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How have you started reading the aSoIaF books?


Lady-Nymeria

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My daughter insisted I watch GoT, it wasnt until season 2 after a rewatch that I started to get obsessed. I only bought the books after season 5 as I had heard how fabulous they were and all the other characters that were left out in show. I read the books in 6 weeks. I then made my Mother watch the show, and a friend read the books ha !   

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  • 3 weeks later...

A friend was rather obsessed with the books, and she recommenced it to me some four years ago. I plowed through the books, and have been patiently waiting for the TWOW ever since :PI've been browsing the forums avidly for some two years, until joining this summer.

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  • 4 months later...
  • 3 months later...

My daughter was an avid fan of the series. Nearly every day she was raving about how she is dying for the next episode to watch and how terrible the next year will be until the start of the 7th season... I thought of it as of a stereotype black and white fantasy stuff similar to Lord of the Rings - don't beat me, I didn't like the movie, too overblown for my taste, and I never read the book, as I'm not a special fantasy fan (however, I loved Pullman's His Dark Materials very much).

At the time I was deeply into whodunnits and psychological thrillers à la Tana French. I couldn't imagine enjoying a discontinuity like this. One day, my daughter couldn't resist to tell me a short episode (like some persons had to leave their castle, and there was a boy who had a crow with a third eye and a stableboy named Hodor who speaks nothing but "Hodor" - today I know which scene it was about *lol*), and as she got around the dreams the boy had and then around some ghouls named the White Walkers, I said: "Stop it! I've got a feeling, I should read this book!" 

I always preferred reading over watching, for I don't like my imagination being overwhelmed by foreign images. So I got the book from the local library, and as Val McDermid started to bore me, I gave it a shot. The beginning was a bit difficult, partly due to a lot of unkown words (I'm no native English), and I thought I wouldn't read it after all, but even then I was thrilled by the colourful, vivid beauty of Martin's diction. His description of the Others is just breathtaking! And as it came to the final showdown of the Prologue, I was caught entirely.

Now, I whipped through the first two volumes within two months, having just begun the third one, making a daily report to my daughter, even watched the first season of the series and waiting for the arrival of the second (but I love the book still more than the show), and I have a bet with my daughter, who's faster: me reading through the first five books - or GRRM releasing his sixth volume. :D 

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A friend recommended the tv-series Game of Thrones to me. That was already like 3 years ago. I decided to watch it and I liked it (the first 3 seasons that were out at this point) a lot. With season 6 starting, I also started to watch some youtoubers who made videos about GoT and they always praised the books and criticized the show. Since I also thought that season 5 and 6 were pretty disappointing, I decided to read the books and hoped that they were better, and yes they definetely are.

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Actually I've never been a fantasy fan, the LOTR bored me to death. My boyfriend brought me the s1 when I was sick for two weeks and I was cought from the first episode. I watched  first three seasons and decided to start reding the books to get more insight and couldn't stop. I finished TDwD last week and now I#M reding the Dunk&Egg stories. I hope it won't take long till the next book (I'm optimistic):D

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  • 1 month later...

Well, im a big Lover of Books. And my favourite Novel-Genres Are High-Fantasy (Tolkien,Lewis), political Naturalism (Tolstoi,Gorki) and Mystery (Poe,Christie). I thought that there will never be something as good as my favourite Piece of Literature: J. R. R. Tolkiens Work (The Silmarrilion,The Hobbit,The Lord of the Rings) and that made me a bit sad. I go to my local Bookstore every Saturday and i once i asked the seller if he knows something good that combines These 3 Genres and he gave me A Song of Ice and Fire-A Game of Thrones and said: "This ist the best Piece of Fantasy,Realism and Mystery in the 21st Century... Read it!" I watched the Series before and i am at the End of Book 1 now and i have to say it is my favourite Book Series along with Lord of the Rings! I love it its perfect.  

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  • 2 weeks later...
On ‎11‎/‎21‎/‎2013 at 4:13 PM, Lady-Nymeria said:

I know that this series of books are now well known by a lot of people, maybe because of the TV show, but I would like to know the way you came across them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I, for example, hadn't even heard about them until this year. It was a teacher at school (he teaches "ethics" to students in our last year in high school), who had watched Game of Thrones and readed the first 2 books, who first recommended them to me. I then decided to buy them (because I love reading books), and really liked them. I started watching the show with my parents. A few weeks ago, my teacher found out that hardly any of his students had read "The Prince" by Machiavelo, as he had told us to do. He decided then: "If youdon't want to read "The Prince", don't read it. I have a better plan for this semester: we're going to watch Game of Thrones, and then you'll write and essay about it". So I watched the first season again in class, no matter how unfit for a classroom the show is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, how did you find about the series? Do you have a funny story to tell about it?

 

I had avoided the show and books up until January of this year.  While I was deployed someone sent my squadron the whole series of books.

When I was set to return I grabbed A Game of Thrones because I knew I had about 72 hours total of travel time.  I fell in love with it, bought the series, and started watching the show.

I just started my re-read of A Game of Thrones

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  • 2 months later...

channel 2 in Finland (yle tv2) broadcast the show and i started watching it during season 1 when they run marathon 5 episodes in row. I liked the series and i decided to buy first book, i liked it and bought second book.....

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Began reading the books once I learned my mother was reading AGoT in 2011 (after season 1 had ended). I was able to borrow the books, after being on a waiting list, from the library. I continued to read the books for the next year. Probably would have gotten through them more quickly had I bought the books. Have been waiting on TWoW since Summer 2012. It has been a bit painful.

I knew all the spoilers of seasons 2 and on. I laughed when I heard the reactions of people who had no idea what awaited Robb and Cat at the Twins for Edmure's wedding. I will only discuss the books with those I know have read them, and mostly stay quiet otherwise.

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I think it was late 2012 when I started reading them. A friend of mine was obssessed with the books and told me I would love them as well. So when I spotted them at an airport in Bangkok before a long flight, I bought AGOT and gave it a try. During that flight, I read up to the second Catelyn chapter, but then put the book aside for a couple of months both because I was reading other books and I was busy. I started reading them again in 2013 spring (I grabbed AGOT to take along for another flight), and from the moment I read Bran's second chapter I was hooked.

 

I think I finished my first read in 2013 autumn.

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I first heard about the book series from some of my friends/acquaintances who are into Science Fiction and fantasy (it's actually a fan association of sorts that meets regularly to discuss SciFi stuff, that's how we met in the first place). ASOAIF was a big point of discussion, and while I thought at first I wouldn't be interested as I had never been into epic fantasy before (I've seen the LOTR movies and, while I didn't dislike them, they never made me want to read the LOTR books, and I tended to assume most epic fantasy was like that), they told me that I'd probably love ASOAIF, because it's right up my alley - I was known as a fan of SF such as RDM's Battlestar Galactica, and they told me ASOAIF was the epic fantasy equivalent of something like BSG, with moral ambiguity, complex characters, no simple good vs evil divide etc. That got me quite interested, so ASOAIF was on my mental list of things I should one day got around to checking out.

Then after the show started, I kept hearing a lot about it - sadly, I also got some things spoiled for me. So it was even more on my mental list of things to check out, whether the books or the show.

Then one day, I think it was spring or summer of 2013, I happened to find a copy of A Game of Thrones in English the library, sitting right there (the American Corner library - the translated versions are easier to find, but as a rule, I always read books in the original language if I can speak that language really well, so I always avoid translations of English language books). It was very lucky that it happened to be there at the time - they have just one copy of each book, and they're usually on loan. I loaned it, read it and immediately fell in love with the series. (Oddly enough, the spoilers did not diminish my enjoyment at all.) I had to make reservations for the other books, having to wait between a few weeks and a few months - I was lucky enough to find ASOS and AFFC at the same time, but had to wait months for ADWD, and finally decided to find an e-book version and read it on my phone). 

I'm very glad that I first read the books before seeing the show. However, I did see season 1 immediately after finishing AGOT, and season 2 immediately after finishing ACOK (I had the time, while waiting for the other books to become available from the library), and now I regret that, because some of the things they put in those seasons influenced some of my perceptions about characters that the show introduced too early (such as

 

Margaery).

I didn't have any preconceived notions about which would be better, the books or the show, but as soon as I started reading and watching, my preference for the books was obvious, and grew over time. I liked season 1, but there were a few things that bothered me, especially all the sexposition and needless focus on female nudity/brothel scenes. I liked A Clash of Kings even more than the first book (it seems that's an unpopular opinion), but season 2 was quite disappointing, failing to fully do justice to any of the characters/arcs from ACOK. Then I read the rest of the series - books 3, 4 and 5, and loved them all. It's only afterwards that I saw season 3, and then season 4 while it was airing, and I liked the show less and less, but I was still OK with it, for the most part, until season 5, when I really started hating it and stopped watching.

In the meantime, I've bought the complete set of the 5 books from Amazon and I've been re-reading them, and I also bought The World of Ice and Fire. I don't own the anthologies with Dunk and Egg novellas and other novellas, but I've read them all. I also recently bought Dreamsongs, a collection of GRRM's earlier and shorter works, so I've been reading that, too.

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

On Twelfth Night (Epiphany) of this year my daughter and her boyfriend hosted a season 1 marathon.

I became helplessly hooked and after seeing the entire series in less time than I care to confess, started watching the videos at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqBYWvKcQCk5JbRQbO05X0w , the GoT Academy.

Then a friend scolded me for not having read the books and I went round to a used book seller and bought the entire series.

So, so much better than the television series, though HBO has given Lord Petyr Baelish tailoring to die for.

Anyway, here I am.

Waiting for The Winds of Winter.

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  • 1 month later...

I already loved anything to do with Tolkien's LOTR, murder mysteries and history. 

Several people recommended the author to me at SF cons in Ireland, but I was studying then, no money or time to read. I finally got around to buying the first book in November a few years ago. I figured that if I liked the first one, the series might be a good winter read. (Obviously I didn't know it would be like stepping through the wardrobe into Narnia.)

Game of Thrones turned out to be brilliant, one of those rare writers that really draws you in. I rushed out and bought the others in the series as soon as I could and I'm pretty obsessed now - but knew nobody to talk about the books with.

Luckily one friend got hooked on the HBO series, and started asking me for background and backstories. So we regularly ring & email each other with our theories. At the moment we're just waiting... sipping coffee from the GOT mugs my friend gave me for Christmas. 

I'm currently dying for the Winds of Winter to come out, and painting a door-sized map of Westeros to curb my impatience. This helps us to follow the plots, and ask 'what if?' 

And rereading book 1.

I hope you all had an enjoyable St Patrick's Day. 

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I was in sixth class (final year of middle school), it was late 2011/early 2012. I was twelve or thirteen. A classmate recommended the books, and while I was deemed too young to be allowed watch the show, I quickly became obsessed with the books. Have re-read them several times since, and have now turned eighteen and I am hoping to re-read them again this summer following completion of my exams, once I have the time. I feel as though some of the finer details of the plot and indeed the writing style would have been lost on me at a younger age, so I'm looking forward to the opportunity to re-discover them. :) 

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