Books

Over the weekend I finished A Storm of Swords.  Like the previous two in the series, I found it to be quite enjoyable.  Towards the the end I noticed with surprise how much I cared whether or not the kingslayer and the imp left each other on good or bad terms and took that as evidence that this book had brought me a long way (I guess it should have at ~1100 pages!).

I gave it 4 out of 5.

After Thrones I went straight to A Clash of Kings.  I got a little bogged down at the beginning but then regained my momentum and read much of it on vacation in CT.  By the end I was quite engaged again.  After one of the last chapters ended in an unexpected and disappointing way, I actually flipped ahead over the final few chapters to see which characters narrated them (hoping that what had apparently just happened actually hadn't...though I managed to miss the one that thankfully showed it hadn't).

I give it 4 out of 5.

On now to A Storm of Swords.

A while back on old friend recommended George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series.  When I heard that the first book, A Game of Thrones, was set to become TV series on HBO, I bumped it up to the top of the "To Read" list.

From Wikipedia:

The series is set in a fictitious world reminiscent of Medieval Europe, primarily on a continent called Westeros. In this world the seasons can last for many years, sometimes decades.

I enjoyed it.  It's been quite a while (nearly 20 years?) since I'd read anything similar (Stephen R. Donaldson? I take that back; I read a couple of Donaldson books during the last few years).  I read much of Thrones during a day and a half I spent in bed with back pain.

I give it 4 out of 5.

I recently finished reading José Saramago's Seeing, a novel slightly connected to Saramago's Blindness, for which he is best-known.  From Wikipedia:

Seeing is a story set in the same country featured in Blindness and begins with a parliamentary election in which the majority of the populace casts blank ballots. The story revolves around the struggles of the government and its various members as they try to simultaneously understand and destroy the amorphous non-movement of blank-voters.

This story had an intriguing start for me but seemed to get bogged down...and therefore ultimately was much less engaging/interesting than Blindness.

I recently finished reading the last book in the Twilight series, Breaking Dawn.  It was my favorite of the 4...probably for the same that Lisa liked it the least...more fantasy/adventure and less realism.  On the other hand, it's still hard to buy the dogs and blood suckers teaming up.  Reminds me of the Rebels and Empire joining forces to battle the invading alien reptiles (link).  It just ain't right.