A Song of Ice and Fire

I just did a bad thing. About 4 weeks ago, I was looking around on amazon and since I the HBO show Game of Thrones was so popular I guess there was a promotion to sell the books the show is based on. I bought for $20 the first 4 books on Amazon. They have been sitting in my apartment for a few weeks while I read books all the while calling to me. Part of me is scared of the undertaking (each of the first 4 books is approximately 1000 pages long) and partially excited. Long story short, I begun the first novel of A Song of Ice and Fire which is titled (you guessed it) Game of Thrones. This first part in a proposed seven-book series is what the first season of the HBO show was named after. I begun the book yesterday and have a few short comments about it.

1) The first episode of the season ended at a certain scene that everyone remembers. I finished reading last night as I got off my train at that scene. Does this mean reading the book will take 10 days and I will follow the episodes of the series? I hope so. That seems like a fun coincidence.

2) Certain parts of the TV show were taken word for word from the novel. This is great.

3) Of course, the novel will be much more detailed, but reading this is helping me to understand certain parts of the TV show I was confused about. The show had so many characters and each character had so much history and keeping track of how each character was related was confusing. Reading it is less so.

4) I will soon come upon my next issue. Do I just bang out this series over the entire summer? Or do I read other books between them? I figure I will have to cleanse my palate from time to time, but I’ve been obsessed before and so far this book is very readable. If the rest flow as well, I may just burn through the first four books in succession.

5) For those that like the picture above, it was done by my friend Corey Breen. Check out the rest of his artwork here: http://cjbpro.blogspot.com/

But that brings me to my other issue…. (See next post)