The employees are also really helpful. This Christmas, I was trying to find some books as a christmas gift, and the staff made a bunch of suggestions based on books that they had actually personally read.
Sidenote: finding appropriate books for 8-14 year old girls is really freaking hard.
Philip Pullman's, His Dark Materials trilogy [1]. The protag, Lyra, is one of the most interesting young female protags in literature. (This is one of those trilogies that you can reread at different stages of your life and get new things from each time.)
Patrick Ness's, Chaos Walking trilogy [2]. (Read the dead tree versions, because the use of typography adds a lot.)
Also, checkout Malorie Blackman.
You might also want to take a look at the Carnegie Medal longlist [3] (released yesterday) for ideas.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lie_Tree
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_Dark_Materials
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_Walking
[3] http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/press.php?release=pres_2...
His Dark Materials (HDM) is a retelling of Paradise Lost [1] – Milton's epic poem of the story of Adam and Eve. Its foundational myth is the keystone of much religion. Pullman is a scholar of Blake, and his grandfather was an Anglican vicar whom he was close to as a result of his father dying when he was young. Pullman knows precisely what he's doing.
Where some Christian groups – I will refrain from labelling them as fundamentalists – seem to have backed into their breeches is with Pullman's portrayal of The Magisterium (which some Catholics believe represents themselves), and that in the telling, Pullman kills God.
The Catholic church has – to say the least – had a colourful history. Much of it sanguine – in colour, that is. That's undeniable. And if a parent should want to censor their 8-14 year old reader from the harm that HDM might thrust upon them with the behaviour of The Magisterium, then they are going to have a whale of a time "protecting" them from history of the Catholic church. Good luck denying Martin Luther's place in history; let alone the Inquisition.
Before I tackle the alleged murder of God, can I point out that the Archbishop of Canterbury loves HDM [2]. This is someone who holds a role first filled by Augustine in 597. (Augustine was quite something. Do read his tale.) If anyone on the planet was going to callout Pullman on atheism, the ArchBofC was the man. Nope. Not only loved it, but recommended it.
And yet, in the US, the books were censored [3].
The most telling expurgation is this from the point of view of Father Gomez (of The Magisterium) watching Lyra (the protagonist):
"And there it was: the dark-blonde movement that was the girl's hair. He moved a little closer, and took out the rifle. There was a telescopic sight: low-powered, but beautifully made, so that looking through it was to feel your vision clarified as well as enlarged. Yes, there she was, and she paused and looked back so that he saw the expression on her face, and he could not understand how anyone so steeped in evil could look so radiant with hope and happiness."
"... he could not understand how anyone so steeped in evil could look so radiant with hope and happiness."
For me, in context, this one of the most beautiful parts in the trilogy, but in the US – the Land of the Free, the bastion of free speech – you cannot read it.
God, of course, is not murdered in HDM. First, let us see how Pullman describes the place of God in his universe:
Balthamos (an angel) said quietly, “The Authority, God, the Creator, the Lord, Yahweh, El, Adonai, the King, the Father, the Almighty — those were all names he gave himself. He was never the creator. He was an angel like ourselves — the first angel, true, the most powerful, but he was formed of Dust as we are, and Dust is only a name for what happens when matter begins to understand itself. Matter loves matter. It seeks to know more about itself, and Dust is formed. The first angels condensed out of Dust, and the Authority was the first of all. He told those who came after him that he had created them, but it was a lie. One of those who came later was wiser than he was, and she found out the truth, so he banished her. We serve her still. And the Authority still reigns in the Kingdom, and Metatron is his Regent.”
Pullman uses the idea of sentient matter – he calls Dust – as a core theme of his books. This can be linked to panpsychism, which has a broad history and many proponents both ancient and recent.
But the murder of God?
The two protagonists, Lyra and Will, simply open the crystal cell that contains the Authority and he/it dissolves with “a sigh of the most profound and exhausted relief.”
There's no "fictionalized advertisement for atheism" here, however hard you look.
[0] If you are at all interested in storytelling, please read this book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1602869.The_Voice_That_T...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise_Lost
[2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/3613962/The-Dark-Material...
[3] https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/118137/what-passag...
But I liked the Dealing with Dragons series from Patricia C. Wrede (humorous), The Hero and the Crown and The Blue Sword from Robin McKinley, and the Dragon's Blood series from Jane Yolen.
As a male I enjoyed it, and one of my best female friends also remembers it fondly.
I'd also throw in Sabriel, as a YA fantasy novel that I really liked, that had a female protagonist who kicked ass (rather than was there to support a male, or something else equally stereotypical)
For the adventurous tomboy: "Alanna: The First Adventure" and "First Test" are the first books in two different series.
In general a good series: Sandry's Book (Circle of Magic Series)
Some of them do have romances/crushes (Alanna series more than the other two), but they're all focused on adventurous girls doing cool stuff, and the importance of hard work, friends, learning new things, etc. etc. I loved them as a kid (and now).
Source: was an 8-14 year old girl
Wrede's Dealing With Dragons series is incredible, the Circle of Magic series is a good read (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_of_Magic), same with the Alanna series (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Song_of_the_Lioness).
The award covers a wide range of ages, so some books might be too young.
Here's a press release for the 2018 long list: http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/press.php?release=pres_2...
Here's a list of all Carnegie winners: http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/archive.php?medal=carneg...
Here are some Twitter accounts that might be useful: https://twitter.com/FaberChildrens
https://twitter.com/PuffinBooks
https://twitter.com/WalkerBooksUK
The Explorer by Katherine Rundell (but anything by this auther, she's written some excellent books) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Explorer-WINNER-COSTA-CHILDRENS-AWA...
The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd https://www.amazon.co.uk/London-Eye-Mystery-Siobhan-Dowd/dp/...
and The Guggenheim Mystery by Siobhan Dowd and Robin Stevens https://www.amazon.co.uk/Guggenheim-Mystery-Robin-Stevens/dp...
Source:
I work/live near there and always went.
Also http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2018/01/barnes_noble_close...
(Hope you see this!)
Start with The Hunger Games and if she likes it that’s next year sorted too, buy her a bow.
"hey, let's suppress rebellion in our outlying provinces by drafting their children and making them fight each other."
"wouldn't that cause rebellion?"
"Yep"
Edit: why the fuck would someone downvote this?
Questions about society, future and such are very interesting at that age, older people tend to be interested in different things (at least I went that way). Asimov packs it together with kinda normal fun to read story which kids at that age like too.
And, I also downvoted this comment because asking why you're being downvoted is not only dull, it adds nothing to the conversation.
If you would read my reply again, you'll note that I said, "I downvoted you because of the suggestion that "most books" are appropriate for (and interesting to) 8-14 year old girls."
Frankly, I don't think that's controversial enough to have to explain.
First, it's flat out wrong to group 8-14 year old girls together. The sheer amount that girls grow between those years makes that highly questionable. The kind of book that the average 8 year old would gain from would be insulting to the average 14 year old. And the kind of book that a 14 year old girl would gain from wouldn't make much sense to the average 8 year old.
And yes, there are outliers, but if your child is an outlier, for the love of all that is holy, spend time in bookstores with her and figure out what she's actually interested in. In distributions like this, outliers tend to have very strong interests that overwhelm all the social pressure. If you're dealing with an outlier, figure out those interests and cater to them.
Second, let's look at the word "most". Do we have to talk about how most popular fiction geared towards adults may not be appropriate for the average 8 year old? And what about interest? I'm a 40 year old man who reads voraciously yet "most" books are neither appropriate, nor interesting to me. There isn't anything wrong with that. It's just that we all have interests.
It's annoying when someone edits a comment to ask why they were downvoted. But, it's flat out dull when they edit a comment and then make an entirely different reply to ask the same thing. That adds absolutely nothing to the conversation.
There. Just a friendly suggestion: I think you may be a bit over-extrapolating from your personal experience and your sense of "common sense", to make overgeneralized statements about things as arguably complex and idiosyncratic as "appropriateness" or "interest" in books. (Hence, perhaps, the pushback from other readers.)
To answer it succinctly, I'll use the programming language example that I used.
Let's say that you have never programmed before, so you come to me for help. I start teaching you. The first lesson, I teach you how to output "hello world". The second lesson, I teach you about monads. Honestly, how do you think you'd do?
There isn't anything absolutely wrong about monads, but I'd tend to argue that they're a little too advanced for someone who only knows how to output "hello world". In this example, I'd say that teaching you about monads in the second lesson was inappropriate - you likely won't gain from it, in fact, it's more likely that learning about monads too soon will actually hurt your progress.
Young girls are primary demographic for reading. While it is true that 8 years old are not there, 14 years old already are. Majority of what is in bookstore is appropriate, maybe boring, but I don't recall running into something super inappropriate while randomly browsing bookstore.
Second, I don't think that 8 year old girls and 14 year old girls should be grouped together. I have an 8 year old stepdaughter and she talks to her stuffed animals. She knows (at least, I hope she knows) that Unicorn is stuffed and I make her voice. But, she still talks to, argues with and consoles Unicorn. And, when I meet her friends, she wants her friends to meet Unicorn.
Let's flash forward six years. What do you think she will say/do if I talk like Unicorn in front of her friends? Or, what will happen if her first boyfriend comes over for dinner, I plop a faded old stuffed unicorn on the dinner table, affect a squeaky voice and ask him "do you like unicorns?" That's not appropriate! It will either embarrass her, keep her friends away from me, or otherwise hurt my relationship with her.
Finally, you talked about how you don't recall running into something super inappropriate while browsing bookstores. I'm not talking about Fifty Shades type of stuff. Rather, let me give you an example.
I love The Catcher in The Rye and genuinely believe that every person should be required to read it before being allowed to graduate from high school.
So, that's a book that I would definitely recommend to 12-16 year olds. The thing about the Catcher is that it's best when you've already started questioning the social world around you. Otherwise, it's too easy to declare Holden Caulfield a whiny little twat and not gain from the book.
So, I would argue that while that book is amazing and all kids deserve a copy, not every kid will be ready for it at the same age. So, while the sentiment is appropriate, the book isn't appropriate for every young person at the same time.
Or, in terms of code, let's say that you've never programmed before. It wouldn't be appropriate to teach you "hello world" then go right into monads. There's nothing particularly wrong with monads, it's just that they would be so far beyond you that you wouldn't gain from the lesson.
2.) I did not objected to your downvote further. I was honestly curious when I asked those questions. (And also appreciated the answer about glib interpretation.)
For the rest, thank you for answer. I guess I have every different opinion about amount of harmful books for kids in bookstores or maybe we have different bookstores around here. At that age, I was freely selecting books from adult section in local library without any supervision or control. I assumed that other girl is the same.
30 years ago I was a part-time employee at a big box store from October to January. Large retailers long ago figured out how to ramp up their workforce temporarily to adequately handle the sales season that accounts for the largest portion of their sales every year.
For any retailer to blow the Christmas sales season by not adequately staffing it, which has been basic retail management for at least three decades, actually does argue for malpractice on the part of executives. It's a criminal level of incompetence, and I'm not sure whether "criminal" means "criminally negligent" or "fraudulent".
“Well, give ‘em one more Christmas.”
As you say, it’s unthinkable they didn’t see Christmas coming. And it’s equally unthinkable layoffs of this size weren’t planned out twelve weeks ago.
As for not adequately staffing it, you simply can't. You cannot get a decent workforce via part time seasonal work. the way it worked before was part timers just took extra hours in peak periods, but Obamacare killed this by forcing any part timer over so many hours to be eligible for benefits, making it impossible to do.
And yet, virtually every retailer for the last 3+ decades has, in fact, done so as a matter of normal operations.
It has nothing to do with Obamacare. The employment norm was not to only schedule full-time hours for part-time employees (which, even before Obamacare, violated a lot of employment law). Aside from laying off full-time employees after the cycle (which they justified by the crap sales during Christmas), B&N refused to staff-up as normal for virtually every other retailer in North America, to accommodate the most predictable sales cycle in the world... basically in order to justify the firing the full-timers.
This was a hit job by insiders looking to profit off the corpse.
Even still, see how Amazon’s flex/contractors handle deliveries (ie atrociously, as there is no incentive to care) vs UPS (a union shop).
You have to align incentives. Your employees’ success is your success. Otherwise, close up shop and go home. You’ve already lost.
I don't know, $14mm for the executive team of a company with tens of thousands of employees and 600+ stores doesn't seem crazy to me. Maybe you think that smart, capable, experienced executives grow on trees, but you're wrong. And what smart, capable, experienced executive would ever want to take this job when they probably have much better options with companies who aren't dying?
Would you want to go be lead developer on the Nook team right now, knowing that you probably won't have a job for long, that your equity will be declining in value, that it'll be miserable unless you can miraculously figure out a way to turn things around? Would it be unreasonable for you to only be interested in doing that if you were getting paid very well?
Also, it's all well and good to say this when it's not your money on the line, but the board is responsible to the shareholders, and I doubt they're interested in taking a chance on some unproven person who has "belief in the company" as their primary qualification.
I’m sure their individual point of view, their self interest, it’s perfectly reasonable. But from the outside it’s disgraceful. How do you justify taking a $4m payout after working less than a year? Especially when you know the axe is going to fall on the lowest paid employees.
Maybe you could, you know, skip your bonus, so the people laid off might have a little breathing room.
Frankly, this kind of stuff looks borderline close to fraud. Maybe not a legal fraud, but the fraud of management who wave their hands around to act like they know what they are doing, while they loot the company before it goes down.
B&N needs to think like a Startup again. Vision and dreams might be more important than a Harvard MBA and 10 years of experience at BigCo, Inc. Remember, Barnes and Noble is default bankrupt right now. Their situation in some ways is more like that of a startup that needs to raise capital fast or die than Amazon or Google. That means that barring drastic changes, their trajectory intersects with the ground. Why not take a big chance? Who's more likely to bet big, a young dreamer who wants $100K and a ton of stock, or the experienced executive who wants $5M a year and is going to get majorly paid no matter what happens? They're going to lose everything as it stands anyway.
That is to say, people whose salary demands are at the lower end of the salary range for that career have outperformed those whose demands are at the higher end.
My sample size is small but significant. Food for thought.
Pay me what market rate is and don’t give me sob stories about passion or making sacrifices to work on some life changing BS. Pay me.
What’s eating away the civic fabric are those who put their own self interest above everyone else.
Once you get up into the millions in compensation, I don’t think the concern is that the poor naive CEO is being exploited by working for less than the absolute most they can get. Especially when the level of pay is so high, that it disproportionately impacts the bottom line.
I’m sorry, this primacy of market and money above all is sickening.
So if you're supporting a family you may want a new approach for thinking about your career.
Better said above, "Working for “passion” is for suckers."
Here's more food for thought: the five biggest companies in the US are all data-driven tech companies that are renowned for paying ridiculously high compensation. Why wouldn't they apply your framework to both save on hiring costs and boost performance?
None of the top ten US companies, by revenue, fit that description.
http://fortune.com/fortune500/
Ranked by profit, only Alphabet squeaks into the top ten at number five.
http://fortune.com/fortune500/list/filtered?sortBy=profits&f...
I’m not seeing much correlation here between rank of CEO compensation and company performance.
https://aflcio.org/paywatch/highest-paid-ceos
The fame of the high salaries at tech companies relates primarily to technical staff, not executive pay. These companies are also located in some of the most expensive areas to live.
The market cap of a company is largely based on a bet of the “size” of a company in the future.
Tesla is the most “valuable” US auto maker, by market capitalization. This illustrates that market cap is inherently related to predictions which have a large speculative component, which can be influenced by pure market phenomena.
Because a) at their scale they need to hire in bulk b) their business (advertising, "media"...) simply don't inspire that level of passion in anyone, so money is all they can do.
It’s easier to hire cheap workers when your actions are keeping wages lower than they otherwise would’ve been.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust...
If anything, that undermines the point I'm arguing against: why would these companies feel any need to collude to suppress wages if they could get better performance just by hiring cheaper workers?
Also, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Netflix, etc. weren't part of this suit, so again, not relevant.
person who really wants the job but is kind of underqualified > person who is highly qualified, but doesn't really want the job (unless the money is right)
edit: I'll add that, for CEOs who should all look amazing on paper and know how to sell themselves, maybe willingness to do the job for less than market is a better signal than most
Apparently the qualification that they care about is "Willing to take $10 million in payments while laying off 1800 to save $40 million". Competence at the CEO level doesn't always have to look like malevolence.