"These are northmen, uncle. The north remembers."

According to commonly adapted reading routines, carrying a book with you for the amount of five consecutive months can mean two things: either you're despising the material but are determined to finish whatever book you've started (not the best piece of advice for that matter) or the book actually is your diary. Both of these scenarios can so NOT be considered in this case (although keeping a diary that epic and rich of details would be amazing), so let's add another category that I'd like to call "must be a fucking George R. R. Martin book".

My love for his work is something I cannot put into words. Although I can only talk about what he did with his epic fantasy saga A Song of Ice and Fire that you probably all know/have read/have seen the tv show, I am convinced that his way to tell a story is special. First off, I cannot strech enough how crucial his decision to tell each chapter from one of approximately ten characters's view was for how his story comes across. All the different point of views on the state of the realm, other (minor) characters and even the mythology itself provide a multi-layered image of Westeros and beyond as a storyworld and I cannot cope with how beautifully this is done. Simultaneously it makes you get HYPER invested in a lot of characters and still you're constantly on the edge of your toes wanting to know more about minor characters that keep appearing in other people's chapter, so you may know their actions and listen to their lines of dialog but you may never get to know what's going on inside their heads (speical mentions here: Joffrey, Robb, Cercei, Gendry, the Spider and so on and so on... luckily at least one of them is going to have chapters in A Feast for Crows and I am BEYOND HAPPY OMG).

I am not even sure what this piece of post is supposed to be. A review? Not exactly. As you can see beyond clearly I am not even able to articulate what I feel about the series as a whole I'm not really in the position to give you a detailed report on the last 1128 pages I've read in the last 5 months (as mentioned somewhere far above).

But WHY oh WHY is reading this - as you claim almost perfect high fantasy saga - taking you that much time? Five months appear to be such a long time for someone who is supposedly "obsessed" with the series? And this is the part of the post where I can't really can't offer any logic explanations. Because there aren't. Reading these books takes me to a place far away and it is sometimes a rather slow and sometimes a rather fast-paste experience. Overall I presume I'm not the fastest reader anyway, so when a character-driven over-1000-pages book is on the menue this feature prevails even more then normally. I once stated in a conversation with a friend that I enjoy spending a lot of my time on this series, it makes the experience more special to me, you know, carrying the book with me for such a long period of time. Although this is true nonetheless, I don't claim that being the actual reason, it's more the outcome of it. Maybe spending so much time with the books makes me love the whole journey even more. It sounds legit since my brain probably needs something to hold on to when it decides to spend so much of my life time on it. And yes, I speak of my brain in the third person and blaims it for all the things I don't really feel in control of. Creeps.

This is rather me talking about my reading experience with A Storm of Swords then reviewing it, I sense now. So sorry if you're acutally interested in the plot or anything ABOUT the book ITSELF (please transfer to something along the lines of its amazon page, goodreads or your local bookstore now). From my opinion, the only thing I can tell you is that the books are getting better with every new book: clash of kings being better then game of thrones and storm of swords being better then clash of kings... the depth of my "review" is breathtaking, isn't it?

If by now you're doubting whether the article/post is worth spending your time on, let me tell you: I am not telling you how much time I spent on this series in vain! What I try to convey by it is that it doesn't matter how many books I miss out on reading during the time it takes or how hard it is sometimes to keep on reading, it is worth all the same. And in the end (like now after finishing one), you're most likely hungry for more. Although reading the first two novels directly after one another didn't work out that well for me since I kind of fell into an ASOIAF-overdose-state afterwards meaning not wanting to touch the next book for the next couple of months I found back to the series and consumed the last one even faster. So that's what I'm gonna do with book for: read directly after the third since I feel full of energy to consume it whole (or at least that's what I am telling myself). 

Oh my, this turned out to be a whole lot of me rambling. Perhaps I should consider recording a podcast, a medium that tolerates rambling a lot more I guess (or so I hope). Anyway, you're stuck with this text for now. If this was indeed an interactive podcast I'd now ask you ladies and gentlemen to express your thoughts and feelings toward the correlation of time it takes you to read a book and the amount of love you have for it - not necessarily implying that there is one of course.

enjoy read- WAIT! There is no possibly scenario in which I publish ASOIAF-related content without expressing my enduring love for Jon Snow. He is my precious baby and his chapters are everything to me. Oh lord, I do sound weird. Better stop writing before I elaborate on my deep feelings for Sansa Stark... oh well... maybe another time! (And oh hey I survived without a single "Winter is coming")

enjoy reading & love hemmingway

Happiness [...] is only the first hour after the alleviation of some ecspecially intense misery (part 1)

I'm starting off with this kind of depressive quotation from the book I read at the moment: The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Having read The Great Gatsby this year (goes without saying that I did that before I saw the movie and I demand you to go the same way with book-to-movie-adaptions as often as you can) and liking his way of constructing a story and his main themes and setting (New York feat. 1920s, rich folks who don't really know what to do with their lifes (let's see: leave out NY, 1920 and the rich part and you got me)) I decided to pick up another of his highly acclaimed novels and found this used copy a couple of months ago which I completely adore! Honestly, the cover is probably the most beautiful one I own. Plus, there is a lot of turqouise at the back and spine which happens to be my favorite colour.

But you know, you should never judge a book by its cover, this goes for real life and books. So let's pretend that the cover didn't amaze you to start with: is this novel still any good or does it fail to keep up with the high expectations The Great Gatsby might have evoked?


I can only give you my opionion about the first half of the book since I am still in the reading process, but I really want to post about this book already!
The crucial thing for me about this book was the very beginning which I really love. While getting into The Great Gatsby took me some couple of chapters and visits at the Buchanan's, this one kicked off for me right from the start. It was entertaining, interessing, you get to know the protagonist's whole life story so far and a little bit about his family and what character traits he developed in which particular part of his upbringing. I found that quite amusing. After getting to know Anthony Patch (who I so far really liked as a character and kind of considered to be a little bit like me), we see him in some nowadays situation and get introduced to the who and who of his minimal social life. Even though there is not a lot going on there, I really liked Fitzgerald's writing style and how he always managed to get some really deep thoughts about the meaningless of life and society into somehow everyday life's thoughts and situations.

The novel starts to get even more interessing when the main female is entering the stage: Gloria Gilbert who is not only the perfect fit for a melodic alliteration but also the definition of beauty and witty and Anthony (who would have thought otherwise?) can't help but fall deeply in love with her.

What follows is a love story that you can not quite fall for - or at least I can't. It started to feel damned and destructive at least for Anthony, but turns out to be just bright and shinny thorughout a (maybe too) long phase of the book. Somehow, the two love birds spent their days and years being the most important part of eachother's life and finding excuses for not doing anything proper apart from travelling and observing life until it's not enough anymore. Or something like that. I don't really know because I just reached the part I am currently reading. And I don't really know where Fitzgerald is heading at the moment with his story. Should I root for Anthony & Gloria to be together and start a family? Or should I pray for them to get separated and finally find their place in life? I don't know, probably the former. Parts of his novel feel like a cheesy romance novel, parts feel like some of Nick Carraway's thought material and he definitely was better off without a girlfriend.

So writing style is A+, storytelling is leaving me conflicted so far but I enjoy the characters once again. Anthony although he slightly changed (or grow?) over this first half of the book and definitely doesn't resemble me that much anymore is a nice fellow that you like to listen to explaining how he sees the world. Gloria annoys me a lot but also has some interesting traits which make her not a very likeable but a strong and consequently built character. She reminded me a lot of The Sun Also Rises' Brett in the beginning but turned out to resemble Catherine Barkley (A Farewell to Arms) a lot more when it comes to here epic not-being-able-to-breath-without-each-other love with Anthony later on. But that might just be my inner Hemingway geek.

This is not my final rating of this book since there is nearly as much as I just wrote about to discover about the novel in its second half. But I really wanted to get this off my chest right now - so my new impressions won't influence my view of this first half.

It's basically YOUR chance to start the book and finish it before me right now! At least I got a little bit more motivated to read while typing these lines :)

enjoy reading & love hemingway