tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986228274737053946.post3163969967143074056..comments2023-06-05T04:04:19.703-07:00Comments on My Book-a-Week Challenge: Re-readingBejoeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02986882048184494495noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986228274737053946.post-26101807210594449882014-01-25T13:22:18.242-08:002014-01-25T13:22:18.242-08:00I'm not saying I dislike his world or his reli...I'm not saying I dislike his world or his religions, but I do indeed prefer a more poetic style of writing :)Bejoeshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02986882048184494495noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986228274737053946.post-70829711839177976462014-01-25T10:07:18.268-08:002014-01-25T10:07:18.268-08:00Ok, I'll bite ;)
It keeps being so funny to me...Ok, I'll bite ;)<br />It keeps being so funny to me how everything you list as the reasons why you love LotR, is exactly why I love aSoIaF. The details, the history, the lore, the sheer vastness of the universe created (GRRM created not one, but at least a dozen religions!). I also love how the books are such an intricate puzzle, stitched together from a patchwork of unreliable narrators, that on every re-read you discover new things (enter endless internet forum theories!) Never are things just told to you, the reader. You have to connect the dots and figure out the clues for yourself. So it can happen that you're in the middle of a 'boring' chapter about a council meeting, and an offhand remark about the king signing a document about a character that has been named... one other time in a different book, makes your jaw drop when it suddenly clicks what that implies. And I'm talking about something that just happened to me while re-reading A Feast for Crows, and I've already read all the books, seen the HBO series at least three times, am regularly involved on http://asoiaf.westeros.org/, and have always excelled at comprehensive reading. I'm not adding this last thing to sound bitchy, but you did go into how you tend to need more re-reads to get stuff, so I'm just adding it to underline that they are complex books and need to be read at least twice, even by people who don't have that problem.<br />What I'm trying to say is: maybe it's not a good idea to dive right into book 5. Maybe (if you still want to) it would be better to re-read book 1-3, then have a go at 4-5. They really require a good deal of effort from the reader, but once you finally have an understanding of what really happened during Robert's Rebellion and the reign of the last Targaryens, they become a hell of a lot more rewarding. And that's not even getting into the good stuff, like the Blackfyre pretenders, all the ancient legends, the history of the Andals and the First Men, and all the prophecies, or exactly why Barristan Selmy is such a badass :D<br />What I'm trying to say is: hate GRRM's writing all you want. I agree with you. His prose is dry and the man utterly lacks the gift of metaphor. But the story, the world, the characters? That's something else altogether... :)<br />trilliehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16721923709685610964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986228274737053946.post-62570231708292720472014-01-25T09:37:40.991-08:002014-01-25T09:37:40.991-08:00seen 'em 4 times ;)seen 'em 4 times ;)Matthiashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14699044619515947606noreply@blogger.com