Reading Together #3

My Advent Calendar has started yesterday and I feel like doing this again, so you get another instalment of Weltenwanderers and SchlunzenbüchersGemeinsam Lesen“ (Reading Together).

Each Tuesday one of them asks four questions, with the first three always being the same about the book one is currently reading and the fourth a new one by either of them. All questions below are obviously translated from today’s German post.

1. Which Book are you currently reading and which page are you on?

I’m still reading „A Game of Thrones“ by George R.R. Martin, one of the books I had chosen as A book someone else picked for me for BiblioSmiles’s Summer Book Challenge.
I’m currently on page 259, so I managed to read about 200 pages since last Tuesday, by mostly reading in the bus and finishing the chapters I started afterwards.
Sometimes I continued reading regardless of that, but I’ll get to that later.

2. What is the first sentence on your current page?

Jon was showing Dareon how best to deliver a sidestroke when the new recruit entered the practice yard.

or in German:

Jon zeigte Dareon wie man am Besten einen Seitenhieb ausführte als der neue Recruit das Trainingsfeld betrat.

For some odd reason I again stopped at a Jon-chapter, even though those are some of the most interesting ones…

3. What do you desperately need to tell about your current book? (Thoughts, Feelings, a Quote, whatever you want!)

The book is awfully captivating and there is pretty much a need to continue reading and sometimes I succumb to it, even though there are other things that I need to be doing.
I just want to know what will happen next…
And even though I know I should not get too attached to the characters, do I already have a couple of favourites. With my luck in these kind of things will pretty much all of them die.
I also couldn’t help myself watching the show after I read the chapters…
With a little search I found this chart that showed which chapters were portrayed in which episode.
From previous experiences do I know that things are changed and added in picturizations, but I was quite appalled at how different the show is from the book.
Some things are toned down („It should have been you.„), others are accentuated (the sex-scenes that are mostly only mentioned so far or don’t exist) and still others were dropped entirely (Ghost attacking Tyrion) or portrayed quite differently (Eddard using a mere dagger, when it should have been Ice).
I can’t say that the show isn’t impressive and well done, but its the little things that still bug me and make the watching less enjoyable.

4. In which perspective is your current book written? Do you prefer it when reading or does it not matter? (omniscient, personal or I-perspective)

At first I thought the book would be written in I-perspective from each character that got a chapter, but I soon learned it wasn’t that easy.
While it is a partly omniscient narrator and it doesn’t feel like a complete personal narrator either, does it mainly focus on what the current character knows and experiences, yet it is no I-perspective, as the character is still referred to in the third person.
It is an interesting perspective to say the least.

The perspective I prefer most would be the omniscient narrator that has still insight into the characters thoughts. So Martins style covers this pretty much.
What I can’t cope with is the You-perspective, the reader-include. I prefer enjoying the story as a spectator, not as a participant…
The I-narrator can be interesting, but also quite annoying at times, so it isn’t that high on my list either.
The book is written in present tense, but somehow, when I myself write I prefer using the past, though I don’t really care about that.

Additional thoughts

You can obviously participate in these questions by either using my translated or the original German version.
By now I do believe it is highly likely that I participate again next week or some other week.
It is just too good a way to talk about my current read without adding a Goodreads Widget to my sidebar or waiting until I finally manage to get a review done.
On a completely different note: This is my 150th post. 😀
I didn’t anticipated this to happen in this year as well.
Then again, I’m not good with predictions as I  have learned.
PoiSonPaiNter
© For the cover, the quote and the banner belong to their rightful owners.

2 comments

  1. Huhu!
    Freut mich, dass du auch mitgemacht hast 🙂
    Ich hab zwar nur die Hälfte verstanden, was du geschrieben hast *lach* aber wenigstens ein bisschen 😀 Echt schlimm mit meinen Englisch-Kenntnissen ^^
    Bei Game of Thrones wartet der 5. (deutsche) ‚Band auf meinem SuB und ich möchte ihn auch bald lesen – ich liebe diese Reihe!
    Liebste Grüße, Aleshanee

    1. Danke, ich bin gespannt, wie lange ich das durchhalte. 😀
      Das mit dem Englisch übt sich, wenn man mehr darin liest und so. Ich kann aber gern auch was übersetzen, wenn du möchtest. 🙂
      Bis jetzt gefällt mir das Buch auch ziemlich gut, ich hab aber wie oben schon geschrieben nur die Befürchtung, dass ich mal wieder anfange die zum Tode verurteilten Charaktere zu mögen…

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