Deborah Pickett started reading Debatable Space by Philip Palmer
Only got five pages in before bad light stopped play. Reading by candlelight is not recommended.
Reviews and Comments
Technical nonfiction and spec fiction. She/her. Melbourne, Australia. Generation X. Admin of Outside of a Dog. BDFL of Hometown (Mastodon) instance Old Mermaid Town (@futzle@old.mermaid.town). Avatar image is of a book that my dog tried to put on their inside.
My rating scale: ★ = I didn't care for it and probably didn't finish it; ★★ = It didn't inspire but I might have finished it anyway; ★★★ = It was fine; ★★★★ = I enjoyed it; ★★★★★ = I couldn't put it down.
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Deborah Pickett reviewed Next of Kin by Eric Frank Russell
So much nope
1 star
Some sf from the 1950s holds up today. This ... does not. It's from a time when women were inconsequential and invisible, that being gay was a character flaw, that rugged male individuals were the solution to any bureaucracy. I did not finish this book and I will make a note to never touch or recommend anything by this author again.
Deborah Pickett stopped reading Next of Kin by Eric Frank Russell
Content warning Homophobia in a 1959 book
Ok I'm done with Next of Kin. I got about halfway through, managed to grit my teeth that every single character in it (even the aliens) is male, but once the protagonist started using his gaydar on other characters, I knew I couldn't finish it. Disposing of this book in the recycling.
Deborah Pickett started reading Next of Kin by Eric Frank Russell
“Hasn’t aged a bit” says the endorsement on the cover by Jack Chalker, 1944–2005. Au contraire, Jack, upon finishing the first chapter, which contains no women at all, this novella from 1959 has aged a fuckton. I will probably need to hateread it in order to finish this supposed comic horror story.
Deborah Pickett finished reading Patch and Tweak with KORG by Kim Bjørn
I’ve only dipped my toe into modular synths, lest I unleash another hobby I don’t have time for. This book has a ton of concrete examples for three of Korg’s modular synths: the ARP 2600 M, the MS-20 Mini, and the Volca modular. Of those, I’ve only got a software version of the MS-20, so I haven’t done much actual patching.
The book is divided into sections about oscillators, filters, modulation, envelopes, etc. with lots of explanatory diagrams and lots of examples. Every few pages there is a long-form interview with a musician who uses one of the modular synths covered in the book. They’ve done a pretty good job getting a diversity of musicians, but of course it’s a mite biased towards featuring people who can afford to buy synths.
This would be a good introductory book, but for more advanced users it’s going to tread a lot of …
I’ve only dipped my toe into modular synths, lest I unleash another hobby I don’t have time for. This book has a ton of concrete examples for three of Korg’s modular synths: the ARP 2600 M, the MS-20 Mini, and the Volca modular. Of those, I’ve only got a software version of the MS-20, so I haven’t done much actual patching.
The book is divided into sections about oscillators, filters, modulation, envelopes, etc. with lots of explanatory diagrams and lots of examples. Every few pages there is a long-form interview with a musician who uses one of the modular synths covered in the book. They’ve done a pretty good job getting a diversity of musicians, but of course it’s a mite biased towards featuring people who can afford to buy synths.
This would be a good introductory book, but for more advanced users it’s going to tread a lot of familiar ground. Either way, it’s very pretty, and it’s quite well produced.
Deborah Pickett rated Stealing Light: 3 stars
Deborah Pickett finished reading Stealing Light by Gary Gibson
Not bad at all. I might track down the sequels. Gibson’s worldbuilding reminds me a bit of Alastair Reynolds.
Deborah Pickett started reading Patch and Tweak with KORG by Kim Bjørn
A beautiful pictorial coffee-table book about analogue and modular synthesis. It uses the Volca Modular, ARP 2600 M, and MS-20 Mini as examples throughout but the concepts are applicable to all synths.
Deborah Pickett started reading The Correct Order of Biscuits by Adam Sharp
The mandatory novelty Christmas present.
Deborah Pickett started reading Stealing Light by Gary Gibson
Another from the trove of pelagikat’s hand-me-downs. Definitely haven’t read this one before.
Deborah Pickett finished reading Final theory by Mark Alpert
David Swift, a professor at Columbia University, is on the run for his life from …
Yeah, I’ve read this before. While I don’t recall any of the plot, I’m getting deja lu on reading each scene. Going to put it down.
Deborah Pickett commented on Final theory by Mark Alpert
David Swift, a professor at Columbia University, is on the run for his life from …
I have a suspicion that I have read this book already, years ago, as an ebook.
Deborah Pickett reviewed Double planet by Marcus Chown
Forgettable pulp
2 stars
I have to remind myself that this book is more than thirty years old, which helps to explain the typecast nature of some of its tropes such as the all-male moon mission. The mutiny-in-space trope also pops up, as well as the disaster-movie vignette of complete strangers coming to a bad end, but nearly at the end of the book rather than towards the start as is traditional. Indeed, the pacing just feels off the whole way through the book, and for a novel which tries hard to stick to real-world physics, the way that spaceships just flit about the solar system like passenger cars undermines it all. At least it is a mercifully short book.
I’ll probably come back to this review in a year and have no recollection of the book at all.
Deborah Pickett commented on Double planet by Marcus Chown
Gribbin and Chown are both names I know from non-fiction science writing. This could be good or it could be dire. Let's find out!
Deborah Pickett reviewed Lessons From Lucy by Dave Barry
Like Lucy, Dave Barry is past his best days
3 stars
I’ll put this up front: the dog does not die.
When a comedian gets old, they often descend into the “you can’t say anything”/“everyone gets offended” trope. One chapter of this book is this trope, almost unadulterated. It was painful to read.
The theme, that there are things that Lucy can teach the author, feels a bit contrived, and at the end Barry even gives himself a report card and admits that he hasn’t taken Lucy’s lessons on board. So what was the point of this book again?
Dave Barry’s columns, collected into book form, are some of my most cherished memories from the 1990s. Sometimes I would even emulate the structure of his humour in my own writing.
The lesson I have learned from Lessons from Lucy is that I will stick with his classic works.