John's recent posts

Recent public posts (showing 101-120 of 186).

Oh, and I realized that I never answered the real question (I've been so swamped irl that I've had a hard time keeping up with much of anything on-line). I read "literature" professionally (I'm an English teacher), and of course I read fantasy (and, to a lesser extent, sci-fi). The non-fiction genre I read the most of might best be called cultural commentary--books that examine an idea or practice or thing: usually the examination is in part historical, but is primarily looking at its social effect (Neil Postman's work comes to mind as an exemplar of this type of non-fiction). For obvious reasons, I am particularly attracted to such books when the topic is relevant to education, though as often as not the subject isn't about education. I read some history and some science, though not as much of either as I'd like to say I read.

In some ways, I think my ideal is Roger Zelazny, who was known to read roughly 16 books at a time, including not only sf and fantasy, but also history, science, life science, biography, poetry, mythology, and mainstream fiction.

Shannon, thanks for the interesting statistics. Cookbooks, if my own collection is any indication, may be bought frequently, but they're used much less frequently. I cook all the time, but out of 43 on my shelf, there are only two (The Joy of Cooking and The Bread Baker's Apprentice) that I use with any regularity, and only perhaps a half dozen more that I refer to more than once each year (or two).

By the same token, the Bible may be the #1 selling book every year, but most of those spend more time on shelves than in hands. Bibles and cookbooks are things we buy because we think we should have them (or, more to the point, because we think someone else should have them). I wonder if there are statistics on what the most READ books are?

If Leslie thought she was coming to this discussion late, then I'm coming *really* late. I think a lot of great points have been made and plausible ideas brought up, and I don't want to rehash them just to say "I agree." I'd like to try to build off some of them to suggest another idea.

Back in the old days, sf was king and just about anyone could write sf. All that was really required was a veneer of science and it could be called sf. It was the best of writing, it was the worst of writing. Now, there seem to be overall higher standards for the science in science fiction. As a consequence, I imagine sf is a bit intimidating to write: readers are often quite discerning and no doubt will call writers on bad science. Therefore, sf tends to select for writers who can manage their science ably... which I think sometimes leads to the emphasis on the science and the plot rather than character, which was at least suggested by earlier comments here.

Fantasy, I suspect, is in something like the situation I suggested for the golden age of sf: it's the popular genre, so everyone's writing it (and, honestly, it's an "easier" genre to write in, so everyone *can*), with the result that there's some real shlock being written and published... but there's also some amazing, amazing stuff being done in the genre.

To some extent, I feel like I've skirted the issue, not really getting at a hypothesis as to *why* fantasy is the more popular genre. Perhaps because it's more things to more people? Some readers go in for the mindless escapism or want to identify with the grandiose main characters that prevail in a certain slice of fantasy. But there's also room in the genre for great writing, for deep pyschological insight, for the big questions, and even just for good story telling.

Oh, and incidentally, I feel like I should clarify my remark about fantasy being an "easier" genre to write in. I think it's just as hard to write great fantasy as it is to write great science fiction--maybe even harder in some ways. But it's probably easier to write merely acceptable fantasy than science fiction (i.e. stuff that can get published, that can attract readers, etc).

I'm currently reading Gardening When It Counts by Steve Solomon and re-reading A Clash of Kings after last month's selection of AGOT. I'd like to read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, but really I don't know what I'll get read. The next week and a half will be crazy, between moving into a new place and getting married, so I doubt I'll get much reading done at all, but when that's all done, I'll probably reward myself with reading time.

Welcome Terence! Any fan of Erikson and Bakker is, by default, a good guy in my book.

Several times in this thread, it's come up that Ned is caught in between honor and love. The end of one of his POV chapters makes this explicit, when Varys offers him the chance to confess and live. For himself, he'll die for his honor, but when it comes to protecting his daughter, it's a different equation entirely. Before we see what decision Ned's made, we get a Jon POV chapter in which Maester Aemon discusses exactly this choice with Jon, who believes Ned Stark would choose honor (actually, he says "He would do whatever was right," which isn't exactly the same thing, is it?). Aemon replies "Then Lord Eddard is a man in ten thousand. Most of us are not so strong. What is honor compared to a woman's love? What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms... or the memory of a brother's smile? Wind and words. Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy."

And, indeed, it is. More and more as I've re-read the novel, I'm convinced that Jon Snow is illegitimate all right, but he's the illegitimate son of Rhaegar and Lyanna, as some folks have already mentioned. Ned really doesn't seem like the sort to dishonor himself and his wife by fathering a child out of wedlock, but he *would* choose to appear dishonorable out of the love he bore his sister (the references to the promise Ned made refer to the bloody bed repeatedly, but it seems more likely that this is the birthing bed, not a deathbed, since there's a reference to her dying of some illness). Ned is convinced that Robert would kill Joffrey, Myrcella, and Tommen if he found out they were Jamie's and Cersei's, and Robert was so jealous of Rhaegar with regards to Lyanna that he probably would have killed Jon as well. For his sister's sake, he takes dishonor on himself, just as later he takes dishonor to protect his daughter.

Anyway, I just wanted to throw that out there.

Lynne, if you've just finished, is there any better time than now to go read the first two chapters? :) I've occasionally found myself doing that with movies--just as I finished watching it for the first time, I go back and start it over again, because once I've seen the whole thing, I want to go back and see how the opening set it all up. One movie, I almost ended up watching the whole thing twice!

I guess I'm still working that out for myself, which is why I haven't written up a review. At this point, it's more of a feeling than a considered opinion. I'll get back to you on this.

While I can see where you're coming from, Leslie, I think that the misogyny you see is part of Martin's project of de-romantisizing the medieval fantasy milieu. Although technically speaking anachronism is impossible in a fantasy world, since we all know that it's basically medieval I think it can still be applicable, and I think to that extent Martin is trying to avoid anachronisms. At the same time, over the course of the series, he does offer strong women. In this first book, Dany is in the process of *becoming* a strong woman.

Speaking of Dany, I want to touch on the issue of Dany's sexuality at 13, which has been such a hot topic. I think Martin has gone to great lengths to establish that this is a culture where people grow up quickly. Robb is also 13, but he is expected to take on the role of a ruler (and does so passably well, all things considered). Although in our culture 13 is still a child, I just don't think you can look at it that way here--13 doesn't mean 13, exactly. Go beyond the fact that girls might be married off at such a young age in other times and other cultures in our own world, to understand that the characters themselves and those around them view age differently than we do.

Let me digress a bit here to try to make my point. In Catholicism, the age of reason is 7. We might ask why this is. It dates back to a pre-literate society. The extended childhood we call adolescence only dates to the past few hundred years or so; sure there are physical aspects to adolescence, but history suggests that it's primarily a social construct that arose with widespread literacy. Why? According to Neil Postman, it's because a print culture allows for certain aspects of life to be hidden and doled out gradually. Literacy is a skill that takes many years to master, and thus it allows for a culture that controls the gradual release of information to children. An essentially oral culture, on the other hand, has a harder time controlling access in this way (incidentally, the dominance of television has helped push us back toward an "all-access" culture where nothing is hidden from children).

I'm afraid I haven't been able to express this adequately, but the point I'm trying to come to is that people in this type of culture--which is the type Martin is using--see age, both their own and that of others, differently. Just because Dany hasn't had sex at 13 doesn't mean she's a total innocent based on her age. Returning to Robb Stark, at the same age, while he may not have had sex, it seems clear that he lives in a culture where he *could have* (I'm basing this largely on the conversation he and Theon Greyjoy--same age, I believe--have in the chapter where Bran is attacked by the Wildings; in that same chapter, as it happens, Robb is considering whether Bran, at 8, is old enough to discuss adult political matters, though he does still shield him from sexual matters). The point is that people in this culture mature faster than people in our culture, so it seems unreasonable to think of 13 in their world as being in any way equivalent to 13 in our world.

Yeah, it's kind of subtle... quite a bit later, when Tyrion is at the wall, Lord Mormont is talking about the missing party that Waymar Royce led and says that Stark sent [whatever his name was]'s head back, that he's the only one who returned.

For what it's worth Donna, much of that variety makes it into the novels at some point, though the POV characters are all members of the nobility. At least, I can't think of any off the top of my head who aren't.

I guess it depends on what you mean by "didn't deserve." When he took the oath of the Night Watch, he knew the penalty for desertion.

Now, of course, since we later discover that he's one of the men from the prologue, maybe we'd consider it extenuating circumstances, to meet with supernatural enemies (to say nothing of doing so with a totally incompetent commander). Still, if he got that far south, no matter where he crossed the wall, he could have made his way back to Castle Black to give warning.

While it may be self-justification, remember too what Ned says about these deserters, that knowing the penalty for desertion, they'll commit any crime, since they already have a death sentence hanging over them (It's like the scene in Life of Brian: "You're only making it worse for yourself." "Making it worse? How could it be worse? Jehovah! Jehovah! Jehovah!" Okay, sorry for that digression). Point being, deserters from the Night Watch as a class of people are dangerous criminals (in fact, many of them were dangerous criminals *before* being sent to the wall!).

While it doesn't make the guy any less dead, don't we give Ned some credit for the spirit in which the execution is carried out? I mean, the whole idea is that the taking of a life is serious business and shouldn't be done lightly. It's not like he does it for kicks, and he doesn't contract it out to a professional because once you do, it's a relatively easy thing to just give the order.

I haven't done a lot of research on the topic, but from what I've heard and read, it seems like the medieval peasant was pretty resourceful and knowledgeable. Out of necessity, they had a wide variety of skills, from agricultural and woodland skills to everything needed to make a life. As Shannon pointed out, the Industrial Revolution changed things pretty drastically, and among those changes was making people less self-sufficient.

For my part, I don't find anything about the medieval-ish setting inherently dull--it's all about what's done with it. Martin isn't my favorite fantasy series being written today, but I do think he's doing a lot of interesting things both within the framework and to re-envision it.

Nathan--re: the passage in a later book about Jon Snow. It's quite possible, but it's been a while since I read them (which was my first reading). If I manage to re-read the series any time soon, I'll be keeping an eye out (unfortunately, I'm moving in less than a week and getting married in less than a month, so sitting down to re-read this series is going to be hard to justify as a priority!).

Thomas, which point were you designating point two? And I don't suppose I was really trying to exculpate Sansa. If anything, my point was that she betrayed them and not vice versa: she didn't side with her sister and--probably more importantly--she didn't tell the truth. Of course, no one *knew* that except for Arya. We might think of it as a sort of cosmic justice (or authorial justice) since the agent of that "justice," Cersei, wasn't looking for real justice, just revenge for her child being hurt, without either understanding or caring that her son's a lying little... um, boy.

Kristen, it seems pretty clear in the text that she's talking about Lady. Clegane and his men don't come back with the boy's body until *after* Ned kills Lady, so Cersei couldn't have been saying they had him.

Incidentally, I absolutely agree that she was well-written. But just because she's believably and I can understand why she does the things she does, and can agree with Kristen that shewas doing what she thought was right, it doesn't mean I have to *like* her. :)

When I was first following these discussions before starting to re-read the book, I too was a bit surprised by the hatred of Catelyn. As I was reading the book again, though, it's easy enough to see why people could dislike her. If nothing else, she's a complete witch to Jon Snow, who most of us absolutely love. She's just not very sympathetic in the early going, and it can be hard to get over an initial dislike of a character.

I'm a little slow in my re-reading, and just read the scene where Lady is killed, and I just don't see any indication that any of the Starks are to blame. "'Lady wasn't there,' Arya shouted angrily. 'You leave her alone.'" Ned pleads several times with Robert and only kills Lady himself because he doesn't want the cruel headsman Payne doing it. By the end of the scene we also see that he wants the wolf taken back to Winterfell and buried, so that Cersei can't get any satisfaction out of her victory. Nowhere in there are the Starks not loyal to her.

As for betrothing her to Joffrey, remember several things: 1) Ned was against it at first 2) Joffrey is a Baratheon, not a Lannister (sort of). Point being, he's Ned's best friend's son, not simply "a good match," though from *her* perspective, he seems like the best match ever (until she actually gets to know him).

Allie, have you read Steven Brust's unauthorized Firefly novel? It's pretty good, and available free as an e-book from his website: http://dreamcafe.com/firefly.html

On the subject of Jon's mother, you don't have to read further than p.92 of the edition I have of AGoT:

[Robert:] "What was her name, that common girl of yours? Becca? No, she was one of mine, gods love her, black hair and these sweet big eyes, you could drown in them. Yours was... Aleena? No. You told me once. Was it Merryl? You know the one I mean, your bastard's mother?"
"Her name was Wylla," Ned replied with cool courtesy, "and I would sooner not speak of her."

And then Robert pushes a bit and Ned goes on about dishonoring himself and his wife.

It's possible that Ned is concealing something here, but if so it seems like a straightforward lie rather than misdirection, since he's asked the direct question about "your bastard's mother."

Oh M.d., if only it was the first of four books... those are just the ones that have been published so far! :)

I'm in the process of re-reading this book for the first time and I'm *almost* 100 pages in. I guess I can't really comment on pacing because I'm a doubly strange reader. First, I was an English major in college, and so much "literature" is far slower than pretty much *any* fantasy. Even as far as that breed of readers go, I'm pretty tolerant: I'm the only person I know who never got bogged down during Moby Dick, even when whales were being described ad nauseum. I should add, though, that there are books that I find slow or that I lose interest in, but what it takes to keep me interested isn't necessarily action.

I'm loving it again, but then, i know what's coming up too, so I'm inevitably reading it differently than I did the first time.

Can someone help me out? What's the latest episode that's been aired? My fiancee and I don't have cable, so we either watch it on the SciFi Channel's website or buy it through Amazon Unbox. We fell behind--the last episode we saw was "Guess What's Coming to Dinner," the May 16 episode. According to imdb.com, we missed just one episode, "Sine Qua Non," aired last week. However, that episode isn't showing up either on the SciFi.com website or through Amazon Unbox. Anyone have any idea what's going on? The episode did air last week, right?

Thanks.