# Reading game of thrones books



## mongey (Jan 6, 2015)

so I have seen all the show series and love it. I havent been reading much the last few years and felt like doing some again , so I decided to start reading the GoT books 

I'm a third into the 2nd one now and I enjoying it . the 1st book seemed to be the 1st series word for word but the 2nd one the obviosuly had to start cutting thigns for the show

they are a nice read too having seen the show. dotn have to think too much abotu weho is who

any one else reading them post show watching ?


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## wankerness (Jan 7, 2015)

After the second to last episode of season 3, I was so rattled that I immediately started reading the third book from that very point in the plot. I was finished with the third book by the time the 10th episode aired, so I got to join in bookreader's disappointment that the season didn't end with a certain character's revelation (one that seems to be cut from the series entirely given that the entire next season also didn't introduce them). It was actually very easy to pick up on what was going on. I continued on and finished the third and fourth books, and sorta lost interest a few pages into book five. I will probably still read it sometime. 

It was really easy to continue the plot of the show into the book from S3E9 into the corresponding chapter of the book, and I was never lost at any point for the rest of the books. However, season 4 just had crazy divergences right and left and it would be impossible to find a place in the books to pick up if you wanted to start where the series is currently left off. I think if you've watched the first few seasons series all the way through a couple times that you can safely skip the first two books and probably most of the third, too.

The fourth book is really an endurance test as probably 1/3 of the text is just explaining the genealogy of the 4000 new characters they introduce on the iron islands and in Dorne. It has way, way less interesting action with any of the established characters than the previous books.


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## mongey (Jan 7, 2015)

wankerness said:


> After the second to last episode of season 3, I was so rattled that I immediately started reading the third book from that very point in the plot. I was finished with the third book by the time the 10th episode aired, so I got to join in bookreader's disappointment that the season didn't end with a certain character's revelation (one that seems to be cut from the series entirely given that the entire next season also didn't introduce them). It was actually very easy to pick up on what was going on. I continued on and finished the third and fourth books, and sorta lost interest a few pages into book five. I will probably still read it sometime.
> 
> It was really easy to continue the plot of the show into the book from S3E9 into the corresponding chapter of the book, and I was never lost at any point for the rest of the books. However, season 4 just had crazy divergences right and left and it would be impossible to find a place in the books to pick up if you wanted to start where the series is currently left off. I think if you've watched the first few seasons series all the way through a couple times that you can safely skip the first two books and probably most of the third, too.
> 
> The fourth book is really an endurance test as probably 1/3 of the text is just explaining the genealogy of the 4000 new characters they introduce on the iron islands and in Dorne. It has way, way less interesting action with any of the established characters than the previous books.


 

yeah my brother in law has read them and he warned me theres a few tougher patches to slog through in the later books


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## SD83 (Jan 11, 2015)

I still haven't watched seasons 2 onwards  
Most of the books were great, but there are a few things that still piss me of which I think will work great in the movies (because in the series they'll probably just disappear), all of which are routed in Martins obsession with with food, dresses, genealogy and whores. I feel like I skipped half of the third book because most of it seemed to consist of describtions of feasts and Cersei's dresses. I skipped two sub plots in 4 and 5 entirely as well as it just felt they were going absolutly nowhere. I still don't feel like I missed anything. (I liked 4 & 5 way more than 3 though, that one had just sooooo hilariously long describtions of uninteresting stuff)
Another thing was that I constantly had the feeling that I didn't know where and when something took place relative to other sub plots. There is no calendar, no scales for the maps, nothing. Do these things happen at the same day, or months appart? Would it take 3 days to get from A to B or 2 weeks? Maybe I'll never know. George Martin has to have whole books with distances, maps, info on about 12,000 characters and their relations to each other, it's rather hard to figure out all of that on ones own.
Still, I hope the sixth and seventh books will be released in my lifetime...


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## Explorer (Jan 15, 2015)

I'm not counting on the series coming to an end.

(Personally, I lost quite a bit of enthusiasm on the books long ago after it seemed like underage rape porn, and never got into the series after that.)


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## bostjan (Jan 23, 2015)

Just a word to the wary: the last season of the show has started to deviate substantially from the novel series.

Personally, I was told about these books with great enthusiasm, and I feel moderately let down by them. They are not as well written as I expected, and they do tend to bog down with details much more than I would like, but the overall plot and the mythos behind them, I think, are really cool - which makes them perfect for a show adaptation, as it were.


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## wankerness (Jan 24, 2015)

bostjan said:


> Personally, I was told about these books with great enthusiasm, and I feel moderately let down by them. They are not as well written as I expected, and they do tend to bog down with details much more than I would like, but the overall plot and the mythos behind them, I think, are really cool - which makes them perfect for a show adaptation, as it were.



I agree with this. My friends that read a lot of fantasy love them, cause I guess this is just what fantasy books do, but to someone like me who never reads any at all I had a hard time dealing with it. The general structure of the writing is like this:

Character gets introduced: 1 sentence
Character's lineage gets outlined: 15 sentences
Character's clothes get described: 10 sentences
Character's dialogue: 1 sentence
Character walks into a room: 1 sentence
Food in the room gets described: 10 pages

If you stripped the writing down down to what actually happens in the book and the dialogue they'd be about 1/3 as long, if that.


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## Choop (Jan 24, 2015)

The detail in song of ice and fire never felt too bogged down to me personally...I like that kind of stuff though. Plus I feel like that kind of worldbuilding is important for the reader to have any idea of context for which events happen and why. There are really complex circumstances that lead characters to do things that they do.


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## bostjan (Jan 24, 2015)

wankerness said:


> I agree with this. My friends that read a lot of fantasy love them, cause I guess this is just what fantasy books do, but to someone like me who never reads any at all I had a hard time dealing with it. The general structure of the writing is like this:
> 
> Character gets introduced: 1 sentence
> Character's lineage gets outlined: 15 sentences
> ...



Fixed


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## GoldDragon (Jan 24, 2015)

The shows are higher quality than the books. I read the books first and after book 2 the quality really drops. It loses steam. At least the show cleans up the storytelling. I advise people to enjoy the show skip the books. I feel the books ruined the show for me.


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## Nickh (Mar 6, 2015)

I watched the show up to season four before I started reading the books and I just recently finished book five. So I'm in the unique situation where I began the series not knowing what would happen episode to episode, but now I know everything that's going to happen for the next few seasons. That is so long as the show doesn't deviate too far from the novel. I would suggest to anyone who wants to read the books that they should watch the show first and then read the books after. It makes visualizing the characters and scenes exponentially easier.


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