User Profile

Deborah Pickett

futzle@outside.ofa.dog

Joined 2 years, 10 months ago

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's books

To Read (View all 6)

Pippa McCathie: MURDER IN THE VALLEYS (Paperback, 2018, Independently published)

Benedict Brown: Murder at the Spring Ball (Paperback, Heathdene Books)

T E Kinsey: In the Market for Murder (Paperback, 2016, Thomas & Mercer)

Read (View all 41)

Martha Wells: Fugitive Telemetry (Hardcover, 2021, Tor Books)

Martha Wells: Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory (EBook, 2021, Tom Doherty Associates)

Martha Wells: Network Effect (EBook, 2020, Tor.com)

Stopped Reading (View all 9)

Sayaka Murata: Convenience Store Woman (2018)

Brian W. Aldiss: Helliconia Spring (Paperback, 2002, I Books)

R. Brasch: How did it begin? (1966, D. McKay Co.)

User Activity

Deborah Pickett quoted Anathem by Neal Stephenson

Neal Stephenson: Anathem (2008, William Morrow)

Raz, a mathematician, is among a cohort of secluded scientists and philosophers who are called …

Content warning Spoilers, Anathem part 11

"Early in the Reticulum — thousands of years ago — it became almost useless because it was cluttered with faulty, obsolete, or downright misleading information," Sammann said.

"Crap, you once called it," I reminded him.

"Yes — a technical term. So crap filtering became important. Businesses were built around it. Some of those businesses came up with a clever plan to make more money: they poisoned the well. They began to put crap on the Reticulum deliberately, forcing people to use their products to filter that crap back out. They created syndevs whose sole purpose was to spew crap into the Reticulum. But it had to be good crap."

— Anathem by Neal Stephenson (80%)

The IT Guy explains AI slop in their version of the Internet.

Deborah Pickett commented on Anathem by Neal Stephenson

Raz, a mathematician, is among a cohort of secluded scientists and philosophers who are called …

I’m always struck by how exponential this book is. It’s hard to go into any detail without spoiling the ride, but the slow monastic life of the first few chapters is a distant memory by this point. And I’m not even done yet.

Deborah Pickett wants to read The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth, #1) by N. K. Jemisin

N. K. Jemisin: The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth, #1) (2015)

A SEASON OF ENDINGS HAS BEGUN.

IT STARTS WITH THE GREAT RED RIFT across …

Bought this ebook, queued up to read next.

Deborah Pickett commented on Anathem by Neal Stephenson

Raz, a mathematician, is among a cohort of secluded scientists and philosophers who are called …

This ebook spells it “millenia” all the way through. I’ve half a mind to fire up Calibre and fix it.

Deborah Pickett commented on Anathem by Neal Stephenson

Raz, a mathematician, is among a cohort of secluded scientists and philosophers who are called …

Content warning Anathem spoilers about Millenarians

Anathem feels more familiar and comfortable every time I read it. I'm tickled that I didn't recognize in prior readings how Fraa Orolo's musings about Causal Domain Shear is foreshadowing.

Female representation isn't great in this book, at least at the beginning. I suppose that it's at least plausible, given how the story is told in first person by a male character in an apparently monastic setting.

Deborah Pickett started reading Anathem by Neal Stephenson

Raz, a mathematician, is among a cohort of secluded scientists and philosophers who are called …

I’ve read this a couple of times before. Helliconia Spring is being a bit of a slog so I’m punctuating it with something more comfortable.

Deborah Pickett commented on Helliconia Spring by Brian W. Aldiss

From the back cover:

Imagine a world in a system of twin stars, where …

Aldiss writes in the introduction: “I developed Helliconia: a place much like our world, with only one factor changed—the length of the year.” Also, apparently, a world with no women in it. This is old-school, masculine sf. It’s on notice.

Deborah Pickett started reading Helliconia Spring by Brian W. Aldiss

Helliconia Spring by Brian W. Aldiss

From the back cover:

Imagine a world in a system of twin stars, where Winter is 600 ice-locked years …

Deborah Pickett finished reading Dictionary of English down the Ages by Linda Flavell

Linda Flavell, Roger Flavell: Dictionary of English down the Ages (Paperback, 2005, Kyle Cathie Limited)

No rating

The arrangement of entries by date was inspired, but it did inevitably lead to a disappointing last century as I already knew the etymologies of the most recent usually-technical neologisms.

This book was, physically, nightmarish to read, with tiny text practically right in the gutter.

Deborah Pickett started reading Shift Happens by Marcin Wichary

No rating

Borrowed this amazing tome from a friend. Mesmerizing and humorous, astonishingly well researched.

Deborah Pickett quoted Dictionary of English down the Ages by Linda Flavell

No rating

[on the history of “ginger”] • In the early eighteenth century horse dealers discovered that inserting ginger into a horse's backside made him sprightly and hold his tail well. According to Francis Grose's CLASSICAL DICTIONARY OF THE VULGAR TONGUE (1785), the original term was to feague a horse. (Grose adds that, before ginger was thought of, an eel was reputedly used for the same purpose.) Not surprisingly, to feague was eventually replaced by a new coinage, to ginger, which appeared in print in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. This verb, often with the particularly appropriate addition of up, was soon figuratively extended to mean 'to liven up', and in this sense is now a common colloquialism.

— Dictionary of English down the Ages by Linda Flavell, Roger Flavell (Page 69 - 70)

I have so many questions.

Deborah Pickett started reading Dictionary of English down the Ages by Linda Flavell

No rating

Another etymology book. This one is arranged roughly chronologically by first use, with themed chapters (e.g., 1086: The Domesday Book).

Deborah Pickett started reading One Good Turn by Witold Rybczynski

Witold Rybczynski: One Good Turn (2013, Simon & Schuster, Limited)

No rating

A Christmas present. I’ve heard good things about this book.

Deborah Pickett replied to Dr Ms Kat's status

@pelagikat Thoughts and prayers.

Deborah Pickett stopped reading How did it begin? by R. Brasch

No rating

Having recently read POSH and its well-researched debunking of many folk etymologies, I find How Did It Begin full of those same wrong etymologies. Perhaps being from sixty years ago, this book is now outdated. Setting it aside because I can’t trust it.