Love of Books

Last night, I spent the entire evening reading books to Gavin. I picked him up from daycare, and he was reading books with the provider. They told me he'd been doing so all day. When we got home and I put him down, he immediately grabbed The Biggest Cookie in the World and crawled into my lap. We read it five times before Kevin came up for dinner. Well, we read it twice. The rest of the time he flipped through willy-nilly, stopping on the pictures he liked and stroking Cookie Monster's fur. (There is no fur to stroke, it's just a picture book. He does this with pictures of cats, too.)

After dinner we moved on to his current favorite, Llama Llama, Red Pajama. Then he grabbed Quantum Physics for Babies from the couch and we read that one, too. When he'd exhausted his appetite for those books (and the cookie one again) he ran to his room and came back with another book.

I have to say, it gets a bit tedious reading the same book over and over and over again. We cycled through five or six books. Each of them takes less than five minutes to read. But we sat on that couch for nearly an hour, working our way through them again and again.

Sometimes Kevin took a turn reading. Sometimes Gavin grabbed a book and flipped quietly through it by himself for a while, until he decided he wanted one of us to read to him again. It was an evening full of books.

This feels like my biggest success as a parent so far: Gavin's love of books. I'm not entirely sure how I managed to instill it in him. Some combination of reading to him all the time and reading in front of him the rest of the time. I hope it continues for the rest of his life. I'm looking forward to telling him that he's always been a reader, right from the beginning.

Girls Who Read

As a girl who reads, I have to say that I absolutely adore both of these essays.

The first, titled You Should Date an Illiterate Girl, was originally published by Charles Warnke on Thought Catalog a year ago. It's posted in two parts, and it's the second part that really gets me. I love this dude's bitterness and the way he articulates it.

Date a girl who doesn’t read. Find her in the weary squalor of a Midwestern bar. Find her in the smoke, drunken sweat, and varicolored light of an upscale nightclub. Wherever you find her, find her smiling. Make sure that it lingers when the people that are talking to her look away. Engage her with unsentimental trivialities. Use pick-up lines and laugh inwardly. Take her outside when the night overstays its welcome. Ignore the palpable weight of fatigue. Kiss her in the rain under the weak glow of a streetlamp because you’ve seen it in film. Remark at its lack of significance. Take her to your apartment. Dispatch with making love. Fuck her.

Let the anxious contract you’ve unwittingly written evolve slowly and uncomfortably into a relationship. Find shared interests and common ground like sushi, and folk music. Build an impenetrable bastion upon that ground. Make it sacred. Retreat into it every time the air gets stale, or the evenings get long. Talk about nothing of significance. Do little thinking. Let the months pass unnoticed. Ask her to move in. Let her decorate. Get into fights about inconsequential things like how the fucking shower curtain needs to be closed so that it doesn’t fucking collect mold. Let a year pass unnoticed. Begin to notice.

Figure that you should probably get married because you will have wasted a lot of time otherwise. Take her to dinner on the forty-fifth floor at a restaurant far beyond your means. Make sure there is a beautiful view of the city. Sheepishly ask a waiter to bring her a glass of champagne with a modest ring in it. When she notices, propose to her with all of the enthusiasm and sincerity you can muster. Do not be overly concerned if you feel your heart leap through a pane of sheet glass. For that matter, do not be overly concerned if you cannot feel it at all. If there is applause, let it stagnate. If she cries, smile as if you’ve never been happier. If she doesn’t, smile all the same.

Let the years pass unnoticed. Get a career, not a job. Buy a house. Have two striking children. Try to raise them well. Fail, frequently. Lapse into a bored indifference. Lapse into an indifferent sadness. Have a mid-life crisis. Grow old. Wonder at your lack of achievement. Feel sometimes contented, but mostly vacant and ethereal. Feel, during walks, as if you might never return, or as if you might blow away on the wind. Contract a terminal illness. Die, but only after you observe that the girl who didn’t read never made your heart oscillate with any significant passion, that no one will write the story of your lives, and that she will die, too, with only a mild and tempered regret that nothing ever came of her capacity to love.

Do those things, god damnit, because nothing sucks worse than a girl who reads. Do it, I say, because a life in purgatory is better than a life in hell. Do it, because a girl who reads possesses a vocabulary that can describe that amorphous discontent as a life unfulfilled—a vocabulary that parses the innate beauty of the world and makes it an accessible necessity instead of an alien wonder. A girl who reads lays claim to a vocabulary that distinguishes between the specious and soulless rhetoric of someone who cannot love her, and the inarticulate desperation of someone who loves her too much. A vocabulary, god damnit, that makes my vacuous sophistry a cheap trick.

Do it, because a girl who reads understands syntax. Literature has taught her that moments of tenderness come in sporadic but knowable intervals. A girl who reads knows that life is not planar; she knows, and rightly demands, that the ebb comes along with the flow of disappointment. A girl who has read up on her syntax senses the irregular pauses—the hesitation of breath—endemic to a lie. A girl who reads perceives the difference between a parenthetical moment of anger and the entrenched habits of someone whose bitter cynicism will run on, run on well past any point of reason, or purpose, run on far after she has packed a suitcase and said a reluctant goodbye and she has decided that I am an ellipsis and not a period and run on and run on. Syntax that knows the rhythm and cadence of a life well lived.

Date a girl who doesn’t read because the girl who reads knows the importance of plot. She can trace out the demarcations of a prologue and the sharp ridges of a climax. She feels them in her skin. The girl who reads will be patient with an intermission and expedite a denouement. But of all things, the girl who reads knows most the ineluctable significance of an end. She is comfortable with them. She has bid farewell to a thousand heroes with only a twinge of sadness.

Don’t date a girl who reads because girls who read are the storytellers. You with the Joyce, you with the Nabokov, you with the Woolf. You there in the library, on the platform of the metro, you in the corner of the café, you in the window of your room. You, who make my life so god damned difficult. The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life that I told of at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being storied. So out with you, girl who reads. Take the next southbound train and take your Hemingway with you. I hate you. I really, really, really hate you.

The second essay, Date a Girl Who Reads, was (according to the internet) written in response to the first by Rosemarie Urquico. I actually read this one first, and it led me to the original article. I love this one for saying what it means, though I think the original is a bit more clever for the way it gets exactly the same message across.

Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.

Geeky Day

The fourth of May wasn't exactly Star Wars day for me, but it was still filled geekery.

After work (which I left a tad early) I went to see Kristin Cashore speak at a library in Bethesda, MD. Well, I tried to. Google told me it would take about 20 minutes on the metro and I failed to account for either rush hour or my complete lack of direction. I didn't arrive until nearly half an hour after she started speaking, but I did get to see the Q&A. Most of her talk seemed to be about the writing of Bitterblue. I recognized the end of it from some of her blog posts.

The Q&A led to some fun tidbits. Like the fact that Katsa means  peenis in Italian, or that Po means butt in German. Some of the names had to be changed for translations. And on the topic of crazy fans, someone (not at the event, this was just a story) asked if Leck had been based on President Obama. Some people just completely fail reading comprehension.

Cashore also confirmed that she wants to write at least one more book in this world. She didn't drop any other hints, but I'm excited for any news that comes next. And I got my book signed. :)

Later that night, Kevin and I went to see The Avengers. It was so awesome. I can't remember the last time I had that much fun in a movie theater. The whole audience was laughing and groaning and cheering. I almost missed Hulk's "puny god" line, because everyone was laughing so hard at the scene that immediately preceded it. I'm definitely going to have to get the super special edition feature packed DVD when it comes out. And I may even need to see the movie again in theaters.

All in all, it was a pretty awesome and very geeky Friday

Carpe Librum

I grew up in the boonies. And as much as I would love to live in the boonies again, I have to admit that working in the city occasionally has its perks.

Every day I come out of the metro station to someone pushing something. More often than not it's high school kids selling Krispe Kremes to raise money for whatever club they're in. Now that baseball has started I occasionally see a giant George Washington or Abraham Lincoln trying to convince me to attend a Nationals games. And then there's the occasional person handing out fliers for a play or a magazine or a concert or something. I've gotten really good at ignoring all of them.

But today a couple of words caught my attention: popup bookstore. I took a flier and proceeded to not throw it in the nearest trash can.

The flier told me of a used bookstore, conveniently located between my office and the metro station I use, that would be open for the next few weeks. It was a fundraiser for Turning the Page, an organization that focuses on improving public education in DC.. This is extra incentive to buy books that I don't necessarily need. I mean, a used bookstore on my way home from work whose proceeds go to charity? Shut up and take my money!

I ended up stopping by after work. Because obviously. I confined myself to the (rather small) sci-fi section where I managed to find three books I've been wanting to read. I picked up The Mists of Avalon (which I haven't read since high school), Stranger in a Strange Land (which I've been meaning to read since high school), and Contact (I saw the movie, but never read the book). All three cost me about five dollars total.

I'm sorely tempted to go back tomorrow and see what else I can find. The books cost between one and three dollars, which is hard to pass up. But I could also see myself spending far too much money there. Then again, it all goes to kids, right?

The silver lining (and touch of gray) is that the store won't be there forever. This is a limited temptation, meaning that I won't be able to spend all of my money on books. In the meantime, I'll probably be adding quite a few books to my personal collection at an incredibly reduced price

Lists and Stacks

I have a pretty extensive to-read list. For a long time, this was just a mental list. I'd hear about a good book and think that I should read it. And then, depending on my memory, I might or might not ever actually do that. But when I started this blog, one of the first things I did was actually write out that list. You can see it by clicking on the "Books" tab at the top.

Having an actual list has helped a great deal. I'm never at a loss when I finish one book and need a new one. I can add a book when someone mentions it in passing and then remember the name and author the next time I'm going to the book store. I've even sort of organized it according to the order I'll probably read those books in. That is, the ones I own are at the top and the ones I want to own are at the bottom. Every time someone recommends something already on the list it moves up a little bit.

When I add a book to the list, I'm thinking "I should read this book". It's not until I actually buy the book that I've committed to reading it. I may hear something new and lose interest. Or it may just wallow on the list for several years until the stars align and I decide to buy it.

A few times a year, I go on a book buying spree. I head into a book store and give myself free reign. This is a lot more fun than just buying books one at a time. Since I'm able to limit how often I do this, I end up with a stack of books that I'm planning to read in the near future

You see, the problem with my to-read list is that it keeps getting longer. No matter how fast I read or how many books I juggle at once, I add to that list faster than I check things off it. I never feel like I'm making progress. In a way, that's how it should be. I'd hate to run out of books to read. That's not really likely to happen, but it's nice to have a safety net stretching out to infinity.

Then again, it's nice to feel like I'm making progress. That's where the stack comes in. The stack doesn't grow; it shrinks. It will last me for a finite period of time, but then it must be replaced.

I mention this, because I have a pretty good-sized stack right now. The last time I had one this large was when Borders went out of business and I went on a mini-rampage. This year I used part of my end-of-year bonus to finance a bunch of books (along with a new bookcase). Here's the result.

Okay, I already owned Robinson Crusoe (the brown and red one) and The Silmarillion. But I just added them to the stack because I'm really planning on reading them before my next major book purchase.

That should keep me busy for a while.

Happy Coincidence

I was on the metro coming home and re-reading American Gods again. I finished The Graveyard Book over the weekend and started Slaughterhouse Five last night. So, naturally, I was thinking to myself "Man, I should really get back to A Feast For Crows" (I was also thinking, "I'd really like to live in Lakeside", but that's beside the point.) I'm still only halfway through the fourth ASOIAF book, even though I started it a month ago. But I hate the Ironborn so much, and all of the Dornish characters still confuse me and there aren't nearly enough Sansa or Arya chapters, so I've been drifting towards other books.

Anyway, I had just recommitted myself to AFFC when the lady sitting next to me needed to get off the train. I let her out and scooted toward the inside and noticed a book sitting between the seat and the wall. I'm all set to call after the woman that she left her book when I see a notice taped to the cover:

Traveling Book 

I'm not Lost - I'm on a journey

I turned the book over and discovered a classic: The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. There are instructions for registering the book on a website to track its journey and pass it on when you've finished.

Now if you know me, you know I'm not one to pass up an opportunity to read a book. Especially since The Graveyard Book, which I'm still kind of ambivalent about, was based on The Jungle Book. It's like the universe telling me I have to read this book to gain a better understanding of the book I just finished. Or at least a really awesome coincidence.

So now A Feast For Crows has been pushed back another week while I dive into The Jungle Book.

There are just way too many books out there that I want to read.

Fan Theories and Shipping in A Song of Ice and Fire

First, a definition. Shipping refers to a preference for a certain relationship. If a ship is "canon", that means it actually appears in the source material. Buffy/Spike was canon. Willow/Spike never was, but I still shipped it.


As I'm beginning to read A Clash of Kings, I wanted to record some of my thoughts. I read the first book, A Game of Thrones, in a bit of a vacuum. But when the TV show started, I began to enter the fandom. I started reading reviews of the show, some by people who had read all the books, some by people who were coming to the story with fresh eyes. And this led me to more things. The fandom (and every fandom, really) produces everything from stunning artwork to hilarious mash-ups with Arrested Development.

Check out the rest of Michael Komark's art

Watching the TV series also clued me in to details I'd missed on my read of the book. I had never picked up on the fact that Renly is gay until it become rather obvious in his scene with Loras. It's possible this doesn't get hinted at until later books, so maybe I missed nothing. But when the prologue of the second book mentioned Renly's new rainbow guard, with each of seven knights dressed head to toe in one of the colors of the rainbow, I laughed and laughed.

Stepping into the online fandom also clued me in to some popular ships and theories. There are pretty vocal contingents who think that Jon and Arya are destined to be together, or that Jon and Dany would make a great couple. There's a smaller faction that seems to ship Sansa and The Hound, though I also have a vague idea that Sansa develops a crush on The Hound at some point. So I guess that's canon at least.

I kind of want to talk about the two Jon relationships, though, because they involve a theory that I'm considering more of a possibility the more I read. Though that could just be because I kind of want Jon and Arya to get together.

Now you might be thinking, but Jon took a vow of celibacy! Or ew! Jon and Arya are siblings! Well, hear me out. Then you can judge all you want. First off, screw the celibacy thing. There are at least five armies involved in at least two wars by the beginning of the second book. Jon may or may not ultimately uphold his vows (though he does seem to have a lot of that Stark honor). Second, the people in Westeros are no stranger to incest. The twins, Jaime and Cersei have three kids together and Viserys was all set to marry his sister, Dany, until Khal Drogo came along. But, there's also a possibility that Jon and Arya don't share a father.

See, we haven't found out who Jon's mother is. Ned took that secret to his grave. But Ned's also an incredibly honorable man, and when you look at his life and choices, it seems less likely that he cheated on his wife in their first year of marriage. Especially since he straight-up never did it again. In a world where everyone cheats on their spouses with prostitutes and family members, Ned didn't. And when you consider that Rhaegar had kidnapped Lyanna to make her his wife and Ned was one of the last people to see Lyanna before she died.

The theory is that Jon is actually the son of Lyanna Stark and the Mad King's son, Rhaegar Targaryen. Ned took that secret to his grave to protect Jon. Had Robert ever learned Jon's true lineage, he would have had him killed as surely as he was trying to kill Dany. Probably moreso, because he would have hated Jon with the same intensity that Snape hates Harry. I hadn't paid this theory much mind until the last episode of Game of Thrones nodded to it by talking about Lyanna's imprisonment. Given that, and Ned's flat out refusal to discuss Jon's mother with anyone, including Robert his best friend and King, I think this theory is a definite possibility. It could still become canon before the series finishes. I also think it adds a nice twist and an extra layer of deception to everything happening in Westeros.

If this is true, it would mean that Jon and Arya are cousins, not siblings. At least that's a step in the right direction. They're still blood relatives, but marrying cousins was a bit more common back in the day (and is still legal in some places). However, this theory also plays right into the Jon/Dany shippers. This theory means that Jon is a dragon as much as a wolf. The Targaryens have been inbreeding for generations because of their blood pride. If there's a chance that Dany can marry another dragon and make another generation of baby dragons, I'm sure she'll take it.

This is all just speculation, of course. I've only read one book, and I could very well be proven wrong. But Arya is now on her way to the Wall. She's supposed to get dropped off at Winterfell, but I hope she makes it all the way to the Wall and reunites with Jon. Then again, he's heading north to fight the zombies White Walkers, so he probably wouldn't even be there when she arrives.

I should just go read the book.

Electronic or not?

I got a kindle for Christmas, and though I love it dearly, it has in no way stopped me from buying and reading physical books. The kindle is certainly convenient. It's much easier to read on the metro. I'm usually wearing three-inch heels and hanging on to a pole to keep from falling over, so being able to read one-handed makes life easier. But that hasn't turned out to be a good enough reason for me to forsake physical books.

I find myself continuing to buy physical books. I just can't stop. I still take books on the metro and am capable of reading them one-handed, for the most part. And I actually prefer physical books on planes because I can read them during take-off and landing. This is at constant war with my need to pack fewer books on vacation. I'm the kind of person who took two books and a kindle to Las Vegas for a weekend and actually read both books and used the kindle (at a night club).

I've finally come to terms with the fact that I will probably never stop buying physical books, despite the convenience of my kindle. It simply doesn't meet all of my needs as a reader. I have managed to find a decent balance for purchasing books in different formats. Here's how I generally divide things up.

Reasons to buy the physical book

It's a graphic novel - The kindle is black and white. But even if I had an iPad, I think I'd still buy physical versions of graphic novels and comic books. My experience reading comics on a screen has never been wholly satisfying. Unless the screen is big enough to show a full page at time, you have to zoom in. And then depending on the layout of the page, you have to scroll all over the place to read the whole thing. Generally, the author/artist put a lot of thought into the layout of a page and expects you to take in the entire thing as a whole. The kindle doesn't even handle basic illustrations very well. I read The Book Thief on is, and the illustrated sections were incredibly frustrating. They took longer than normal to load and there were random blank pages that had me worried I was missing part of the story. E-Ink technology just hasn't caught up with this yet.

I already own part of the series - There are some series that I'm only partway through. I started them with physical books, and I want to own the entire series in the same format. I currently own 30 of the 39 published Discworld books and I intend to keep buying the physical copies so they can all sit on the shelf together

I think Boyfriend or his mom would be interested in reading the book - If I expect I'll lend a book to someone, I'm going to buy a physical copy. It's just easier that way.

I want the book on my shelf - There are some books that just look cool. I want them sitting on my shelf to show that I've read them. Or for easy reference. Things like Isaac Newton's The Principia (which was a Christmas gift years before I got my kindle) fall into this category. Yes, this is a bit pretentious. But I still dream of having a library in my house one day. A library full of awesome books.

It's a collection of short stories - The kindle is really geared to reading a book cover to cover. While it's possible to jump around in a book, provided it has a linked-up table of contents, the interface really isn't optimized for it. When I read a collection of short stories, I rarely read them in order. I jump around. I skip stories. I come back to others. This is easier to do with a physical book than a kindle.

It's not available on the kindle - This happens more often than I expected. Some authors are surprisingly resistant to electronic readers. Some just haven't gotten around to converting their works yet. Either way, it makes the decision easy.

Reasons to buy the electronic book

It's free - This is the big reason. I got all of Sherlock Holmes, Charles Dickens, and Jane Austen on my kindle because I was able to download them without paying anything. I actually grabbed a lot of classics this way. I was mostly buying the cheap versions of these books before. I'm still hoping to one day inherit my grandfather's awesome collection of beautifully bound classics, so I don't feel a pressing need to get copies of these books for display. I can always buy cool versions in the future without being out any more money than I would have been in the first place. You really can't argue with free, and since the kindle's memory is huge, I have no real fear of filling it up. That said, the free versions (from gutenberg.org) aren't always formatted the best. I had to delete The Complete Works of Shakespeare because I couldn't click directly to any given play. You get what you pay for.

It's really cheap - Amazon has started releasing cheap versions of classics that are still covered by copyright law. $3 a pop for anything by Kurt Vonnegut, for example. I haven't bought these yet, but that price tag is enough to tempt me away from a physical copy. At least for a first read-through. I had actually expected e-books to be the cheaper option for the most part, but this hasn't been the case. Especially for new releases, Amazon.com will generally offer the physical book at a lower cost than the e-book.

The physical book is huge - Sometimes a book is just too big. I do most of my reading away from home - on the metro, in the waiting room, on vacation - and I don't want to lug around a huge book just so I can read it. Infinite Jest is 9.1" x 6.1" x 2.1" and weighs almost three pounds. Each book in A Song of Ice and Fire is roughly 1000 pages long. It's easier to carry these beasts around on my kindle.

I want to be able to carry the book around with me - There are some books I love and want to be able to have on my person at all times. Good Omens falls under this category. I own the physical book, but it's hardcover and I'm always a bit worried I'm going to ruin it. If the electronic book is ever made available, I'll buy it in a heartbeat. (It currently isn't available because the kindle inexplicably can't split up hyphenated words to appear on separate line. Thus the name "Things-Not-Working-Properly-Even-After-You've-Given-Them-A-Good-Thumping-But-Secretly-No-Alcohol-Lager" destroys the formatting of the book.)

The book is a bit embarrassing - If I had owned a kindle a few years ago, that's how I would have consumed Twilight. I do get a perverse sort of pride from having those books sitting on my shelf, but it was a bit embarrassing to read them in public. This is also why I bought Amber Benson's most recent book on my kindle. I want to read these things, but I don't want to risk being approached about them by strangers.



Each book is a special case, of course. While I definitely want to physical copy of some and the electronic copy of others, I occasionally have trouble choosing a format. Ever since Dead Reckoning came out over a month ago, I've been going back and forth. The e-book was shockingly more expensive than the physical book, but I wasn't sure I wanted to carry a hard cover around. Or pay $15 for a book that will probably take me three days to read and hasn't gotten stellar reviews. I'll probably end up waiting for either the kindle price to drop dramatically or the paperback to come out next spring. We'll see which happens first. In the meantime, I'm excited to get back to my kindle for the next installment of A Song of Ice and Fire.