A Game of Thrones

I haven’t read fiction much these days but back in grade school, when I was 8 or so, I started on my first novel: The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. I found it lying about with my mom’s stuff and curious as I was, read it. I remember having a struggle reading this new book that had no pictures.

I persevered and eventually went through the book and soon after The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. I also went through the Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys (one book every afternoon after class). During high school, I kept reading: going through Tolkien’s books again, suspense/thrillers notably The Bourne series and even crap like Mills and Boons(!). During college, there was a whole bunch: Robotech, the Robot Series, the Foundation Series, the Clancy books, a bunch of Crichton books, the Dragonlance Chronicles, and more.

All this reading meant I’ve usually read the book even before it became a movie. This means the books, and how I imagined them, guides how I see the movie. Yes, I didn’t read Harry Potter but I didn’t really watch the movies either. I didn’t watch half of them and I slept through half of those I watched. Twilight? What twilight?

A few weeks back, I started watching the HBO series Game of Thrones. It seemed interesting enough that I started reading reading the book A Game of Thrones. I figured I’d augment the episodes with information from the book. So it was the TV series leading the book. But last night, I got the the point where the latest episode was, more or less. I was at a crossroad: to go on or to stop and wait for the next episode.

I turned the page.