A Game of Thrones (Game of Thrones Book #1)

I lied about the historical fiction book being next. This was maybe about ten times more interesting and so I went with it.

While I was planning for a couple of long plane rides, I remembered that I have 12 hours on a plane with nothing to do. Rather than playing mobile games the whole time, I ended up bringing this book with me. I had originally started reading it in March because my friend found the series and we ended up following it together. Then I got busy and didn't get the time to read it all the way through because of school.
I've always wanted to read this book. Apparently Game of Thrones (especially the TV show) is a big hit all over the world because I know people from everywhere who love it.
However, I have decided pick up with the show where the books leave off because I like the style of the writing and will find a way to make the time to read.

The Cover:

(There are multiple reprinted versions of this book since it is about a decade old but this is the version I got)

 Summary: ((Beware, it is long, but I tried to make it as concise as possible. Besides, a summary for an 800-ish page book has to be long and complicated, or those 800-ish pages were wasted.))

There are two main continents in this world: Westeros and Essos. Westeros is "civilized" and holds most of the action, while Essos is home to the Free Cities, the Dothraki and not much else.

Westeros is extremely varied as far as weather goes, starting from the high north pole, having a mid-region and ending with a hot southern end. It is divided into two distinct areas: The land of the Seven Kingdoms and the land beyond the Wall. The majority of the action happens within the Seven Kingdoms and the only things beyond the Wall are the "Others"/ "White Walkers" (creepy zombie-like things that are much stronger than humans) and "Wildlings" (tribes who never joined the kingdom of the North).

• A major source of conflict (in Westeros) is which house sits on the Iron Throne. It is said that the one who sits on the Iron Throne is the ruler of all of Westeros. Prior to the events of the book, it was held by House Targaryen until the other houses (namely Stark, Baratheon and Lannister) came together to overthrow Aerys II Targaryen and killed his son, Rhaegar to stop the Targaryen bloodline. Little did they know that some Targaryen sympathizers had smuggled the other two children (~5 year old Viserys and infant Daenerys) out of the Crownlands and to the Free Cities, where (at least Viserys) plotted their revenge.
• Out of the ten major houses, I'm going to try and give a rundown of who is good and who is bad just so you have a basic idea. (Their loyalties keep shifting all the time so even I'm not really sure) 
• House Stark is widely accepted to be the "good guys" of the series. Basically every not so evil and messed up character in this series has to be or at least related to a Stark. They're always doing what's right for everyone and just being very virtuous people in everything that they do. Most notably allied with them is House Tully (through the marriage of Catelyn Tully and Eddard (Ned) Stark), House Arryn and House Baratheon (at least Robert Baratheon).
• House Lannister is widely accepted to be the "bad guys" of the series. They commit every crime possible, from hiring assassins to straight up incest. I have a theory that the fact that they come from the Westerland, a land known for its overflowing riches, at least plays a role in their hunger for power that obviously stops at nothing. Overflowing riches is usually attributed to extreme greed, which is stated clearly in most religions/belief systems as a sin. I feel like House Lannister's greed that stayed for generations finally surpassed the material realm of gold and silver and entered the possibility of controlling masses of people to further their agenda of amassing as much wealth as possible. As of right now, I can't really think of any allies that they may have, but they do have Jaime Lannister the Kingslayer and that in itself I think is enough.
• And then there's what's left of House Targaryen. The way I see it, they're not really good or bad. They don't like any of the houses of Westeros, but I can imagine that's because their father was murdered for the sake of reclaiming power.  

 Essos is the largest continent and the weather grows hotter the further south you go. It is home to:

• The Free Cities (nine independent cities on the west coast)
• To the east of the Free Cities lies the grassy plains called the Dothraki Sea which holds the barbarous Dothraki people
• The Slave Cities
• To the extreme east are mysterious lands that aren't really elaborated on

My Thoughts: (Plot descriptions ahead, but no major spoilers)

• I would like to start off right away by making it clear that the characters are actually a lot younger than you would like to think they are. It's hard to believe that Daenerys Targaryen is actually thirteen years old when she gets married to Khal Drogo (who I believe is in his late 20s but his age is never stated) and is pregnant only a year later. Jon Snow is fourteen when he leaves to join the Night Watch. Heck, Bran Stark is only seven when he is thrown off one of the towers of  Winterfell, shattering his legs and rendering him crippled for the rest of his life. That's probably the one thing I feel I will have to overlook as an issue of relevance, more than creative liberty. 
• BTW: I checked and it turns out the show aged up all of the children by 3 years which still makes none of what happens socially acceptable but it makes the oldest of the kids 17. They're not "technically" adults in today's world, but if you didn't know their age, would you really be able to tell? (Just throwing in my own two cents: I think I find Jon Snow a lot more attractive when he's not younger than me...) But realistically, I think you lose the harshness in a story like this with adults (or almost-adults).

• I was talking to a friend about some of the characters in the series when we got onto the topic of what makes some of the characters so loved and so hated. For example, she told me in an interview with Jack Gleeson (Joffrey Baratheon/Lannister/You-know-what-who-cares-there's-only-one-Joffrey-in-this-series-anyways) he said something about how when people see Kit Harington (Jon Snow) or Maisie Williams (Arya Stark) in public they give them hugs and kisses, while he has never gotten a positive reaction. I guess in his case, that makes him a really good actor if he could play a hated character and be hated for it.

I recently rediscovered MBTI types (the Myers-Briggs Personality Test) and have found myself fascinated by the personalities of fictional characters (and real people). This section has nothing to do with MBTI, I just wanted to discuss personality traits and character archetypes. The heroes (or at least main protagonists) of this book have so many different personalities that I just have to talk about a few of them!

• I see Jon Snow as being another addition to the common zero-to-hero type of character. Being a bastard child, he does grow up with somewhat less privilege compared to the other Stark children, but he makes up for it with his strong determination to rise above his label. What's not to love about a boy who can be strong and determined when he needs to be and loving and a really good brother when he also needs to be? Because honestly I feel like some (MOST) of the characters are suffering from some kind of bad emotional issue that's kind of ruining them.
• I'm going to go on a whim here but I feel like at least some of the positive response to a character like Arya Stark comes from the fact that her life goal to become a warrior is a major smack in the face to every traditional gender role ever. I feel like more people like a female character who doesn't try to hide her masculine energy in today's society where female empowerment is everywhere. In my opinion this isn't a bad thing, and if anything Arya's embodiment of these traditionally masculine personality traits such as bold courage and a quick temper make her a more lovable character.
• I just have to point out one interaction between her and her father when he goes to comfort her after she gets in a big fight with her sister and locks herself away in her room. I feel like that this was one really cute moment in an otherwise heart-wrenching book. Obviously her father is shocked and very angry when he finds out that Jon gave Arya a sword before he left. In his anger, he asks her something like, Why do you have a sword? Do you even know the first thing about sword fighting? To which she just calmly replies, Jon told me like one thing before he left: You stab them with the pointy end! And her father is all like, Sure, I guess that is the essence of it. But after that he does get her a proper teacher.
• Is it just me or do people just feel overwhelmingly bad for Daenerys in this book? Absolutely none of her situation has been explicitly caused by her and she is always the "vehicle" of her brother's plans. She was married off to Khal Drogo because Viserys wanted an army so he could take back the Iron Throne. He's completely deluded himself (and Daenerys too, to an extent) that they are "blood of the dragon" and that they're so high and so mighty that they rightfully deserve the Iron Throne, even if that means they have to slaughter people to get it. This attitude is also what leads him to hurt (physically/emotionally abuse) Daenerys whenever he feels like she is "getting in his way".

Age Rating: 16+

• You've got to have a lot of mature understanding if you're going to read this book. In all honesty, it's very violent and sometimes unsettling in its details. There's really nothing "good" about this series as far as positive role models go. As perfectly summed up by the Common Sense Media review for this series (which I go to for an approximate age rating before I write this section), "even the good characters make plenty of iffy choices". But the bad characters, they are bad. 
• I would also like to put it out there that this book is somewhat heavy on adult content. However, it's not adult content for the sake of adult content and actually has importance to the plot. It does sometimes move from your usual relationships into the perverse (which I will not go into detail about). The Lannisters are the main culprit of this, strengthening the fact that they are the "villains" through all the disgusting things they do. And believe me, it's not pretty. I would like to think this is something you signed up for when you went to read this and can find complaints about basically everywhere on the Internet so I'm not going to waste my time.

On the emotional side of things, I just want to let you know that you will probably feel a lot of different emotions while reading this and I think that's the beauty of the writing. At certain points I just had to put the book down and cool my head because things were going the opposite of the way they should and the characters were getting themselves into even worse messes. And at certain points it was so gripping that I spent about three hours in a row just reading.

I would like to leave you with one final judgement about this: Nothing in this book (and I'm going to jump to say the entire series) is ever okay. Everything and everyone is always a total mess. 
Winter is coming.

Olympus

My last post was about foreign poetry and now this one is about a foreign book about a not so foreign subject.
I've gotten back into mythology after a long time (I think the last time I read something centered on Greek mythology was probably the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series back in sixth grade. That was a long time ago and a time best forgotten... *shudders*). I never really read a full book on mythology so the knowledge I've picked up about it is mostly through my own curiosity and the world wide web-- namely Wikipedia.
To some people, mythology gives insight into a group of people's beliefs and culture. And to others it provides explanations of natural events that the group may not have known the scientific reason for and decided to make a creative story out of.
As one of my English teachers once said, "Think about mythology like Ancient Greek campfire stories." << Those are pretty violent and sometimes downright strange campfire stories.

The cover:

As I have found it, the book isn't really an "Indian" retelling, but mostly a retelling of Greek stories (in the basic sense of the word). At the end of most chapters (at least the ones with some kind of parallel in Indian mythology), there is a section where Pattanaik briefly goes over some events from mythological works or deities/figures with an equivalence in Hindu mythology. Since that section is so brief, I personally see it as a retelling of Greek myths with some parallels drawn to Hindu mythology.
This review is going to be somewhat different from my usual reviews because this is not a fiction work (but the mythology was originally fiction so that makes this a non-fiction work about fiction if that makes any sense at all) and I can't really talk about it the same way as I would a regular YA novel. So I've decided to talk about some common themes and popular stories that you may have come across in popular culture and referenced to in other books.

#1: Oedipus

While staying in Pisa, King Laius of Thebes broke the rules of hospitality and was given a horrible truth to wrestle with for the rest of his life: The foresight that his son would kill him.

King Laius married Jocasta, who wanted children. Laius refused, knowing that this was the only way to preserve his life. However, one night Jocasta got him drunk and forced him to give her a son.
Out of fear for his life, Laius took the newborn child, pierced his ankles with a hook and hung him to a bar the way that game is hung when it is hunted. He gave the boy to his gamekeeper and told him to hang him from a tree as food for the animals. Luckily, the boy was discovered by another hunter from Corinth who took him to the childless king, who raised him like his own son.

The boy was named Oedipus, meaning "large feet" because his ankles were swollen.

Oedipus grew up completely unaware that he was adopted until an incident where a beggar called him a "foundling". So he went to the Oracle at Delphi and she told him an even more frightening truth: That he would kill his father and marry his mother.
Thinking that he could change his fate, Oedipus left Corinth.
On his travels, Oedipus found himself at a bridge that had only room for one chariot to pass at a time. When he was almost at the other side, he was met by a king (Laius) on his chariot who demanded the right of passage. The two got into a fight and Oedipus killed Laius, not realizing that it was his father.
Laius was on his way to see the Oracle because his kingdom was being held hostage by the Sphinx, who demanded that anyone who wanted to enter the city had to answer all of her riddles correctly or face death. Oedipus too had to face this challenge.
The Sphinx asked him, "What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon and three legs in the evening? Answer or die!" (I encourage you to close your eyes and think about this riddle if you haven't heard it already) To which he replied, "Man, because he crawls on all fours as a child, walks on two legs as an adult and takes the help of a cane in old age."
Getting frustrated, the Sphinx asked him another question, "Who are the sisters that give each other birth?" (This is one you should try too because I think it's a little bit trickier) To which Oedipus replied, "Day and night."
The Sphinx was defeated and killed herself, allowing Oedipus to enter Thebes.
He was greeted with great cheer as he had saved the people from imminent starvation (The Sphinx would not allow anyone into the kingdom-- including farmers and shepherds and traders). They decided to wed him to Jocasta, the widow of Laius, and make him the new king of Thebes.

And with that, Oedipus had fulfilled his fate of killing his father and marrying his mother-- both of which without even knowing he had done it.

--A recurring theme in Greek mythology is the idea that we cannot escape our fate and as much as we try to avoid it, fate will catch up to us at some point. Both Oedipus and Laius try to avoid their undesirable fate and neither of them succeed.--
(**This happens several times to particularly kings, like for example, King Midas of Crete. I guess royalty from really anywhere hasn't yet caught up to the whole "the Oracle kinda knows what she's saying and it's definitely gonna come true" thing)
This idea brings about the age old question of whether we are free to choose the outcomes of our lives or if it is pre-determined and our only purpose is to live it out.
According to the Greeks, the latter is true. The three fates weave the web of threads that is human interaction and influence, determining what will happen to every person. It is made clear that we cannot escape what will happen to us, even if that fate is ugly.

#2: Hades and Persephone

Persephone was the beautiful daughter of Demeter, goddess of the harvest. She was ruler of spring, making flowers bloom and transition out of the harshness of winter. Hades was the cold god of death, unhappy with the way his brothers had treated him and resigned him to rule the underworld. When Hades saw Persephone for the first time, he was overwhelmed by her beauty and decided to make her his wife. So he threw on his helmet of invisibility to hastily abduct her and take her to the underworld.
Persephone knew nothing of the man who had kidnapped her, and definitely did not want to marry him as he proposed. Hades gave the the most beautiful room in his castle and everything she could ever want, telling her that in seven days he would show her everything that the underworld had to offer.
For six days they toured the underworld, where Hades showed Persephone every wonder of his kingdom. Slowly, she felt that she was beginning to like the god of death. However, she still refused to eat anything from him. On the sixth day, as she retired in her room, she broke her fast and ate six pomegranate seeds.

(**In some versions Hades shoves the pomegranate seeds in Persephone's mouth and forces her to eat them, highlighting the non-consensual aspect of their relationship better. I like this version better because it's not as awkward to tell and doesn't lead me to title this subsection "The Rape of Persephone" or something similar)

On Olympus, Demeter was sick with fear. She had always kept a watchful eye on her daughter and suddenly she was gone. In her fear, she had destroyed every crop on Earth, halting the growing season until Persephone was returned to her.
Persephone returned after the seven days, telling Demeter that she wanted to marry Hades. Demeter did not like this idea, but took it to Zeus to make the final judgement.
At his court, Zeus asked Persephone if she had eaten anything while she was with Hades, to which she mentioned the six pomegranate seeds. Zeus finally ruled that Persephone was to spent 6 months out of year with Demeter and the remaining 6 months with Hades.

When Persephone stayed with her mother, there were flowers everywhere and the weather was wonderful for growing crops. When she went to stay with Hades, Demeter killed the crops out of her loneliness and chilled the air so that no more could be planted until her daughter returned.

--This is an aspect of the explanation type of myth, where gods and goddesses are used to explain a natural phenomenon (In this case, the changing of the seasons). I picked this one in particular because A. It was the first one that came to mind and I didn't want to go looking for another one
AND
B. It's got an interesting idea that spring "marries" death for half the year and so that's why the weather is terrible for growing crops during the winter. It's by far one of the more understandable explanations that I've come across.

Happy Reading everyone!!!
Next is a super recent (like I mean published in 2017) WWII historical fiction book!

Gulzar

APRIL IS NATIONAL POETRY MONTH! So to kick off the month (It starts on Saturday, I know...) I'm gonna write a review about foreign poetry because you should give it a try if you can find some about topics that interest you. (Bonus points if it's from a culture you know nothing about or originally in a language you do not understand and is not closely related to English)

Because of my school assignments, I've been reading a lot of poetry recently and because of my frequent driving from place to place, have been listening to a lot of Bollywood movie songs (I think this is the first time that I have actually been thankful for my busy schedule). I can only think of these songs from a musical point of view (because I don't understand Hindi too well), but when someone explains the lyrics to me, I find that I appreciate it as much as I do western poetry. I guess I just have to work on the language gap part..., but that is a personal goal for another time.
It turns out that my mother likes this kind of poetry too, so she bought a book of poems by an Indian poet named Gulzar. His poems are very famous throughout India and have been adapted into a lot of movie songs.

My point of this post is that foreign literature can be just as interesting as literature from your home country. People from other regions of the world feel all the same feelings and sometimes have interesting ways of expressing the same ideas.

First of all, I have to explain my views on understand/decoding poetry: Personally, the way that some people may see it as just abstractions and others may see it only in terms of the techniques used to present it, I see every poem as a story. I think that's because I'm a writer and try to find stories in everything, but that's the way I make sense of basically everything. I like to think about a string of events connected to the poem and it usually takes shape in my head that way. And that's what I'm going to do. I picked two short poems from the book and have written a little bit about what I see as the "story" within it. I encourage you to do the same. Read the poem, close your eyes, and picture it as if it were a movie. No matter how short, or how simple, this is the easiest and most natural way that I make sense of literature in general And no, it's not just limited to poetry- you could do this with a novel or short story and slowly build the "movie" in your head as you read onward.

I really enjoy Gulzar's style of writing in the way that it is simple and easy to understand (not saturated with countless references that would be difficult for anyone not a literary scholar to make sense of. I'm looking at YOU, old European poets!), but still holds the same amount of meaning if you are willing to think about it enough. I like brevity. That way you don't have to hide behind references to the works of others to make your point.
One that caught my eye as I was reading is called "Ash".

"Ash 

Behind prison bars
Ash has begun to settle
In the eyes of the rebel
The white of cataract
Descends in the eyes of even a glowing ember
If not fanned for long."

I see it as a revolution, a war that is wrecking havoc on a nation, a city, some place somewhere. People are torn between supporting the rebels and the risk of being killed by the government or giving up themselves to a corrupt institution. The insurgents are being thrown into prison/being murdered in mass numbers and it seems like the other side is winning. Numbed by the dull cracks of bombshells sits a single young man (I see the speaker as a man, probably just grown up, maybe early-mid twenties) in a jail cell. His food remains untouched for days and all he can do is watch the chaos that is happening beyond his window. The fire for freedom that burned brightly in his heart that made him sign himself up for such an endeavor is weakening as he saw the horrors of war/conflict and he has lost the will to continue. The effort seems to be futile, so why bother supporting it?

The second is called "Mountain".

"Mountain

The bruised and mauled mountain did try
To hold on to the falling tree
But some people carried it away on their shoulders
Down to the factory
And the mountain just stared stonily at the sky.

Man has mercilessly clawed my flesh
His axes have torn away the forests on my head
My rivers
My waterfalls have been denuded
By man steeped in greed
My heart can be ripped apart by molten lava
But not that of man
His heart is made of stone!"

I think this is a situation that is not alien to our time. Deforestation and the destruction of ecosystems is a great problem in mankind's hunger for natural resources. I see this as nature's response towards the pillaging it has suffered at the hands of man.
What I find the most interesting about this poem is the twist in description that happens in the last three lines. We think of mountains as strong, without emotions. They are immovable, unshakable. But when it finally confides that even it can feel something in its heart, maybe man is the one that has a heart made of stone. Maybe man is the one that is truly immovable and unbreakable. Maybe his constant hunger for control, and what he does not have has made him more tough and his impact on the world more everlasting than the largest mountain.
That is a scary thought. That man, such a small thing, has conquered the mighty Earth that he once had fear of.

(Just something to turn around in your head as you're passing time.)

Happy Reading and I wish you all a wonderful and poetry-filled month!

Note: I am using the English translations by Pavan K. Varma in all of the poems that I provide/analyze.

Paper Towns

I haven't read another John Green book since The Fault in Our Stars became popular. And from what I've seen, most of his books are just cheesy love stories. (Which I don't have much problem with, but it gets boring when you read too many)
But when I saw the trailer for this book's movie maybe a year ago, I was suddenly interested. I had also requested it, but in my busy school schedule, I had no time to read it. Now, I finally got the time!

The cover-

Quentin has always admired the beautiful Margo Roth Spiegleman from afar. But she always seemed out of his league with her popular friends and her popular boyfriend. Soon he gave up chasing after her and accepted his fate as a lonely nerd.
One night, she crawls into his bedroom window, asking for him and his car, saying that she will give him the adventure of a lifetime taking revenge on the people that have done her wrong. What ensues is beautiful chaos as they wreck havoc throughout their small town while still trying to stay anonymous. Their escapades include waxing a singular eyebrow off of most annoying person at their school while he is sleeping (Now the real question comes the next morning- Should I wax the other one off or draw the waxed one on?), "breaking into" SeaWorld and crazily running around Walmart at 2 AM, trying to find every item on a really strange (but incredibly well thought out) shopping list.
By day, they go their separate ways, until Quentin hears that Margo has gone missing. He takes it upon himself to find her, wherever she may be hiding. All around him are the clues, but he needs the courage and the heart to piece them together and find his true love and best friend.

"If people were rain, I was a drizzle and she was a hurricane" (By far my favorite quote from this book...)

My thoughts-

A recurring motif throughout the book is the idea of how fake and "paper-thin" modern society is. It seems to be all that Margo complains about. Even though she was living the "perfect life", she often mentions that everything she was trying to maintain was ultimately not worth it in the long run. Quentin actually has a hard time accepting this at first because as far as he is concerned, Margo has the social life that he spent most of his life dreaming of. What problems could she possibly have with her lifestyle?
Margo makes one analogy between the modern lifestyle and the thinness of paper that is rather significant to her whole argument. She says, "All those paper people- living in their paper houses, burning furniture to stay warm. All the paper kids drinking beer some bum bought for them from the paper convenience store. Everyone demented with the mania of owning things. All the things paper-thin and paper frail. And all the people, too. I've lived here for eighteen years, and I have never once in my life come across anyone who cares about anything that matters."
I love the connection between the metaphorical "Paper Towns" that symbolize modern materialism and the actual "Paper Towns" that exist on maps. "Paper Towns" are a type of "signature" that a cartographer would put on their map in the form of a fictional city. Such a city does not actually exist, but serves as a sort of copyright if their work is ever reproduced.
The "Paper Town" featured in this book is called Agloe, NY, a city created by Otto G. Lindberg and Ernest Alpers. It actually has become a town, with the erection of the Agloe General Store and soon other small shops around it.
I take back what I said in the beginning of this post about this book being a cheesy love story. Indeed it is, but it also presents a subtle argument about materialism. I absolutely loved the sarcasm and humor that was the majority of the jokes. It reminded me of the way I talk with my friends and the kind of jokes that we make. I kind of wanted to be with the characters, living through their experiences and enjoying every moment with them.

Age Rating: 14+ (I think that's like the only rating I ever give to books...)

The love story content is pretty tame and it's really not an issue. There's a lot of general teenage angst and salt, but if you are (or have) a teenager, it's also not an issue. Other than that, the book is not too provocative as far as YA novels can go (Believe me, I've seen some pretty weird things that qualify as YA...).

Other than that, enjoy yourselves! It's stress time at school and who knows when I'll actually have enough sleep to sacrifice for another book... :)