Hi — I'm Dorte Skriver. Reader, programmer and mother, living just outside Copenhagen. This little corner of the web is where I keep the things I care about: the books on my shelves, the recipes I cook, and the odd list of wishes. Here's a bit more about the person behind it.
The programmer
I write software for a living, and I do it on purpose. I'm a hands-on C# engineer — I've led and mentored people over the years, but I keep turning down the manager's chair, because what I actually love is building things. I'm a partner and part-owner of the company I've helped grow for about a decade, where we build software for the pension and retirement industry. Somewhere along the way I also built this site by hand, which explains its charming, home-made character.
The physicist
Before the code there was physics. I trained at DTU in Copenhagen and at McGill in Montreal, and wrote my master's thesis on the mathematics of the heart — nonlinear models of cardiac dynamics. I don't work in physics anymore, but the way it teaches you to think — models, patterns, the quiet thrill of an equation that finally behaves — never really leaves you. It's also why a shelf of popular science still pulls at me harder than almost anything else.
The reader
If I had to pick one word, it would be this one. I read mostly in Danish and English — with the occasional venture into French — and I've kept a catalogue of nearly everything I own — not to show off, but because a library you can't search is really just a beautiful pile. My physical shelves are arranged by spine colour (yes, really), so the collection is gorgeous to look at and completely impossible to navigate without the database behind it.
My taste has shifted over time. I used to devour thrillers, crime and sweeping historical sagas, and there are still plenty on the shelves — Stephen King, John Irving, Paul Auster and Agatha Christie among the most-owned. But as reading time gets scarcer I find myself drawn to books that are literary and morally serious: the twentieth century's harder history, quiet devastating fiction, and anything that repays a slower, fuller read. I'd rather sit with one difficult, generous book than race through five easy ones.
A library you can't search is just a beautiful pile — so I built the database, and let the shelves be beautiful.
The rest of me
Home is Greater Copenhagen now, but it hasn't always been. I've lived in Canada, the Netherlands and Australia along the way — years abroad that left me a little rootless in the best sense, and that go a long way toward explaining why I read across languages and borders. These days I'm the mother of four: two have flown the nest and two are still keeping the house loud and lived-in. Between the code, the physics and the books, that's most of me. Have a look around the site, and feel free to borrow a book recommendation on your way out.