I'm thinking of the Vorkosiganverse's comconscoles, which stand in for phones and computers - you don't need an appendix to translate that into modern Earth English

Blackberry? Iphone?

I find Sarah Monette to be exceptionally good at choosing placenames and using new words so that they seem natural and enrich the background of the story.

Her calendar system was maybe the hardest for me to wrap my brain around, so every time she referenced a unit of time, I had to stop and figure out what I thought it meant, and how/if that affected what the character was saying/doing.

It was very annoying.

so every time she referenced a unit of time, I had to stop and figure out what I thought it meant

Ha! That definitely helps explain our different reactions, as I could be described as time-impaired. I have no sense of time, I am bad at telling time, and I pretty much disregard time references when I see or read them. I just read her time stuff by context and didn't pay that much attention to the specifics.

Blackberry? Iphone?

More like a computer running Skype, but the wrist coms would be basically a smartphone shaped like a Dick Tracy watch.

whatsherface who writes "sci-fi romances" as Jayne Castle drove me crazy in the one book of hers I read - she'd compound words so people drank "cafftea" and so on - words compounded into long portmanteau word/phrases that were awkward. People are lazy - they wouldn't use the long versions.

Jayne Ann Krentz--yeah, that bugged me bigtime in her Castle books.

I prefer Robin D. Owens "Heart" series which features cats and other animals as familiars that can communicate telepathically with their human counterparts. The first one, Heartmate, has a really well-written cat as the main familiar.

Teppy - I slurked back in here to post that xkcd link. It's double funny because I paid full price for Anathem.

Sadly, Hayden Carruth just passed away. [link]

I thought about mentioning that about Hayden Carruth. We share initials, a name, and an interest in poetry, so friends used to give me books of his when I was younger. The NYT obit mentions that James Dickey thought he would scatter his little gems among some fairly stiff poetry, which is my take, too (and Dickey knows a few things about the emotional suckerpunch). When Carruth was pedestrian, he was pretty dull, but when he was good, he had that rare ability to knock you out of phase with reality with only a couple of words, the poetic satori.

Did y'all know there was an official Gormenghast website? Which features Peake's handwritten/drawn pages of the manuscript?

Cool.

Good lord! Peake's illustrations for Bleak House are awesomely gothy.

Lady Dedlok

Mr. Grindley

Miss Smallweed.

From the Rime of the Ancient Mariner: Life in Death