The first order of
post-dissertation life has been to buy a copy of
Game of Thrones and read to each other until I fall asleep (that's how it goes in our house). I'd never heard of the series until the show started up. J and I watched the first two episodes and decided with how awesome it was, we couldn't wait to get the story week by week. We needed it NOW! If you want to read a book so bad you'll run out at 10pm on a Saturday night and buy a damn copy, it is going to be good. You are ready for it and you obviously need it. Sharing that kind of a compulsion with J was wonderful.
We read for a few hours on Saturday and Sunday, and I'm excited to get back on the couch and get through some more. I feel like we've cheated, watching a few episodes. Now I see all the characters as the actors who play them in the show. Luckily, I'm not familiar with many of them other than Peter Dinklage, who is fantastic. He plays (so far) the only likable person from the queen's side of the royal family of Lannister.
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| Tyrion, seen slapping a most obnoxious character. CLICK for animation. |
Also unexpected, the female characters are well-rounded and bad-ass. Since I haven't read very much sci-fi/fantasy, it's easy to have low expectations of kick-ass ladies. This series has them in abundance. J and my favorite so far is Arya, the youngest daughter of one of the main characters (there are lots of characters). She has a pet wolf and thinks dresses and princes are boring. She is awesome.
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| from http://hes-got-bear-hands.tumblr.com/ |
Ok, I will stop geeking out now. If any readers are also into Game of Thrones (show or book) feel free to geek the fuck out in the comments. But writing even a little about this means the blog has become unbalanced in Battlestar Galactica* content.
*The only reason we aren't currently re-watching seasons 4-6 is because we started reading. Then we can see who the final cylon is!**
**Ok, we know who it is. But it's fun to pretend!
Cheers to geekery, yeah! I've been watching BGalactica instead of writing my thesis. This is not a good thing. I'm saying its homework, though. That should count for something, no? Also, again, Congratulations to Dr. J!
ReplyDeleteI luuuuurved BSG, but I'm still on the fence about Game of Thrones. There's way too much gratuitous TnA so far for my taste, and I don't object to it across the board. It makes me very uncomfortable that all of the "sex" shown so far has been varying degrees of non-consensual, coercive, or otherwise dysfunctional. While I understand that it's necessary to the story to show how horrible some of the characters/situations are, I think there's a difference in showing horribleness and in using it as titillation, as HBO seems to be doing.
ReplyDelete(Sorry for the rant, which is not meant to be directed at you or anyone who enjoys the show or the books. I like the show over all, and haven't read the books, but the blurring of sex and non-consent makes me very uncomfortable).
Oh dang, the HBO series is really bad about that. So far I can only compare the first two episodes and the first 150 pages, and let me assure you that Daenerys wasn't supposed to be raped. I have no idea why they decided to portray it that way (in the book, it's a pretty fabulous love scene, well, except that she's 13-- that really sounds bad, huh?). I have it on good authority from a friend that the gender dynamics in the book are not what you'd expect from fantasy, and the author is aware that extra homework must be done.
ReplyDeleteLast night we got through what would have been the end of the 2nd episode, but are going to read as much ahead as we can before watching ep. 3. I don't want our reading to just be a recap after we watch the show.
>the gender dynamics in the book are not what you'd expect
ReplyDeleteThat's what I've heard, and having read some of the author's other books, I believe it. My J has read the books, loved them, and said the same, which is why I find HBO's choices so perplexing and off putting. It's as if having a show with hot sex and happy women didn't seem like a good idea to the producers, so they had to make the women women who enjoy sex evil and deviant (the incest) or make the protagonist women unhappy and violated. I'm thinking of getting the books so that I don't mix up the show's portrayal of women with the author's portrayal.
We're now 500 pages into 800. And it gets SO MUCH BETTER. So much better, that Danerys and Arya's chapters are the ones I look forward to most.
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