A Game of Thrones Challenge

Hello, my darlings! Long time no see, right? Well, October was a chaotic month in all aspects of my life: my work is wreak havocking my brain, my pc screen sat broken for almost three full weeks before I got it back, I was crazy enough to accept a Game of Thrones challenge (more of that in a moment, haha!), I got sick for a whole week and almost had to be interned at the hospital thanks to a never-ending diarrhea… Rollercoaster doesn’t even start to describing my life this year. I’m so ready for 2017 – It has to be better than 2016.

Anyway, I’m here today to share with you the results of my Game of Thrones Challenge!

Game of Thrones Challenge: the results!

On my quick update bellow, I briefly mentioned accepting a challenge from a friend: I would have to read all five books of A Song of Ice and Fire in 30 consecutive days. Now I’ll tell the whole story and a bit of how this craziness went, haha!

First of all: I won the challenge. I started A Game of Thrones on September 27^th and finished A Dance With Dragons at 10:37PM of October 27^th. Now that the suspense is gone, I begin my tale, haha!

Despite watching several loose episodes of the TV show, I had never shown a true interest in reading the book series. The books are so big and heavy and I’m not really a fan of epics. My cup of tea leans more towards fantasy, YA and New Adult overall. However, my offline bff Jenny (who is already tired of reading her name on my blog, btw) was pinning hard for me to read the books and she knows me well enough: we would be 90 years old in a home, playing bingo all day, and I would still have excuses to dodge reading Game of Thrones. So, she played dirty: she challenged me and bet on it.

She knows I get intimidated by physically big books, so she said not even I could read the five books in the A Song of Ice and Fire series in a month in English (we are both Brazilian girls, so our native language isn’t English, which naturally poses a harder challenge than reading it on Brazilian Portuguese). She also said she would buy me two books if I did it. However, Jenny knows me so well she knew I would also need a threat in case I lost. She loves movies overall, so she stated that, If I couldn’t read the books on time, I would have to shut up and watch a whole movie series of her choice the next time we met.

But Annelise, why is it so bad to watch movies? Movies are nice and cool! Nope, not for me. I’m really a pain in the ass with new movies (new movies = movies that I have never watched, not necessarily “new” movies. I have resistance with old movies too, no prejudices here). I can’t explain it, I just don’t feel like watching 95% of what hits the theaters. The last move I watched on the theater was Finding Dory and, before that, I’m pretty sure it was Maleficent or the last movie of the Hobbit series (sorry, I have a terrible time related memory, haha!).

So, now that you know how bizarre particular I am regarding movies, you may start to understand my dread. I HAD to win, there wasn’t an option for me – the books were just a nice bonus, haha! So, I’ve got myself the 5 ebooks and started my journey though George R. R. Martin’s world.

Here are my stats:

A Game of Thrones: read from Sept. 27^th to Oct. 04^th

Overall impressions (a full review of the series will be written eventually, haha!): As I had watched several episodes on the first, third, fifth and, later on into the challenge, on the sixth seasons, the first book was just a deeper version of what I already knew. The first thing I did was to harden myself to not like anyone – I did tried to be indifferent to all characters, as “they all die” at some point, haha! As this didn’t work, I changed a bit my tactics to only like people I was sure it would appear on the sixth season – it worked pretty well most of the story, haha!

The reading pace was okay, as there was so much info everywhere and I was adjusting to George’s writing, but I knew I would have to do better than that to win. This is my third favorite book in the whole series so far, haha!

A Clash of Kings: read from Oct. 04^th to 10^th

Overall impressions: I did pick up my pace in the second book and George helped a lot, as there were so many Tyrion chapters ❤ (Tyrion, Daenerys, Jammie Lannister, Jon Snow and Brienne are my favorite characters in the series, in case you are wondering. I also quite liked Robb Stark, but oh well.) Also, I finally started to like Daenerys on this book, so it was fun.

me after entering Game of Thrones community

 

Oh, and judge me all you want, I was in love with Jamie Lanniester since the first moment he appeared on the first book, haha! Oh, and I need to make a comment about this book in particular: I was still a bit naïve about George’s ways and started it before I went to bed. “I’ll just read the prologue”, I said. Well, the damn thing had 50 pages. I was so mad at the time I took to overcome it that I read the book until chapter 3 before actually sleeping, haha! I was also really happy that a narrator from the previous book was dead, so it meant less people telling the story and things would go faster, right? WRONG. George exchange an okay narrator for two people I didn’t think I knew at the time. It was… frustrating.

A Storm of Swords: read from Oct. 10^th to 17^th

Overall impressions: I entered in an alpha state to see Jamie winning his own spot as a narrator in this book – also, the battles were really cool.

And the thing which happens to Tyrion was jaw dropping as well – sorry, I know many of you already know all the story, but I’m trying to not give away many spoilers, haha! The only thing that truly got me about this book was the amount of songs in it! I think George likes musicals, haha! I did a similar reading time in this volume, comparing to the previous one (6 days x 7 days), so I felt confident I was going at a pretty good pace despite the crazy schedule.

To be honest, I’ve read 474 pages of this volume on a single Saturday evening – my reading pace is weird, just like the rest of my personality, haha!

A Feast for Crows: read from Oct. 18^th to 24^th

Overall impressions: Despite keeping up with the amount of time I took on the previous volumes, it felts like AGES before I finished this one. I HATED this volume with a force – you see, there are cool moments, but the narrators are a pain in the ass and none of the people I wanted to see were in this book – interpret this as you will.

Each time I clicked on my e-reader to go to the next page, I kept thinking: one less page to go, we are almost there! This was sad in many levels. Also, I almost had a heart attack on a specific chapter involving one of my favorite characters and it was the TV show fault. As you guys may know/have guessed, there are some plot differences from book to TV show and one of those differences made me crawl out of my skin in fear that one of my fave characters could be actually dead on the book while this person waltzed along the show, haha!

I’m happy to inform it was only a false alarm, but omg. I suffered.

A Dance of Dragons: read from Oct. 24 to Oct. 27^th

Overall impressions: yes, my darling. You read it right. It took me only two days and a bit (I started the book in the night of the 24^th) to read the last published book in the series. It was that good.

Working was a punishment because it was 7h30min of my day without Game of Thrones in my life. All the doubts I had of not being able to fulfill the challenge during the fourth book vanished and I was left utterly heart-broken as I reached the family trees in the end of my ebook. How was I going to survive without Game of Thrones in my routine? Who would I be after reading this series? I suffered a slight book hangover through the last days of October, haha!

After such long and never-ending volumes full of stuff really cool and stuff I (reader) totally didn’t need to know, I came down to the conclusion any book with less than 1000 pages is a small book. The first sign came with my re-reading of the Never Veil series, in which each book has 250 to 300 pages more or less. If I had properly sat and read them, I would have finished in an hour or so each. As I’m lazy and still a little hangover about Game of Thrones and now I have a decent computer again to play and watch Netflix on a bigger screen, I put my hands on the books only a few times and already felt the pages ending too fast, haha! I’m ruined for life.

This is all your fault, George.

 

That’s it! Now you know a little of what has been going on with me, how my challenge went and I can’t wait to hear the opinions of GOT lovers! Let’s discuss this incredible series, please? Thank you.

Until another time, love you all!