More of same …

Sorry for the late post this week – I let myself get distracted yesterday. I have been continuing my search and application process, and I’ve been expanding it to include some administrative-type jobs along with librarian positions. For example: over the past week I applied to the positions of File Clerk for the Veterans’ Administration in the county where I’m currently living, Library Clerk for the Library of Congress down in Washington, and Librarian with Cornish College for the Arts out in Seattle. I’ll keep going, and hopefully someone will decide to hire me soon. The job I have right now isn’t that bad, but it’s not that great either. I need something full-time that will help me pay my bills (rent, loans, etc.) and give me benefits like health and dental insurance.

I’ve been attempting to maintain my relative sanity in my usual ways: reading and listening to music. I haven’t really watched TV since November, but I can’t say I miss it. My two current books are Ashes of Victory by David Weber and Abundance by Sena Jeter Naslund. Ashes is the ninth book in Mr. Weber’s Honor Harrington series, and I’ve been finding it to be fully excellent. I’ve got the rest of the series through Mission of Honor waiting for me on my shelves, along with the first four Worlds of Honor anthologies (More Than Honor, Worlds of Honor, Changer of Worlds, The Service of the Sword), and Crown of Slaves and Shadow of Saganami from Wages of Sin and Saganami sub-series of the Honorverse. Sena Jeter Naslund is well-known for her book Ahab’s Wife, which gave an excellent alternate view to the vengefully obsessed captain from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. Her book Abundance deals with Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France and wife of Louis XVI, both of whom were beheaded during the French Revolution. Ms. Naslund says in her Author’s Note that she attempted to be as true as possible to Marie Antoinette by drawing on actual letters and accounts of her from the period. She also says that the famous quote “If they have no bread, then let them eat cake” was actually said by the wife of Louis XIV and wrongly attributed to Marie Antoinette. Either way, Abundance has given me a new view of the French Revolution.

Lunacon is five weeks away, and I’m getting excited. This year’s Guests of Honor are author Lawrence M. Schoen, artist Rachael Mayo, and special interviewer Eric “In The Elevator” Zuckerman. It’s going to be a good time – at least, I hope so.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

I’d like to start out by wishing a Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates it, Happy Hannukah to the latke-lovers, Happy Solstice if that’s your thing, and Happy New Year to all.

There haven’t been any huge developments in the Great Job Hunt so far. I believe I’ve mentioned a job that I interviewd for in Peekskill, NY, a few weeks ago – I got a letter today saying they chose someone else to fill the position. I know I probably don’t have everything they were looking for in terms of that position, though I thought the interview went well at the time. My dad pointed out that with the current job market and state of the economy (not to mention the large-ish pool of applicants the Director mentioned), they probably found someone who had more experience working with teens and programming and stuff than I do. I’ll get there eventually – there has to be a library out there that wants to hire a nuttly li’l book nerd like me, I just need to keep plugging until I find them. Maybe the call I got about a Library Assistant job from a third-party career center will work out. The person I talked to said they’ll forward my information to a yet-to-be-revealed institution who will contact me if they think my qualifications match up for the position.

Now I think it’s time to talk about something I find more fun to discuss than the fact that the continuing job hunt is just that – continuing. Anyway, on to books!  I started reading books by David Weber a month or two ago. I’ve read and enjoyed the first three books in the Empire of Man/Prince Roger series that he co-authored with John Ringo, but Mutineer’s Moon was the first of Weber’s solo books that I read. Mutineer’s Moon plays a bit off of the theory that humans came (or were brought) to Earth from elsewhere, and I liked it enough to get the second and third books from the trilogy. I’ll get to them eventually, and I’ve also started exploring Weber’s Honor Harrington series. I’ve known of Ms. Harrington for a couple years now, but I only recently got a copy of the first book (On Basilisk Station). It’s my current walking-around book, which I’m reading on the bus and during breaks and such.

I’m also finally getting to Terry Pratchett’s book Nation. It’s historical fiction of a sort, set in our universe (a bit of a rarity from the creator of Discworld), and geared towards the YA crowd. My mom got a copy on my recommendation, read and enjoyed it, and passed it on to me. I’ve been trying to get her to read Pratchett for a while now, so finally success! I love sharing good books. I also lent my DVD copies of the live-action movies of Pratchett’s Hogfather and Color of Magic to a new friend who is also a fan of Discworld. She hadn’t heard about the movies, or that Pratchett had released Unseen Academicals, so it was a pleasant surprise for her. Ook!