A Book Rec, and About Me

This isn't a full book review, but I just read The Beginning of Everything, by Jackie Fraser, and really enjoyed it. Not sure where I read about it, but it's a novel set in Wales that's kind of a romance but not completely, and with protags in their 40s, which was a nice change from the young ones, and I really liked the writing: more than once I stopped to read a bit aloud to myself. Two thumbs up.

As a side note, I'm really in a reading period! It's funny to me how it goes in waves, where I'm not reading much, or only re-reading, or reading/re-reading bits but not finishing books, and then there's a time like this, where I devour one after another*. Does that happen to you?
*Still not the book club book, though, so I told my friend to take me off the list. No point in feeling pressured to read what I don't want to, even if I'm the only one putting on any pressure!

~~~~~

Anyway! When I described myself in passing as an English major, Nicole said she hadn't known that about me, and Kyria also asked for more info, so hey, always glad to talk about myself!

I did not go to college (UMass Amherst) knowing I would be an English major or having any plan beyond choosing to go rather than get a job (and this after already putting things off for a year by taking an opportunity to do a year at a boarding school in England). In hindsight, of course, it was obvious: as a high school senior, I had to get permission to take three English classes at once, which apparently no one at the school had ever wanted to do before. 

English classes were certainly my favorite at UMass--I wrote a killer paper on the Critical Response to Winnie the Pooh for a children's lit class, and the lexicography* class was awesome. But practical? Not so much.
*dictionary-making

So once I had my English degree, what did I do with it? Well, worked in bookstores for some years (an independent in MA, then Barnes & Noble in NC). I finally had enough of retail and started working any old office job* I could get, still not knowing what I wanted to do.
*My supervisor at one job saw me in the break room, trying to read the first H@rry P0tter** book in French and, when I explained why***, asked not unkindly, "What are you doing here?"
**I absolutely hate what the author of those books has shown herself to be, but the books were a big part of my retail experience.
***I was trying to brush up my very-basic-level French, so thought I would try material I was familiar with.

...I may have gotten a little carried away with nesting footnotes there. Let's break it up with a photo. Have you ever noticed the big old bookcases in the background of one of my photos? Those are from my B&N days. They are solid, and I love having the adjustable shelves (I have these two and two others). 

For that matter, the Oxford English Dictionary there at the bottom, all 20 volumes? Also bought that when I was at B&N. The OUP had a sale and with my employee discount, it was almost reasonable. Fun fact: I was on the phone with my oldest friend and said, guess what ridiculous English-major thing I bought and she instantly said, the OED.

All right, so, I moved back to MA, and signed up with a temp agency. The job I got was at a medical device company, the diabetes division of Abbott Labs, and while it wasn't an editorial position, I was in the process of transitioning to their label editor position a year later when the company announced that they were moving the business to California. Whoops! Layoffs!

I didn't want to move, but I did stay with them for another year during the transition, and then got what I suppose was my first "real" editing-type job, as a proofreader for an educational company. Three years later, whoops, layoffs! 

My next job was called labeling coordinator, with a dental implant company, and wasn't officially a proofreading/editing job, but I was known as someone who could look over your thing if you needed another set of eyes on it. 

I left that job, which was increasingly oddly run*, for a temp proofreading position at a publisher, then back to the educational company as a temp for more proofreading, and then got an editorial job at a company that made training material for pharma sales companies. And eight months later, whoops, laid off again!
*Oh, the turnover was crazy there at the end

At this point, I had enough editing experience, and at enough medical-associated companies, that I was hired at my current company as a medical editor (I like to say that I'm not a medical person, but I have a good amount of familiarity with it for an English major). I was there for two years and left for a job at a small company that was expanding after being bought by a larger one; the role was deep-level content editing. A year later, the bigger company pulled the plug and, yes, laid us all off. Sigh. That's four times.

I did look around for another job, but the boss where I had worked asked if I would come back, and sweetened the deal by offering work-from-home, and I was hooked. Happily for my sanity, when I was getting ready to move myself to FL to be with Mom, I asked if they would let me work from here, and they said yes. Hooray for not having to job search on top of an interstate move! I complain a lot about work, but there are ways that they are really good--that's one of them, and also that my boss allowed all the flexibility that I needed for Mom last fall, too. 

Not that I won't ditch the job the minute I win big in the lottery, but who wouldn't, right?

So that's the work history side of the English-major thing. On the personal side? Well, there's the OED. There are my bookshelves full of books, and my marked-up, written-in books from high school:

There's my inability to read so much as a restaurant menu without noticing double-spacing between words. My friends asking if I can look over their resumes and cover letters for them. There's this blog, where I play around with words like they're legos, fitting them together this way and that to see how best to tell a story. 

So: questions? What am I not thinking to tell you?