potentialities

What I've been reading

I read The World of Ice & Fire: The Untold History of Westeros and the Game of Thrones. Actually, I read it the week before last, but I accidentally left it out of my last Wednesday reading post. Whoops. Anyway, I love fake history and fake historiography, so I really enjoyed it. Although everyone is right, the first part (which is arranged chronologically) is good, and the second part (which is arranged geographically) is less good. Also, I would have liked for it to have been written after the series was finished, partly because I would like to read the future historians' version of the events of the books and partly because that would mean that the series actually was finished. But then it probably wouldn't have been written at all because GRRM wouldn't be using it to procrastinate on writing said books, so.

I read A Cloisters Bestiary, which contains text mostly adapted from T. H. White's Book of Beasts, enhanced with bits that the compiler fancied from other bestiaries and illustrated with items in the Cloisters' collection. It is great, of course, since either of those things separately is great.

I read Petty Theft, which is a Québecois cartoonist's story of how while reeling from a breakup he tried to strike up a relationship with a woman on the basis of the fact that he had seen her shoplifting one of his books at a bookstore.

I read The Darkest Part of the Forest, Holly Black's new YA book. I am so there for ( spoilers )

I read Time Regained, and I just want to make a public service announcement to anyone else who might be thinking of reading Proust, which is something I endorse, incidentally: do NOT let yourself get bogged down by the claustrophobic jealous misery of The Captive & The Fugitive. At the end of The Fugitive Proust has pretty much mined that vein out and kicks into another gear entirely, to mix my metaphors. Time Regained is practically action-packed, not that you read Proust for the plot exactly but it's nice to change up what hooks those digressions are hung from.

I read The Just City, which is a book that I have been wanting to read since Jo Walton posted about The Republic and eventually decided that she was going to write a new version of one of her earliest novel ideas, about what would happen if someone tried to implement Plato's republic. I loved it and I'm so glad that the sequel is coming out in June and the third book is currently being written.

This is my birthday present to you all, but particularly to Bevy, to whom I have owed it for so long now that George R. R. Martin is actually doing better than me in terms of delivering ASoIaF material as promised, which is unacceptable, so it's getting posted today!

This is pretty much just porn. And, uh, I leaned pretty heavily on the Wiki of Ice and Fire for my fake history, because there's a lot of it to keep track of. (You may find the previous two sentences contradictory, but this is pretty much how my mind works.)

Forgotten by Morning
A Song of Ice and Fire. Robert Baratheon/Ned Stark. NC-17. 2,509 words.
I’m about to get fucked by Robert Baratheon, Ned thought dizzily. Afterward I can compare notes with half the beddable women in Westeros.

( Eddard Stark fell to his knees like they’d been cut out from under him. )