Recent Reading

The reason I like Gilmore Girls is because in the first episode I ever saw, Rory explains that she carries a book everywhere she goes. And I do that too, so I approve of television characters doing that.

Queen Margot, by Alexandre Dumas

I enjoyed it, but I have to tell you, it's not Dumas's best work. Also, it's not really called "Queen Margot"; it's "Marguerite de Valois". But there was a movie version starring Isabelle Adjani, and that's really the only reason this edition of the book got published. You usually have to go for the depressing World's Classics editions when you're talking about lesser works by big-name authors, but this one got to be published in a more mainstream edition.

The book's about Protestants and Catholics squabbling in France. Although I was more enjoying the random bits of filler Dumas tends to put in when he gets bored. I find an author entertaining himself to be more fun than Huguenots.

A Game of Thrones, by George R. R. Martin

This is why I carry a book everywhere I go.

I didn't think I was going to finish this book this week. It's 800 pages long, and I was only on page 300 on Wednesday night. But then I woke up on Thursday with severe abdominal pain and ended up going to the Emergency Room. And it took five and a half hours for them to decide I had a kidney stone. Now, about thirty minutes of that was taken up with actual activity; Blood Pressure checks, X-Rays, CAT Scans, and so on. But the other five hours, I was sitting in a scandalously thin hospital gown with nothing to do. Except that I brought a book.

So I read it. It helped take my mind off the pain, and also distracted me from the unsettling wails coming from other parts of the ER. And it also gave me something to do besides sit there and imagine various things that could be wrong with me. So I finished the book, and then I had to start over because I didn't have anything else to read.

It's an epic. You can tell that from the 800 pages. And the two books that come after it. It's written in Epic Fantasy, which means old women tend to be called "wizened crones", and horses are always "destriers". It can get a little tiring, but it's all right if you like that sort of thing. It has lots and lots of characters, but at least the inevitable Genealogical List of Everyone in the World shows up at the end of the book this time.

When I was only a few hundred pages in, I had no plans to read the sequels. I was worried from the moment I read that it was "The Major Fantasy Publishing Event of 1996." I've decided I don't like Events. I can't remember the last time I enjoyed watching a Major Motion Picture Event. And Television Events have gotten even dumber than ever. But now I have an obligation. A Game of Thrones was there for me when I spent five hours in an Emergency Room. I owe it.