Charles Stross

[Jacq]

I think it depends on the class a lot of times. I would never have liked Kafka's The Hunger Artist or Bartleby the Scrivener (by a famous author I've totally spaced on) if we hadn't analyzed it in English class. Nor would I have ever, EVER in a million years made the effort to struggle through Foucault's The Archaeology of Knowledge if I didn't have the TA there to help me through it... Come to think of it, that was a pretty exceptional class, I guess.

I dunno, maybe I'm someone that needs my hand held a little more, but I always love when my History profs assign fiction. It adds another dimension and I really dig being able to relate the FACT with the perspective.

But onto Stross... Hooray for free books. I will definitely add it to my queue!

[Kathy Li]

Bartleby: Melville, iirc. And yeah, never reading Moby Dick again...

BTW, the fifth volume of the Merchant Princes series (The Revolution Business) is now out in hardcover, and I believe that Saturn's Children comes out in mass market paperback next month.

Oh, and Stross's blog also rocks. I can't keep up with it, but it's fun. I loved the essay he wrote on why he uses OpenOffice for his writing ("Preventing the New Dark Ages: Start Here"). Man, can I relate to that one. It's even got me thinking about whether or not I should be considering converting my digital photos from RAW to DNG...

[Kathy Li]

.... and The Fuller Memorandum (the third "Bob Howard"/Laundry) book is out in hardcover in the US. So far, he's already got me hooked, and I haven't even started reading the book proper, yet.

Because one of the folks he dedicates the book to is John M. Ford, whom I do indeed still miss.

And one of the writers he acknowledges for TFM is Anthony Price, whose cold-war spy/historical novels I was introduced to by John M. Ford, when I squeed at him about The Scholars of Night and he said that he was, in part, deliberately modeling it on Anthony Price. You may want to read Jo Walton's essay on Price's Audley series, and the one I'd recommend starting with is Other Paths to Glory.