How did you get into ASOIF

[Whatever]

My parents named me after Corwin of Amber

Cool!!

[undertow]

I heard that Sean Bean had been signed for some HBO fantasy series written by the 'American Tolkien.' Next time I went to the bookstore I bought AGOT. A few days later I went and bought the rest of the series.

[dixiehellcat]

Kof-pie, that is indeed awesome! I love me some Amber. (and I'll really scare y'all by telling you my bff & I wrote a mashup fanfic series back in tha day, which incorporated Amber, Narnia, and Miami Vice...)

Ahem. Anyway, to the actual topic. There's a thread on another board where I'm active, about HBO's GoT. I kept seeing it but never took a closer look. Then when I got my Kindle for my birthday I went prowling for free books and found all 4 ASoIaF's. The name rang a bell and I went 'what the heck, I'll give em a try'.

Whoa. What a try. That was last Tuesday & I'm well into ASoS. :) Hope to get thru all 4 before ADwD comes out.

[Firekeeper]

I was looking for something else to read and saw the series getting alot of phrase on a forum. Read up abit on what it was about and decided to give it a shot. The rest is history.

[Arrogant Bastard]

I found about this series from seeing an HBO ad in December. I'd never heard of it, and from the short preview I actually thought it was about a fantasy medieval gladiator competition. I decided to get A Game of Thrones from the library solely based on my respect for previous HBO shows like The Wire, Deadwood, and the Sopranos. Honestly, if scifi or even Showtime had picked up Game of Thrones rather than HBO i never would have bothered or probably even heard of the series.

I started the series slowly, but at about the 200 page mark I zoomed through the rest of the book and immediately drove to Barnes and Noble to pick up the rest. I'm not a huge fantasy fan, but this is by far my favorite series of books. Luckily I started with the TV show and fifth book right around the corner.

[Hyper]

I became aware of the series first after seeing one of the first HBO trailers for the show, in December or January. A second trailer made me even more interested, so I picked up the first book in a bookstore. This was 3 weeks ago.

I read through it in a few days, and immediately went out and purchased the ACOK, ASOS, and AFFC. I have now read through all 4 books, eagerly anticipating book 5 - And certainly the HBO series. :thumbsup:

[Kit]

Last October I had gone out to eat in the neighborhood with some friends. The restaurant we went to is right next to a wonderful locally-owned bookstore and, since we're all nerds around here and wanted to kill some time, we of course decided to stop in just to look. We went around laughing at all the weird mystery books and boilerplate fantasy books and whatnot, and then we saw a sign that was titled something like "Still Suffering from PHPD (Post Harry Potter Depression)? Check out these book series!"

Massive millenial nerd that I am who grew up on Harry Potter, I picked up on that straight away. Either the first or second series on the list was ASOIAF. I can't remember how they described it, but it was something about political scheming and whatnot, which got my attention, although I was convinced just by the title of the series (A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE, really? So stereotypical, I told myself) that it would be enjoyable but very boilerplate and formulaic, kind of like a John Grisham book in the fantasy realm or something. I had told myself that I would read for pleasure a lot more, however, so I picked up the MMPB version of AGoT, figuring that it was only 7 bucks and wouldn't set me back that much.

I didn't start it for a few weeks as I was busy finishing some trash I'd picked up at a used bookstore. At first it vaguely intrigued me but didn't really catch my attention, until "The things I do for love," which was when I knew I had to at least finish this volume. The last hundred-two hundred pages sold me on the series as a whole, so I went back to the same bookstore and picked up the other three. The clerk who checked me out said she'd seen a lot of people showing interest in them lately.

[Lany Freelove Cassandra]

15 yrs ago, or so, I was a recent college grad, my kids were on summer vacation and we spent a lot of time at the library. I also belonged to the Sci Fi book club but frequently forgot to fill out the "don't send" these book cards. one of the ones I failed to request not be sent was Game of Thrones. After a few months I had gone through the majority of good books in our little library, so I looked at that box of unwanted books, pulled out Game of Thrones and started reading. I was hooked.

[Niphredil]

3 years ago, I was at a bookstore looking for a nice book to buy. For some reason which I can't even remember, Game of Thrones caught my attention, I read the back cover, looked good, so I bought it. Went home and read the prologue, meh, typical fantasy. Read the next few chapters and may jaw dropped to floor. No turning back from then on.

All right, my joining date tells a different story. Apparently it has already been 5 years since I picked up ASOIAF and just HAD to read other people's opinions and discussions on the plot that I looked for a forum. Has it really been that long?

[Ryan E]

Like the title says. For me, after i finished Tolkien i was looking for more fantasy to read, and found this site.

http://www.bestfantasybooks.com/best-fantasy-series.php

I started to read series the site recomended. I read a bunch of Raymond E Feist stuff, and the WOT series, as well as His Dark Materials. Then i had noticed that he had rated ASOIF as the number one recommendation, so i took it up and been in love ever since.

Wow. I found it from that exact same site as well Whitebeard, and have read a couple of the other series as well based on their recommendation: The Malazan (just the first 3), the First Law by Abercrombie, and the Lies of Locke Lamora.

[dixiehellcat]

Last October I had gone out to eat in the neighborhood with some friends. The restaurant we went to is right next to a wonderful locally-owned bookstore and, since we're all nerds around here and wanted to kill some time, we of course decided to stop in just to look. We went around laughing at all the weird mystery books and boilerplate fantasy books and whatnot, and then we saw a sign that was titled something like "Still Suffering from PHPD (Post Harry Potter Depression)? Check out these book series!"

Massive millenial nerd that I am who grew up on Harry Potter, I picked up on that straight away. Either the first or second series on the list was ASOIAF. I can't remember how they described it, but it was something about political scheming and whatnot, which got my attention, although I was convinced just by the title of the series (A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE, really? So stereotypical, I told myself) that it would be enjoyable but very boilerplate and formulaic, kind of like a John Grisham book in the fantasy realm or something. I had told myself that I would read for pleasure a lot more, however, so I picked up the MMPB version of AGoT, figuring that it was only 7 bucks and wouldn't set me back that much.

I didn't start it for a few weeks as I was busy finishing some trash I'd picked up at a used bookstore. At first it vaguely intrigued me but didn't really catch my attention, until "The things I do for love," which was when I knew I had to at least finish this volume. The last hundred-two hundred pages sold me on the series as a whole, so I went back to the same bookstore and picked up the other three. The clerk who checked me out said she'd seen a lot of people showing interest in them lately.

May I ask what bookstore? I've been to Chicago a few times and found some marvelous bookstores, especially in the Wicker Park/Bucktown area. (Quimby's FTW!)

[DragonAge93]

I've always been a medieval fantasy fan. While scouring the internet one day, a site I was on was talking about how HBO is making a show called "Game Of Thrones". Thought it sounded cool and interesting, and saw it was based off a book series. I didn't get the first book till November last year, but I've known about it since late 2009. On March 22nd I bought the new boxset of all four books with the GoT pics on it. Almost done with AGoT, and eagerly looking to dig into ACoK.

[Kit]

May I ask what bookstore? I've been to Chicago a few times and found some marvelous bookstores, especially in the Wicker Park/Bucktown area. (Quimby's FTW!)

The bookstore where I bought ASOIAF is 57th Street Books, in Hyde Park. (Yeah, U of C undergrad here haha). As far as used bookstores go, my friends and I go to Bookman's Corner in the Belmont area a few times a year.

[morbiczer]

In 2003 the Aeron chapter from AFFC where he learns of Balon's death was printed in Dragon magazine. I read it and liked it (although in hindsight I must say it is not representative of the series at all).

Then around the same time they had a D&D-based ASOIAF mini-game in Dungeon magazine. It talked about the world, the Night's Watch, introduced some characters. Melisandre's picture looked awsome!

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix came out around that time, and I wanted to order it on Amazon, so that I got the English version asap (I lived in Germany at that time). To get the free shipping I need to add another book. I chose AGOT, and the rest is history.

[elfish_warrior]

I got into it thanks to Werthead starting the GRRM thread on SFX forum. His gushing over the series (well deserved I might add) got me into it.

[Rodgex]

I was recommended the series by a friend, and then bought the first book when I saw it in the bookstore. We now talk about the series obsessively every few days...

[Merihathor]

My husband had been recommended the book, so he in turn recommended it to me after he finished the first book. I was hooked after that :-)

[twincast]

The dev team of BioWare's Dragon Age: Origins constantly cited ASoIaF as a heavy influence, so I decided to try the books about a year before the eventual release of the game, so late '08, maybe early '09? Needless to say I got hooked immediately. I've only been occasionally lurking here, though, only signing up yesterday - primarily to comment on the video games.

[wolf spider]

About 5-6 years ago, I was looking for fantasy books on amazon.com for my husband's birthday. I came across enough reviews that basically said "this book is ok, but if you want to read something really worthwhile, check out Game of Thrones". I bought him a copy and he loved it.

He left the book lying around while in the middle of reading it, so I picked it up and started to read the first few pages and was hooked. He had to wrestle it away from me.

[Reposado]

I read Game of Thrones when I was young and as there was yet no sequel, it was stashed in an attic. Then one September after everyone else had left for college(was on trimesters) I started reading the latest WOT(the one series I had kept up with). When I finished I started remembering GOT, remembering a series left unfinished.

"There was that one where the family came from the north, and the kids all had wolves, that was a good one," was all that I remembered. SO I found it in the closet, re-read it and then headed down to the store to see if there was a new one. There were two new ones and I read them, then immediately re-read all three once more.