First off, I apologize that my review has been a long time coming. I am in the middle of a big move, and I’m afraid my blogging has suffered as a result. However, I would like to offer a brief defense of A Game of Thrones. I initially read the book several months ago and was instantly smitten with the series. While I typically don’t read epic fantasy, the sheer unpredictability of A Game of Thrones distinguished it from similar efforts in the genre.
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Every month the readheads pick one book that all three of us read and review. Our first book of the month for 2010(!) is Timothy Ferris’ Coming of Age in the Milky Way (2003 edition).
Synopsis from Publishers Weekly:
The ancient Egyptians regarded the sky as a kind of tent canopy. Thirty centuries later, astronomer William Herschel argued that the sun belongs to a huge cluster of stars (a galaxy, as we call it today) and charted great swaths of intergalactic space through a telescope. How the human species slowly awakened to the vast reaches of space and time is the story absorbingly told by popular science writer Ferris (The Red Limit, Galaxies). His narrative humanizes the scientific enterprise […] from Darwin’s and Lyell’s investigations of the age of the earth to modern physicists’ quest for a perfectly symmetrical, hyperdimensional universe.
Have you guys read Coming of Age in the Milky Way? If so, please tell us what you thought in the comments! If not, the start of a new year is the perfect time to learn more about the history of the universe and our understanding of it. Read along with us and check back for our reviews later this month!
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This month I was really absorbed by other things and put off reading A Game of Thrones until a few days ago. I bulldozed straight through it over the past three days – and boy, is that the wrong way to read this book. I ended up feeling completely swamped by the unending horror and cruelty that just never let up. By the end of the book I was so frustrated I was ready to throw it away.
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I’m not really a fantasy person. Or maybe I should say I’m only into fantasy if it’s a young adult book, and even then only if the book comes from an author I have been loyal to for years. But a fantasy book, the first in a long series might I add, thrust at me by an author I’ve never heard of? It took me a while to pick it up and even longer to actually get into it, but once I had given A Game of Thrones a fair chance (I think 200 pages is more than fair), I was surprised at how much I took to certain characters and how complex the storyline became. Continue reading →
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It is a truth universally acknowledged that a classic novel often suffers the embarrassment of countless adaptations (and hideously misused opening sentences). Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is a classic work that is still widely-read today despite being published in 1813, because while the setting is period-specific, the entertaining absurdities of Austen’s characters and intricate plot are timeless. It is no surprise that the novel has been adapted numerous times for books, movies, and television shows. Off the top of my head, I can think of the books Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (a popular undead re-telling) and An Assembly Such as This (P&P from Darcy’s point of view), as well as the A&E 1996 film and the more recent 2005 feature film.
Add to these Lost in Austen, a four part television series by Guy Andrews that starts from a puzzling premise: what would happen to one of the best-loved English novels of all time if the heroine were removed entirely and replaced with an every-woman from our time? As the brief summary from Amazon.com tells us:
Amanda Price is sick of the modern world. She yearns for the romance and elegance found in the books by her favorite author, Jane Austen. But she’s about to get a rude awakening as one fateful evening, she is propelled into the scheming 19th century world of Pride and Prejudice while that book’s Elizabeth Bennet is hurled into hers. As the book’s familiar plot unfolds, Amanda triggers new romantic twists and turns within the Bennet family circle as she clumsily tries to help the sisters nab husbands and even captivates the tantalizing Mr. Darcy herself. But what about Elizabeth… and what will become of one of the world’s greatest love stories?
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Starring: Jemima Rooper, Elliot Cowan, Hugh Bonneville, Florence Hoath, Alex Kingston
Rating: NR (Not Rated)
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