Anyone else reading "The Game of Thrones"?

[cavalier973]

I started reading these novels after seeing one episode of the HBO tv series.  I found the show incredibly boring, except during the part that focuses on Tyrion, the dwarf.  I bought the first four books, breezed through the first three, and struggled through the fourth.

They are quite depressing, but gripping all the same.  I'm hoping to find a paperback copy of "A Dance with Dragons", or I might just get the Kindle version and download the app that allows one to read Kindle books on the laptop.

Anyone else here who has read these?

[Laetitia]

I've read all but Dances With Dragons twice. Will read the whole series again when the next book comes out... which might be 5-6 years from now, if the George RR Martin takes as long as he did for the last one.

Tyrion is my favorite character through the first five books, along with Arya Stark, but there are a few characters I started to find quite interesting - don't worry, no spoilers - heading into book six. Given the number of characters I got attached to over the first books though, I'm going to have to assume this means they'll die in book seven.

[Brooklyn Red Leg]

I'm reading the second book now (almost finished) and definitely its interesting. The characters are fairly compelling. Never saw the series and not really interested in such. Its way too High Medieval for my tastes from what I can see, which is one of the few gripes I have about the books. I'm more of a Germanic Heroic Myth than Le Morte D'Arthur fan. 

[Dalebert]

I'm very tempted. I've been gorging myself on The Tudors on Netflix. I heard recently that the story was inspiration for GoT.

[John Shaw]

Too much rape, incest and kid fucking for me.

Couldn't get into it.

[Dalebert]

Too much rape, incest and kid fucking for me.

You'll hate The Tudors then. Little kids being sentenced to beheadings and shit. Based on reality.

[cavalier973]

Too much rape, incest and kid fucking for me.

Couldn't get into it.

One could also add murder and torture.  I read somewhere that Martin wrote horror stories at one time, and it shows.  The characters that the reader is led to believe are the protagonists suffer all manner of extreme misfortune and betrayal, which makes the parts where the bad guys get their due all the more satisfying.

On the other hand, it is disconcerting to really hate one character in one book, then sort of like him in the next, then root for him in the next.  There are characters, however, that one hates throughout <cough> Cersei <cough>.

[Defendant]

No, I haven't.

I might read it one day.  I like my shit to be sequential.

Try reading James Clavell's "Asian" saga.  Its over nine thousand pages.  Three centuries. 

James Clavell was a serious bad ass.  He's one of the only writers I can point to who had a complete understanding of geopolitics, how shit that happened 200 years ago made a global impact on today's events, and multiculturalism.  And prejudices. 

People scoff at Rand for being long winded at 1200 pgs.  Clavell's Asian saga is like, 10k pages, six books, three centuries.  Its deep.  Many generations of families.  The single-mindedness of each ethnicities thinking.  British, French, Japanese, Chinese, American, each thought differently, imperialistically.  Each thought the others were barbarians.  Each thought themselves to be the pinnacle of society. 

Its fucking brilliant shit.

[Laetitia]

Crap. Thanks to this thread, I downloaded book 1 to my iPad from the big family library in the cloud.
I'll be re-reading the whole thing over the next 5-6 weeks. Damn you, cavalier973!

[cavalier973]

Crap. Thanks to this thread, I downloaded book 1 to my iPad from the big family library in the cloud.
I'll be re-reading the whole thing over the next 5-6 weeks. Damn you, cavalier973!

Doing what I can to increase the level of human misery in the world.

[Laetitia]

Crap. Thanks to this thread, I downloaded book 1 to my iPad from the big family library in the cloud.
I'll be re-reading the whole thing over the next 5-6 weeks. Damn you, cavalier973!

Doing what I can to increase the level of human misery in the world.

12 hours into Game of Thrones... only 100-130 more to get through the whole series.
Woohoo?

Also, my husband started reading Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, and keeps talking to me about it, though it's been almost 2 decades since I read the first book. Just finished Eye of the World, and am starting book 2, The Great Hunt, tonight. There's 13-14 books in the series... Dammit.

My stack of zombie, Sam Harris, and Richard Dawkins books will just have to collect dust for a while.

[cavalier973]

My wife and I have really enjoyed watching Merlin

http://www.hulu.com/merlin

[freeAgent]

I might read the books...I enjoy the HBO series.  However, I hate getting into a series of books that hasn't been completed yet because I lose the continuity that comes with reading them all back-to-back.  I recently finished reading Avogadro and AI Apocolypse, which I'd recommend...but the series isn't finished yet so now I'm going to have to wait for the next book to come out.

In the meantime, I'm reading a book on photography and trying to get better at it myself.