Game of Thrones is a book I've had since high school (so about 8 years now), I've started, stopped, restarted, stopped, so many times. That's the way I am with quite a few books actually. Some attention span thing/shit getting in the way distracting from any concentrated time reading thing I guess. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Last I checked, looks like I left off at page 214 when was it, a year ago? I would like to finish the damn thing so I can go on the next books, but don't want to have to re-read it to catch on which characters were which (though I do remember mostly major events and happenings up to that point). And since that time I've had certain things in the series inadvertently spoiled to me since the HBO adaptation's been the talk of the town. Like, now I know how a certain character in the first book will meet their fate by the end and the shock of it will simply not be there, same as a couple other things I've caught on about. :/ Very sad, I hope there is still some element of surprise left for me in at least the first three books (I have no interest in watching the HBO series btw, at least not until I'm done with the books that is).
Last books I read were... Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian which is absolutely brilliant but definitely not for everyone, and Robert Cormier's (author most known for The Chocolate War) After the First Death which is a solid page-turner with some genuine poignancy. Neither are books I would recommend to a severely depressed person or generally anyone looking for fun or uplifting reading. What I love about Blood Meridian besides its jaw-dropping prose is how detailed and researched it is and yet how subverted this intensive research is with scenes bordering on the surreal, strange descriptions of events and landscapes that seem like that of some hostile alien planet (it's a western that takes place in the 1850s mainly on the Mexican border btw). And then there's Judge Holden, wow. Easily one of the greatest villains in any form of fiction in general. What I got is that the first half of the novel is the more violent and visceral, showcasing the disturbing brutality that took place, the last half is when Judge Holden's character really begins to open up and offers his philosophical justification for these events. Still to the end it never lets up on the sense of how fleeting life, and even death, are, with people, places, things and events that come and go in equal (in)significance. McCarthy also wrote The Road, a post-apocalyptic novel and his first try at it, but if it weren't for the historical fiction tag and events of this book I'd say Blood Meridian may as well be a post-apocalyptic novel by itself. The boneyards at the end, eek. Keep in mind if you read this book expecting lots of complex character development and arcs read something else. The book keeps as much a distance from the characters outside of basic physical description and actions as possible (Judge Holden being the obvious exception, though he never really "develops," he remains the same character the whole way through, a point that the book sort of emphasizes pretty strongly a few points, it's just that he remains initially somewhat mysterious and in the background with more and more of his terrifying personality being unveiled as it goes on; the supposed "main" character, the kid, disappears and reappears in the narrative at will, says very little, mostly short, monosyllabic exchanges, though he is the one we follow along with the whole way through, Toadvine and the ex-priest Tobin have some small interesting character details too but overall it's definitely not the point of the book).
After the First Death is a much easier read, well in terms of writing style, not necessarily content as it's pretty rough. The plot: terrorists hijack a children's schoolbus and their demands are far from compromising as are their rules, saying that for each one of them that dies one child on the bus will die as well. It jumps between first-person narration from the perspective of a general and his son reflecting on the past events and their involvement in it and then a third-person description of the thoughts of the characters in the bus, from the driver to one of the terrorists. The ending pulls a bit of a Shyamalan on the reader in terms of one of the characters (which some may suspect early on if you read between the lines close enough) and pulls no punches, and you felt the genuine threat of the terrorists and what they would do next. However after I was done I never was that convinced by the terrorists or their tactics. The motivation is a kind of worldwide revolution to restore their homeland (heavy implications of being Palestinian here, though that might be a retroactive analysis, this was written in 1979 when the Iranian Revolution was at its height, I wouldn't doubt that that was a heavy influence on the book), which is never named. I wish some of the terrorist characters were more humanized. The ringleader is just cold and calculated, a means justifying the ends kind of person with no inclination of empathy, just his mission, two other terrorists are just ciphers there as plot justifications, one's the muscle and the other the black driver who never speaks. The one whose headspace we get into, Miro, is more interesting though he rings of that "repressed foreigner who finds hidden pleasure in western culture" kind of character which I generally don't care for, but they don't compromise his character in the end which was a good move. The interactions between the attractive female bus driver, Kate, trying hard to keep her head straight and calm the children down, and Miro was an interesting dynamic. They are essentially playing with and trying to win each other over for their own ends, Miro for the success of his operation and keeping everyone calm, and Kate so she can try and escape the hellish situation, and when you think some genuine sympathies develop they drop immediately when one reveals or tries something to the other that puts them back as enemies. Anyway I think it could have been more even-handed in its depiction of the characters, despite the ending it's still feels very much like "good Americans" vs. "evil generic foreign terrorists" kind of tale, a little more grayscale would have helped, which this book does admirably try its hand at but doesn't quite succeed. A solid, bleak thriller with some good writing and brutal bluntness (I'll just say it's not a book that sees children as Spielbergian immortal beings and that a sealed bus full of drugged-up children in near-unbearable heat for a day isn't shown as being the most pleasant or clean environment to be in) but I wouldn't call it a classic. Worth a read if the subject interests you, it sells really cheap on Amazon, probably could find it even cheaper at some used book dealies but far from essential. Still I think it would make for a great movie adaptation in the right hands if they'd tweak certain aspects a bit, as the subject matter rings to an alarmingly relevant degree today.
Post edited August 31, 2013 by cannard
