I have an admission to make. I know it's not strictly historical. It may not even be literature, although it is definitely a book, several in fact. Suitably big and heavy enough that two in a carrier bag could be used to club a passing vicar to his knees.

But I seem to have got addicted to Game of Thrones. Any one else suffering. Or is it just me?

Yep, I'll come out of the closet and join you bttdp. My son gave me his copies to read and I've read them all and loved them too!

The telly series isn't quite as good as the books though.

PS If you liked GOT then you'll also enjoy the Malazan Empire series by Steven Erikson, along similar lines but twice as huge and action packed.

Thank heavens! I thought it was just me.

Nah, there are many of us closet readers out there, got to take a break from the serious stuff occasionally. Well I do anyway. Which book are you up to now?

Just started book one again. It makes the third or fourth time for the early ones and when I reach the last one dance with dragons. Got em on kindle got em in real book form.

Just hoping he doesn't do a Robert Jordan before he finishes.

Not seen the series on tv I'm afraid of being disappointed

backtothedarkplace wrote:

Not seen the series on tv I'm afraid of being disappointed

Yes - I've got a sort of rule - if I've read it, I don't watch it.

The special effects are always better in your head. The only one that wasn't was the lord of the rings. Every one else just gets trashed.

backtothedarkplace wrote:

I have an admission to make. I know it's not strictly historical. It may not even be literature, although it is definitely a book, several in fact. Suitably big and heavy enough that two in a carrier bag could be used to club a passing vicar to his knees.

But I seem to have got addicted to Game of Thrones. Any one else suffering. Or is it just me?

No - I am near the end of Season Three now and I am addicted too. I think it's brill.

It got a lot better after Season One.

Haven't read the books.

Better than all that boring 16th century drama.  

Read the books last year in one long stint when abroad and it was too hot to do anything else. Now seeing the DVD's and impressed by how some of the hither thither jumble got sorted. Read of a woman cooing because her young son has taken to watching it.... because, she thinks,  he is interested in the War of the Roses. I suggest the shortage of women's clothes in the studio wardrobe might be a further lure along with assorted humping and much quivering gore.  Though, as ever. I enjoyed the books more.

Amazing how much the content of TV and films has changed in our lifetime - or, rather, what is now allowed to be shown to all and sundry. (Sundry was actually never very shockable, even back in the time before 1963 when, according to the poet Larkin, sex was invented.)

I'm not doing a Mary Whitehouse here, but what would she (and our parents   ) make of the sex, the violence and the language routinely watched/heard by us all these days, in series such as Game of Thrones? Remember the old X-rated movies? Laughable and tame now - although the old masters, like Hitchcock, knew a thing or two about real psychological violence. I remember being terrified - as an adult - by the old (1961) black-and-white film of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw (it was called The Innocents and starred Deborah Kerr as the possibly crazy governess).

Remember the furore when Kenneth Tynan used the f-word for the first time on TV, way back in 1965? What a stupid old fuddy-duddy he seems now! Fings most definitely ain't wot they used to be.


http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/nov/21/britishidentity.features11

From the above link:

The first time I heard the word f**k, I was seven. My 12-year-old brother asked me if I wanted to know the worst word in the world. He whispered it to me and, although he wasn't quite sure what it meant, we both loved the idea of a word so rude that it could barely be uttered.
And in suburbia in the 60s, you would not even breathe such a word. I know my parents were aware of it from the war, and it was certainly in their secreted-away 1962 Penguin edition of Lady Chatterley. But whereas today, any 12-year-old from the dodgiest comp to Eton would say f**k if they so much as grazed a knee, I doubt my dad would have said it even if a flying saucer landed on the patio and a Martian laser-gunned the shed.

As for the c-word - routinely used on GofT, although usually only by the men - well, that was unheard of in my young days. Nasty word, but a very old one.

But then a word in itself is never nasty - just the thought behind it.

There is a word in the Marprelate pamphlets which caused me a double take. Wasn't until I read the modern day translation that I realised it was Vicar.


I am now the only one in the whole civilised world who has not watched a single episode, or read a single line of GoT,

Not alone - I am also a Blue Ribboner in respect to GoT.
Not, of course, in respect to G&T.

In my younger days - and I may have said this long since on another thread - my parents would have jumped on me, figuratively at least, from a great height if I had used the 'f' word.  I may also have said that on a trip to France in my teens circa election time I asked which political party Monsieur Merde represented.  (There were slogans such as 'En bas Poujade' among the graffiti on walls with graffiti).  I can remember when "Stamboul Train" was shown on the BBC when I was in my early teens and a man and woman were shown in a bunk together (from what I recall - though after all this time I can't put my hand on my heart and say it's 100% correct - neither of them were completely naked).  There was at least one letter of complaint to "Points of View" about a man and woman being in bed together.