit him.
When the news attacks on his family escalate Gamache meets with his superiors and resigns. But, then he goes back and solves the crime... so he didn't really resign, and he finds out that the person plotting against him is a man who was his best friend as a child and his supervisor. I am not really sure that I buy the reason why the supervisor turned against Gamache.
As always a great read but it was a bit heavy with the conspiracy against Gamache.
Monday, 8 July 2013
The Hungry Ghosts
by Shyam Selvadurai
The author is Sri Lankan, and this story is about a Sri Lankan boy who eventually immigrates to Canada and his life and Canada and Sri Lanka.
The book does a great job of developing the characters and the complexity of their lives and ambitions. The story is about the boy, his mother and sister and his cantankerous grandmother. The grandmother, a widow, has numerous properties and she is very aggressive and even spiteful in her business dealings, doing everything she can to outsmart, even abuse people during the trouble time of the Tamil conflict in Sri Lanka.
The boy's father dies when he is young and the boy's mother moves in with her mother because she is poor and sees not option. Her mother treats her horribly, either criticizing her or ignoring her. The grandmother adores the young boy and is mentoring him to take over her business investments. He is witness to the eviction of some very poor tennants from a slum dwelling his grandmother owns by some thugs his mother is friends with. The boy is so upset by his grandmother's behaviour to his mother and her terrible business practices that he convices his mother that they should emigrate to Canada. The mother is reluctant at first but eventually agrees. The grandmother is furious about their decision.
Life in Canada is safe but very difficult for the entire family. The mother struggles in low level jobs and the boy has trouble making any friends. His problems are compounded by the fact that he is gay. He does have some temporary relationships. Then the Grandmother has a stroke and the boy goes back to Sri Lanka for a short visit to help her out. She convinces him to stay longer and he agrees because he is so unhappy in Canada. However he insists that he will run things his way, be less mean, fix up some of the poor buildings and get better tennants more likey to be able to pay their rent. He also starts a loving relationship with a former school friend. When his grandmother finds out that he is gay she gets her thugs to kidnap the young man's lover. While they were only supposed to scare him off, he is killed, we do not learn exactly howl
In Sri Lanka homosexuality is not permitted and there are severe penalties for those who are caught.
The boy is devastated by the death of his friend and furious at his grandmother. He decides to leave and return to Canada. His grandmother decides to build a temple, to achieve good Karma, and to leave all her wealth to the church, rather than her grandson.
He is having difficulty with his mother so he decides to leave Toronto for Vancouver. He starts a new life and finds a new lover, but he is still haunted by the death of his former lover. When he tells his current partner about his past life and that he still dreams of his dead friend, the partner is angry that he never told him the truth and their relationship falls apart.
As the book ends the boy is leaving for Sri Lanka to bring his Grandmother to Canada as she has had several more strokes, but as he is leaving he realizes she will never come to Canada and that his only option is to return to Sri Lanka and look after her til her death.... to appease the bad Karma his grandmother has created in her life and also to achieve some forgiveness for his role in the death of his friend.. He thinks that is the only way for the family to achieve peace.
This was a fascinating story, the disfunctional family dynamics were portrayed very well and very convincingly, the challenges the many characters face trying to live the lives they want in conflict with society roles and expectations against the backdrop of Sri Lanka in civil war, are very poignantly depicted. He also does an excellent job of portraying the struggles and frustrations of new immigrants.
This is a book that makes you think about personal responsibility, conflict and consequences of pursuing ones passions with not sufficient thought of the consequences.
The author is Sri Lankan, and this story is about a Sri Lankan boy who eventually immigrates to Canada and his life and Canada and Sri Lanka.
The book does a great job of developing the characters and the complexity of their lives and ambitions. The story is about the boy, his mother and sister and his cantankerous grandmother. The grandmother, a widow, has numerous properties and she is very aggressive and even spiteful in her business dealings, doing everything she can to outsmart, even abuse people during the trouble time of the Tamil conflict in Sri Lanka.
The boy's father dies when he is young and the boy's mother moves in with her mother because she is poor and sees not option. Her mother treats her horribly, either criticizing her or ignoring her. The grandmother adores the young boy and is mentoring him to take over her business investments. He is witness to the eviction of some very poor tennants from a slum dwelling his grandmother owns by some thugs his mother is friends with. The boy is so upset by his grandmother's behaviour to his mother and her terrible business practices that he convices his mother that they should emigrate to Canada. The mother is reluctant at first but eventually agrees. The grandmother is furious about their decision.
Life in Canada is safe but very difficult for the entire family. The mother struggles in low level jobs and the boy has trouble making any friends. His problems are compounded by the fact that he is gay. He does have some temporary relationships. Then the Grandmother has a stroke and the boy goes back to Sri Lanka for a short visit to help her out. She convinces him to stay longer and he agrees because he is so unhappy in Canada. However he insists that he will run things his way, be less mean, fix up some of the poor buildings and get better tennants more likey to be able to pay their rent. He also starts a loving relationship with a former school friend. When his grandmother finds out that he is gay she gets her thugs to kidnap the young man's lover. While they were only supposed to scare him off, he is killed, we do not learn exactly howl
In Sri Lanka homosexuality is not permitted and there are severe penalties for those who are caught.
The boy is devastated by the death of his friend and furious at his grandmother. He decides to leave and return to Canada. His grandmother decides to build a temple, to achieve good Karma, and to leave all her wealth to the church, rather than her grandson.
He is having difficulty with his mother so he decides to leave Toronto for Vancouver. He starts a new life and finds a new lover, but he is still haunted by the death of his former lover. When he tells his current partner about his past life and that he still dreams of his dead friend, the partner is angry that he never told him the truth and their relationship falls apart.
As the book ends the boy is leaving for Sri Lanka to bring his Grandmother to Canada as she has had several more strokes, but as he is leaving he realizes she will never come to Canada and that his only option is to return to Sri Lanka and look after her til her death.... to appease the bad Karma his grandmother has created in her life and also to achieve some forgiveness for his role in the death of his friend.. He thinks that is the only way for the family to achieve peace.
This was a fascinating story, the disfunctional family dynamics were portrayed very well and very convincingly, the challenges the many characters face trying to live the lives they want in conflict with society roles and expectations against the backdrop of Sri Lanka in civil war, are very poignantly depicted. He also does an excellent job of portraying the struggles and frustrations of new immigrants.
This is a book that makes you think about personal responsibility, conflict and consequences of pursuing ones passions with not sufficient thought of the consequences.
Wednesday, 3 July 2013
Gaudy Night
by Dorothy L. Sayers
This mystery takes place in 1930's in Oxford. A previous scholar, now a mystery book writer, comes back to Oxford to attend a Gaudy celebration. Strange, threatening things start to happen after the event. The author finds a threatening note, composed of cut out letters glued to a page, tucked into her gown sleeve. Other women also receive threatening messages and someone is defacing the buildings, burning gowns, etc.
The college wants to keep the news about these events out of the press. They ask the author to try to find out who is perpetrating the threats. She tries to figure out who the guilty party is but is not successful and the threats continue when classes resume in the summer.
The author has a tragic past, her former lover was murdered and she was almost hung for the crime. The lawyer who saved her from the gallows is now a close friend and suitor. He keeps asking her to marry him but she keeps declining.
A good part of the book involves the story of the women's college, the challenge of women getting an education at that time, debates about marriage versus a career and the value for women of getting an education. It is of course largely the story of the wealthy and privileded but some poorer women are featured including the woman who is found to be the criminal. Her husband is dead, she is working at the college and has to farm her kids out to another family to raise. She blames one of the scholars for her husband's academic demise and evenutal death.
The main character struggles with the marriage proposals because she wants to be independent and not feel beholding to any man, especially her saviour, but in the end she calls him in for help with the crimes and it is he who identifies the guilty part. In addition to the main story there are side stories about some young men scholars also, this added to the complexity of the novel and as far as I can see wasn't essential to the story.
I found the book very long winded with all the academic discussion, class and society discussions, etc. I was particularly disappointed that a book that seemed to be somewhat feminist with its subject matter ends up by having a man solve the crime and in the end she decides that she really does love him and will marry him.
So for all the talk about women's independence the book ended very traditionally.
This mystery takes place in 1930's in Oxford. A previous scholar, now a mystery book writer, comes back to Oxford to attend a Gaudy celebration. Strange, threatening things start to happen after the event. The author finds a threatening note, composed of cut out letters glued to a page, tucked into her gown sleeve. Other women also receive threatening messages and someone is defacing the buildings, burning gowns, etc.
The college wants to keep the news about these events out of the press. They ask the author to try to find out who is perpetrating the threats. She tries to figure out who the guilty party is but is not successful and the threats continue when classes resume in the summer.
The author has a tragic past, her former lover was murdered and she was almost hung for the crime. The lawyer who saved her from the gallows is now a close friend and suitor. He keeps asking her to marry him but she keeps declining.
A good part of the book involves the story of the women's college, the challenge of women getting an education at that time, debates about marriage versus a career and the value for women of getting an education. It is of course largely the story of the wealthy and privileded but some poorer women are featured including the woman who is found to be the criminal. Her husband is dead, she is working at the college and has to farm her kids out to another family to raise. She blames one of the scholars for her husband's academic demise and evenutal death.
The main character struggles with the marriage proposals because she wants to be independent and not feel beholding to any man, especially her saviour, but in the end she calls him in for help with the crimes and it is he who identifies the guilty part. In addition to the main story there are side stories about some young men scholars also, this added to the complexity of the novel and as far as I can see wasn't essential to the story.
I found the book very long winded with all the academic discussion, class and society discussions, etc. I was particularly disappointed that a book that seemed to be somewhat feminist with its subject matter ends up by having a man solve the crime and in the end she decides that she really does love him and will marry him.
So for all the talk about women's independence the book ended very traditionally.
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