I held off reading the Song of Fire and Ice series for a long time. People kept telling me to read them, that they were so good, that I would love them and I dismissed them because a) I’m not into fantasy (confession: I fell asleep during the first Lord of the Rings and haven’t seen the others) and b) I’m more about making reading recommendations than taking them.
So when people (and there were a lot of them) told me that I should read them I just explained that I wasn’t a fan of fantasy and it seemed to stop there. Then the show came out and I didn’t make the connection and thought the show looked like something my boyfriend and I would enjoy watching together. But still didn’t give any thought to reading the books, even though by now with the show being so popular, you’d have been hard pressed to walk into any bookstore without seeing hundreds of copies of A Game of Thrones lining the shelves.
It wasn’t until Jen Lancaster, one of my very favourite authors, posted this on her blog about George R. R. Martin not being your bitch.
I’ve added a lot of books to my list based on Ms. Lancaster’s recommendations. Some of the most notable were Orange Is The New Black by Piper Kerman and Laurie Notaro’s Spooky Little Girl. So when she finally told me that I needed to read A Game of Thrones, when it was the only book on her August book recommendations list – well I forced my boyfriend to watch the series with me and was able to convince him that he would like to read the books as well. I’m a giver, people.
I must have been in some kind of magnanimous mood because I convinced him that he should read the books first. Something about him liking the series so much and me having all these other books to read? Doesn’t totally sound like me because I feel like the memory of letting him read Bossypants and An Idiot Abroad before me (laughing like a maniac while he read it saying “Let me just read you this one part”) really should have been fairly fresh in my mind. Nonetheless, he read it first and it seemed like it took him that much longer to read it.
Finally, finally (am I being a tad dramatic? Doesn’t sound like me…) he was finished and I could begin and WOW. Am completely engrossed. Can’t get enough. Would happily sit and read it for days if I could. I don’t need to work do I? I don’t notice bus rides to and from work (dare I say I’m excited to read more about the Starks and the Lannisters, Winterfell and King’s Landing on the way to and from work?) and I gladly read into the early hours of the morning, work shmork.
The only question left is why did it take me so long to get to this point?
The Paperback Princess 