Do you read?

[snowychap]

I reckon the moon has a lot to answer for.

Lunacy for one.

[ender4]

A song of ice and fire, I'm on book 4 now. So addictive and immersive.

 

Thats Game of Thrones books?

Is it worth reading even if i've already seen the series? (and totally loved it).

[PompeyVillan]

 

A song of ice and fire, I'm on book 4 now. So addictive and immersive.

 

Thats Game of Thrones books?

Is it worth reading even if i've already seen the series? (and totally loved it).

 

 

Absolutely. The books have SOOO many characters, that many of them are cut out in the TV series. It's a very good read indeed, but I don't think it's for everyone, as it can be a bit heavy on details and each chapter is written for a different character, weaving in and out of storylines. Some of them are more interesting than others. It's also interesting to see how the narrative deviates (necessarily) in the HBO series. 

[maqroll]

 

Lucky to see this thread on the first page again...

 

I'm taking a couple of weeks off and going to Maine at the end of August. I'd like to start and finish a book while I'm up there. I need some good suggestions for non-fiction books that aren't too wonky.

 

Maine? Surely you have to read a King?

 

Nah, I read tons of his stuff years ago. I really liked "It". But I'm more interested in non-fiction these days. Most fiction is total crap.

[snowychap]

Most fiction is total crap.

Ye wot?

[Ginko]

I'm still making my way through King's Dark Tower series at the moment. So far I've read, in this order, The Gunslinger, The Drawing of the Three, The Stand, and I'm not halfway through The Wastelands which is absolutely blowing by, perhaps because it's a much easier read than The Stand was which preceeded it. That was a bit of a beast to get through. The first part was a little dull, but the rest of the book certainly picked up.

[The_Rev]

A song of ice and fire, I'm on book 4 now. So addictive and immersive.

 

Oh snap!  Also on book 4.   It's the weakest book of the series so far though I am enjoying it on the most part, but **** me the chapters set on the Iron Islands are a slog aren't they? 

[leviramsey]

Most fiction is total crap.

Ye wot?

Sturgeon's Law.

[ender4]

 

A song of ice and fire, I'm on book 4 now. So addictive and immersive.

 

Oh snap!  Also on book 4.   It's the weakest book of the series so far though I am enjoying it on the most part, but **** me the chapters set on the Iron Islands are a slog aren't they? 

 

 

is the rest of the book(s) a bit of a slog as well?

[leviramsey]

Lucky to see this thread on the first page again...

 

I'm taking a couple of weeks off and going to Maine at the end of August. I'd like to start and finish a book while I'm up there. I need some good suggestions for non-fiction books that aren't too wonky.

It's an interesting history and ethnography of the past few centuries of North America. It's not wonky and I found it quite enjoyable. The introduction:

On a hot late-August day in 2010, television personality Glenn Beck held a rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on the forty-seventh anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. Mr. Beck stood where Rev. King had stood and addressed the white, mostly middle-aged crowd encircling the National Mall's Reflecting Pool. "We are a nation, quite honestly, that is in about as good shape as I am, and that's not very good," he joked. "We are dividing ourselves," he said, "but our values and our principles can unite us. We must discover them again."

It's a theme heard again and again in times of crisis: Americans have become divided on account of having strayed from the core principles on which their country was founded -- "a firm reliance on divine providence" and "the idea that man can rule himself," in Mr. Beck's analysis -- and must return to those shared values if unity is to be restored. When society was turned upside-down by mass immigration at the turn of both the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, intellectuals counseled that America was in danger of losing the "Anglo-Protestant" culture and the associated "American creed" that supposedly had kept the nation unified. In the aftermath of the tumultuous 1960s, conservatives like [ex-Trotskyist... --LR] Irving Kristol denounced liberal intellectuals, philanthropists, and social workers for abandoning America's traditional capitalist values in favor of utopian social engineering; the liberals fervently defended these projects as promoting shared national principles of equality, justice, and freedom from oppression. With the United States allegedly divided between red states and blue ones in 2008, presidential candidate Barack Obama promised to "beat back the politics of fear, doubt, and cynicism" in favor of hope, a sentiment that allegedly rallied Americans to rebel against Britain, fight and defeat Nazism, and face down segregation in the South. "We are choosing hope over fear," he said before the Iowa caucus. "We're choosing unity over division."

Such calls for unity overlook a glaring historical fact: Americans have been deeply divided since the days of Jamestown and Plymouth. The original North American colonies were settled by people from distinct regions of the British Islands, and from France, the Netherlands, and Spain [to say nothing of Sweden... -LR], each with their own religious, political, and ethnographic characteristics. Throughout the colonial period, they regarded one another as competitors -- for land, settlers, and capital -- and occasionally as enemies, as was the case in the English Civil War, when Royalist Virginia stood against Puritan Massachusetts, or when New Netherland and New France were invaded by English-speaking soldiers, statesmen, and merchants. Only when London began treating some of its colonies as a single unit -- and enacted policies threatening to nearly all -- did some of these distinct societies briefly come together to win a revolution and create a joint government. Nearly all of them would seriously consider leaving the Union in the 80 years after Yorktown; several went to war to do so in the 1860s. All of these centuries-old cultures are still with us today and have spread their people, ideas, and influence across bands of the continent. There isn't and never has been one America, but rather several Americas.

Any effort to "restore" fundamental American values runs into an even greater obstacle: each of the founding cultures had its own set of cherished principles, and they often contradicted one another. By the middle of the eighteenth century, eight discrete Euro-American cultures had been established on the southern and eastern rims of North America. For generations, these distinct cultural hearths developed in remarkable isolation from one another, consolidating characteristic values, practices, dialects, and ideals. Some championed individualism, others utopian social reform. Some believed themselves guided by divine purpose, others championed freedom of conscience and inquiry. Some embraced explicitly Anglo-Saxon Protestant identity, others ethnic and religious pluralism. Some valued equality and democratic participation, others deference to a traditional aristocratic order. All of them continue to champion some version of their founding ideals in the present day. The United States had Founding Fathers, to be sure, but they were the grandfathers, great-grandfathers, or great-great-grandfathers of the men who met to sign the Declaration of Independence and to draft our first two Constitutions. Our true founders didn't have an original intent, they had original intents.

America's essential and abiding divisions are not between red states and blue states, conservatives and liberals, capital and labor, blacks and whites, the faithful and the secular. Rather, our divisions stem from this fact: the United States is a federation comprised of the whole or part of eleven regional nations, some of which truly do not see and have never seen eye to eye with one another. These nations respect neither state, provincial, nor international boundaries, bleeding over US frontiers into Canada and Mexico as readily as they divide California, Texas, Illinois, Ontario, British Columbia, or Pennsylvania. Six joined together to liberate themselves from British rule. Four were conquered but not vanquished by English-speaking rivals. Two more were founded in the West by differing mixes of American frontiersmen in the second half of the nineteenth century. Some are defined by cultural pluralism, others by their French, Spanish, Anglo-Saxon, or Celtic heritage. Few have shown any indication that they are melting into some sort of unified culture. On the contrary, since the 1960s the fault lines between these nations have been growing wider, fueling culture wars, constitutional struggles, and ever more frequent pleas for unity.

...A state is a sovereign political entity, like the United Kingdom, Kenya, Panama, or New Zealand, eligible for inclusion into the United Nations and inclusion on the maps produced by, say, the National Geographic Society. A nation is a group of people who share -- or believe they share -- a common culture, ethnic origin, language, historical experience, artifacts, and/or symbols. Some nations are presently stateless -- the Kurdish, Palestinian, and Quebecois nations, for instance. Some control and dominate a nation-state, which they typically name for themselves, as in France, Germany, Japan, or Turkey. Conversely, there are several states that aren't dominated by a single nation, like Belgium, Switzerland, Malaysia, Canada, and, indeed, the United States. North America's eleven nations are all stateless, though at least two currently aspire to change that and most of the others have tried to at one time or another.

This is the story of the eleven nations, and it explains much about who we North Americans are, where we've come from, and where we might be going.

American Nations reveals the history of North America's nations from the moments of their respective foundations to their present positions within the continents three federations: Canada, Mexico, and the United States. It shows how their conflicting agendas shaped the scope and nature of the American Revolution, the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution, and the chain of violent citizen uprisings against the early American Republic. While every American knows about the great interregional conflict known as the Civil War, it was in fact neither unprecedented (both Appalachia and New England made serious, formal attempts to secede in the 40 years after the Revolution) nor was it strictly two-sided (the war was actually a complicated six-nation minuet over the future of the West, with slavery only being a major consideration for two of the nations). Northern Mexicans -- including those who built the culture of what is now the extreme southwestern United States -- have for centuries seen themselves as separate from their purported countrymen in central and southern Mexico; they rallied behind numerous secession schemes, including the Texas Revolution of 1836. English-speaking Canadians endlessly ponder the weakness of their own identity, and it's no wonder: their federation is comprised of very strong Quebecois and far northern aboriginal entities and the northward extensions of four English-speaking nations whose cores lie south of the border (a Haligonian is more Bostonian than Torontonian, Calgarian, or Vancouverite, who are themselves more like Philadelphians, Denverites, or Portlanders than the others).

Disregard the conventional map of North America, with its three neat federations of thirteen Canadian provinces, thirty-one Mexican states, and fifty American ones. For the most part, these boundaries are as arbitrary as the ones European powers used to divide up Africa or the Middle East. The lines on the map slash through cohesive cultures, creating massive cultural fissures in states like Maryland, Ohio, or New York, whose residents often find they have more in common with their neighbors in other states than they do with one another. Banish the meaningless regions with which we try to analyze national politics -- "the Northeast", "the Midwest", "the West", or "the South" -- whose boundaries are drawn based on state lines in complete disregard for the continent's history and sectional rivalries. The states, provinces, and federations do matter, of course, but they are merely the official forums through which political power is exercised and expressed. On careful examination of over four hundred years of history, one realizes that these jurisdictions are illusions that mask the real forces that have driven the affairs of our sprawling continent.

So what are these nations? What are their defining characteristics? What parts of the continent does each control? Where did they come from? Let me briefly introduce each of them, their spheres of dominance, and the names I have chosen for each.

Yankeedom was founded on the shores of Massachusetts Bay by radical Calvinists as a new Zion, a religious utopia in the New England wilderness. From the outset, it was a culture that put great emphasis on education, local political control, and the pursuit of the "greater good" of the community even if it required individual self-denial. Yankees have the greatest faith in the potential of government to improve people's lives, tending to see it as an extension of the citizenry, and a vital bulwark against the schemes of grasping aristocrats, corporations, and outside powers. For roughly four centuries, Yankees have sought to build a perfect society on Earth through social engineering, relatively extensive citizen involvement in the political process, and the aggressive assimilation of foreigners. Settled by stable, educated families, Yankeedom has always had a middle-class ethos and considerable respect for intellectual achievement. Its religious zeal has waned over time, but not its underlying drive to improve the world and the set of moral and social values that scholars have sometimes described as "secular Puritanism".

From its New England core, Yankee culture spread with its settlers across upstate New York; the northern strips of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa; parts of the eastern Dakotas; and most if not all of Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and the Atlantic Provinces of Canada. It has been locked in nearly perpetual combat with the Deep South for control of the US federal government since the moment such a thing existed.

While short-lived, the seventeenth-century Dutch colony of New Netherland had a lasting impact on the continent's development by laying down the cultural DNA for what is now Greater New York City. Modeled on its Dutch namesake, New Amsterdam was from the start a global trading society: multi-ethnic, multi-religious, speculative, materialistic, mercantile, and free-trading, a raucous, not entirely democratic city-state where no one ethnic or religious group has ever really been in charge. New Netherland also nurtured two Dutch innovations considered subversive by most other European states at the time: a profound tolerance of diversity and an unflinching commitment to freedom of inquiry. Forced on the other nations at the Constitutional Convention, these ideals have been passed down to us as the Bill of Rights.

Despite the defeat of the Dutch by the English in 1664, New Netherland has retained its fundamental values and societal model, having long ago replaced Amsterdam as the leading world center of Western commerce, finance, and publishing. Its territory has shrunk over the centuries, its southern reaches (Delaware and southern New Jersey) absorbed by the Midlands, its northern ones (Albany and the upper Hudson Valley) by Yankeedom. Today it comprises the five boroughs of New York City, the lower Hudson Valley, northern New Jersey, western Long Island, and Southwestern Connecticut (with the border between Yankeedom and New Netherlands is more or less drawn based on whether there are more supporters of the Yankee Red Sox, Celtics, and Patriots as opposed to the New Netherlands Yankees, Knicks, and Giants*). As a center of global commerce, New Netherland has long been the front door for immigrants, who've made it the most densely populated part of North America. Its population, 19 million at this writing, is greater than all but 10 European countries [being greater than The [Old] Netherlands and less than Romania -- LR], and its influence over this contient's (and the world's) media, publishing, fashion, intellectual, and economic life is hard to overstate.

Arguably the most "American" of the nations, The Midlands was founded by English Quakers, who welcomed people of many nations and creeds to utopian colonies on the shores of Delaware Bay. Pluralistic and organized around the middle class, the Midlands spawned the culture of Middle America and the Heartland, where ethnic and ideological purity have never been a priority, government has been seen as an unwelcome intrusion, and political opinion is moderate, if not outright apathetic. The only part of Anglophone North America to have a non-British majority in 1775, the Midlands has long been an ethnic mosaic, with people of German descent -- not "Anglo-Saxons" -- comprising the largest ethnic group since the late 1600s. Like Yankees, the Midlanders believe that society should be organized to benefit ordinary people, but they are extremely skeptical of top-down government intervention, as many of their ancestors fled European tyrannies. The Midlands is the home of the dialect known as "Standard American," a bellwether for national political attitudes, and the key swing vote in every national debate from the abolition of slavery to the elections of Barack Obama.

From its cultural hearth is southeastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey, and northern Delaware and Maryland, Midland culture spread west through central Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois; northern Missouri; most of Iowa; and most of the less arid eastern halves of South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas. It shares the key "border cities" of Chicago (with Yankeedom) and St. Louis (with Appalachia). It also has an important extension in southern Ontario, where many Loyalist Midlanders emigrated after the American Revolution, forming Toronto and the central core of English-speaking Canada. While less cognizant than the others of its national identity [perhaps because when one thinks of an American, they think of someone from Columbus or Peoria and when one thinks of an Anglo Canadian, they will tend to think of someone from Ontario -- LR], the Midlands is the enormously influential moderating force on North American politics as it agrees with only a part of each of its neighbors' more strident agendas.

Tidewater, the most powerful of the nations during the colonial period and the early American Republic, has always been fundamentally conservative, with a high value placed on respect for authority and tradition and very little placed on equality or public participation in politics. Such attitudes are not surprising: it was, after all, founded by the younger sons of the English gentry, who aimed to reproduce the semifeudal manorial society of the English countryside, where economic, social, and political affairs were run by and for landed aristocrats. These self-identified "Cavaliers" largely succeeded in their aims, turning the lowlands of Virginia, Maryland, southern Delaware, and northeastern North Carolina into a country gentleman's paradise, with, first,indentured servants and, later, slaves taking the part of the peasants.

Tidewater elites played a central role in the foundation of the United States, and were responsible for most of the aristocratic inflections in the US Constitution, including the Electoral College and Senate, whose members were to be appointed by legislators, not the electorate. But its influence waned in the 1830s and 1840s, its elite planters generally and with more moderation following the lead of the planters of the ascendant Deep South in matters of national political importance. It has been in more or less continual decline since then, rapidly losing its influence, territory, and cultural cohesion to its Midland neighbors. Its undoing has geographic roots: as with New Netherlands, it couldn't expand westward, over the mountains, but unlike New Netherlands, its essentially feudal economy was not at all suited to the rise of industrial capitalism.

Greater Appalachia was founded in the early eighteenth century by wave upon wave of rough, bellicose, largely Celtic settlers from the war-ravaged borderlands of Northern Ireland, the north of England, and the Scottish lowlands. Lampooned by writers, journalists, filmmakers, and television producers then and now as "rednecks", "hillbillies", "crackers", and "white trash," these clannish Scots-Irish, Scots, and north English frontiersmen spread across the highland South and on into the southern tiers of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois; the Arkansas and Missouri Ozarks; the eastern two-thirds of Oklahoma; and the Hill Country of Texas, clashing with Indians, Mexicans, and Yankees as they migrated.

In the British and Irish Isles, this culture had formed in a state of near-constant war and upheaval, fostering a warrior ethic and a deep commitment to individual liberty and personal sovereignty. Intensely suspicious of aristocrats and social reformers alike, these American Borderlanders despised Yankee teachers, Tidewater lords, and Deep Southern aristocrats. In the Civil War, most of this region fought in states which seceded for the Union (forming secession-from-secession movements in western Virginia (which successfully formed West Virginia), eastern Tennessee, and northern Alabama) and fought for the Confederacy in the states which did not secede. During Reconstruction, the region was vehemently opposed to Yankee efforts to make the slaves full citizens, driving it into a lasting alliance with its previous avowed, but defeated, enemies: the overlords of the Tidewater and Deep Southern lowlands of Dixie. The Borderlanders' combative culture has provided a large portion of the US's military, from officers like Andrew Jackson, Davy Crockett, and Douglas MacArthur, to the enlisted men volunteering to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq. They also gave us bluegrass and country music, stock car racing, and Evangelical fundamentalism. Greater Appalachia's people have long had a poor awareness of their cultural origins. One scholar of the Scots-Irish calls them "the people with no name". When US Census takers ask Appalachian people to identify their ethnicity, they are most likely to simply say "American" or even "Native American".

The Deep South was founded by Barbados slave lords as a West Indies-style slaveocracy, a system so cruel and despotic that it shocked even its seventeenth-century English contemporaries. For most of America's history, the region has been the bastion of white supremacy, aristocratic privilege, and a version of classical Republicanism modeled on the slave states of the ancient world, where democracy was the privilege of the few and enslavement the lot of the many. It remains the least democratic of the nations, essentially a one-party entity where race is the primary determinant of political affiliations.

Beginning from its Charleston beachhead, the Deep South spread apartheid and authoritarianism across the Southern lowlands, eventually encompassing most of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, and Louisiana; western Tennessee; and the southeastern parts of North Carolina, Arkansas, and Texas. Its territorial ambitions in Latin America frustrated, in the 1860s it dragged the federation into a horrific war in an attempt to form its own nation-state, backed by reluctant allies in Tidewater and some corners of Appalachia. After enduring a Yankee-led occupation, it became the center of the states' rights movement, racial segregation, and labor and environmental deregulation. It's also the wellspring of African-American culture, and four decades after it was forced to allow blacks to vote, it remains polarized on racial grounds. Having forged an uneasy "Dixie" coalition with Tidewater and Appalachia in the 1870s, the Deep South remains locked in an epic battle with Yankeedom and its Left Coast and New Netherland allies for the future of the federation.

New France is the most overtly nationalistic of the nations, possessing a nation-state in waiting in the form of the Province du Quebec. Founded in the early 1600s, New France blends the folkways of ancien regime northern French peasantry with the traditions and values of the aboriginal people they encountered in northeastern North America. Down-to-earth, egalitarian, and consensus-driven, the New French have emerged as far and away the most left-wing people on the continent. Long oppressed by British overlords, the New French have imparted some of their attitudes to the Canadian federation, where multiculturalism and negotiated consensus are treasured. They are indirectly responsible for the [re]emergence of First Nation, which is either the oldest or newest of the nations, depending on how you look at it.

Today, New France includes lower third of Quebec, northern and northeastern New Brunswick, and the Acadian ("Cajun") enclaves of southern Louisiana (New Orleans is a border city, blending Deep Southern and New French elements). It is the nation most likely to secure an independent state, though it would likely have to negotiate a partition of Quebec with First Nation.

El Norte is the oldest of the American nations, dating back to the late sixteenth century when the Spanish Empire founded Monterrey, Saltillo, and other northern outposts. Today, this resurgent nation spreads from the US-Mexico border for at least a hundred miles in either direction. It encompasses south and west Texas, southern California, southern Arizona, most of New Mexico, parts of Colorado, and the Mexican states of Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, Coahuila, Chihuahua, Sonora, and Baja California. Overwhelmingly Hispanic, it has long been a hybrid between Anglo and Spanish America, with an economy oriented toward the United States rather than Mexico City.

Most Americans are well aware that the USA's southern borderlands are a place apart, where Hispanic language, culture, and societal norms dominate. Fewer, though, realize that among Mexicans, the people of the northern border states are seen as overly Americanized. Nortenos have a well-earned reputation for being more independent, self-sufficient, adaptable, and work-centered than Mexicans from the more densely populated hierarchical society of the Mexican core. Long a hotbed of democratic reform and revolutionary sentiment, the northern Mexican states have more in common with the Hispanic borderlands of the southwestern United States -- historically, culturally, economically, gastronomically -- than they do with the rest of Mexico. The borderlands on both sides are really part of a single Norteno culture.

Split by an increasingly militarized border, El Norte in some ways resembles Cold War Germany: two peoples with a common culture separated from one another by a large wall. Despite the wishes of their political masters in Washington, D.C. and Mexico, D.F., many nortenos would prefer to federate to form a nation-state of their own. Charles Truxillo, a professor of Chicano studies at the University of New Mexico, has predicted that this sovereign state will be a reality by the end of the twenty-first century. He's even given it a name, La Republica del Norte. But regardless of any future nation-state aspirations, El Norte is going to be an increasingly influential force within the United States. By 2050, the proportion of the US population that identifies as Hispanic will be around 30%, more than double the percentage from 2005. Much of that growth will be in El Norte.

A Chile-shaped nation pinned between the mountains and the Pacific coast, the Left Coast extends in a strip from Monterey, California, to Juneau, Alaska, including four decidedly progressive metropolises: San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver. A mostly-wet region of staggering natural beauty, it was originally colonized by two groups: merchants, missionaries, and woodsmen from New England (who arrived by sea and controlled the towns), and farmers, prospectors, and fur traders from Appalachia (who arrived overland and dominated the countryside). Slated by Yankees to become the "New England of the Pacific" -- and the target of a dedicated missionary effort -- the Left Coast retained a strong strain of New England intellectualism and idealism even as it embraced a more Appalachian culture of individual fulfillment.

Today it combines the Yankee faith in good government and social reform with a commitment to individual self-exploration and discovery, a combination that has proven fecund. The Left Coast is the birthplace of the modern environmental movement and the global information revolution (it's home, after all, to Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, and the rest of Silicon Valley) and the co-founder, with New Netherland, of the gay rights movement, the peace movement, and the cultural revolutions of the 1960s. Ernest Callenbach's 1975 sci-fi novel Ecotopia imagined the US portion of the nation as having broken off into a separate, environmentally stable nation at odds with the rest of the continent. The modern secessionist movement of Cascadia seeks to add in British Columbia and southern Alaska as well. The closest ally of Yankeedom, it battles constantly against the libertarian-corporate agenda of its neighbor, the Far West.

Climate and geography shape all nations to some extent, but the Far West is the only one where environmental factors trumped ethnic ones. High, dry, and remote, the interior West presented conditions so severe they destroyed those who tried to import agricultural techniques from the other nations. With very few exceptions, this vast region could not be colonized until after the industrial revolution brought railroads, mining equipment, ore smelters, dams, and irrigation systems. As a result, the colonization was facilitated and directed by large corporations headquartered in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Montreal, Toronto, Chicago, Vancouver, Houston, and San Francisco; or by the Eastern-run governments themselves, which owned nearly all of the land. Even if they weren't employed by one of the corporations, settlers would be dependent on the railroads for transportation of goods, people, and products to and from far-off markets and manufacturing centers. Unfortunately for the settlers, the region was and still largely is an internal colony, exploited and despoiled for the benefit of the coastal nations. Its political class reviles the federal governments for interfering in its affairs -- a stance allying it with the Deep South -- while demanding that it receive federal largesse. Challenges to the foreign corporations are notably more rare, however. Today, the nation encompasses nearly all of the interior west of the 100th meridian from the northern boundary of El Norte to the southern frontier of First Nation, including northern Arizona; the interiors of California, Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia; most of Alberta and Saskatchewan; much of Manitoba and Alaska; portions of the Yukon and Northwestern Territories; the arid western halves of the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Kansas; and all or nearly all of Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Utah, and Nevada.

Like the Far West, First Nation encompasses a vast region with hostile conditions: the boreal forests, tundra, and glaciers of the far north. The difference, however, is that its indigenous inhabitants retain much control, having never given up the land by treaty. Native Americans have begun reclaiming sovereignty and have won considerable autonomy in Alaska and Nunavut, and a self-governing nation-state in Greenland, which stands on the threshold of full independence from Denmark.

*: [The Mets and Jets run a distant third in Connecticut; the Nets, due to their history in New Jersey are even less of a factor; ice hockey allegiances are complicated by the former Hartford Whalers... -- LR]

Difficult as it may be to undertand today, the Quakers were considered a radical and dangerous force, the late-seventeenth century equivalent of crossing the hippie movement with the Church of Scientology.

[The_Rev]

 

 

A song of ice and fire, I'm on book 4 now. So addictive and immersive.

 

Oh snap!  Also on book 4.   It's the weakest book of the series so far though I am enjoying it on the most part, but **** me the chapters set on the Iron Islands are a slog aren't they? 

 

 

is the rest of the book(s) a bit of a slog as well?

 

 

 

The first three books are excellent.  Book three, A Storm of Swords, is the best in the series so far in my opinion.   The TV show kinda keeps pace with the books, the first season is a pretty faithful recreation of the first book, the season season is the second book (albeit with a few changes) and the third season is probably about half of the third book with some stuff from book two that they left out of season two and some stuff that (I presume) happens in books four or five that I've not read yet. 

 

If you have been watching the show then there is still a ton of stuff to happen in book three which will .probably make season four.  I will say if you want to start reading start on book one rather than attempting to jump in where you think the TV show is. 

 

As for the specifics about book four, well I'm a little over half way through (400 of 700 pages) and the book has been all set up no pay off so far. It's alright when you have a lot invested in the characters and some of the storylines are still very good but there are a couple which really do feel like a slog.  

The Iron Islands storyline is positively boring at the moment and Samwell spending fifty pages on a boat watching a baby and it's mother cry was hardly thrilling stuff either. It also appears that some of the strongest characters from the series (Dany, Tyrion, Bran) are not in this book at all even though they are all alive and well.

[Eames]

 

 

 

 

Oh snap!  Also on book 4.   It's the weakest book of the series so far though I am enjoying it on the most part, but **** me the chapters set on the Iron Islands are a slog aren't they? 

 

 

is the rest of the book(s) a bit of a slog as well?

 

 

 

The first three books are excellent.  Book three, A Storm of Swords, is the best in the series so far in my opinion.   The TV show kinda keeps pace with the books, the first season is a pretty faithful recreation of the first book, the season season is the second book (albeit with a few changes) and the third season is probably about half of the third book with some stuff from book two that they left out of season two and some stuff that (I presume) happens in books four or five that I've not read yet. 

 

If you have been watching the show then there is still a ton of stuff to happen in book three which will .probably make season four.  I will say if you want to start reading start on book one rather than attempting to jump in where you think the TV show is. 

 

As for the specifics about book four, well I'm a little over half way through (400 of 700 pages) and the book has been all set up no pay off so far. It's alright when you have a lot invested in the characters and some of the storylines are still very good but there are a couple which really do feel like a slog.  

The Iron Islands storyline is positively boring at the moment and Samwell spending fifty pages on a boat watching a baby and it's mother cry was hardly thrilling stuff either. It also appears that some of the strongest characters from the series (Dany, Tyrion, Bran) are not in this book at all even though they are all alive and well.

 

IIRC they aren't - they are in Book 5. Martin originally wrote 4 & 5 as one manuscript and the publisher said "**** no" and so he split them. So Tyrion/Dany and others are in Book 5.

Edited July 31, 2013 by Eames

[leemond2008]

Any one ever read lord of the flies?

I'm waiting for it to be delivered I dont know why I've never bothered to read it before

 

At the moment I'm going over some of the older classics, just re-reading turn of the screw, then I want to revisit the catcher in the rye, to kill a mocking bird and the haunting of hill house

 

quite looking forward to lord of the flies though

[legov]

Fukkin hell, Levi, another book I have to read. They just keep coming.

[Wainy316]

I'm on book 2 of Ice and Fire and would definitely recommend reading them to fans of the show.  

[Webbs]

I'm on book 2 of Ice and Fire and would definitely recommend reading them to fans of the show.  

Would you recommend them to a fan who hasn't watched the show? And is the show worth watching?

[Wainy316]

 

I'm on book 2 of Ice and Fire and would definitely recommend reading them to fans of the show.  

Would you recommend them to a fan who hasn't watched the show? And is the show worth watching?

 

 

Yes and yes, without doubt on both counts.

 

I couldn't advise which to do first though.  I watched the show first and as I read it, I find myself remembering and linking things that went over my head in the show, which has been quite enjoyable. 

Edited July 31, 2013 by Wainy316

[Webbs]

I'll be sure to check both out then 

[Ginko]

 

I'm on book 2 of Ice and Fire and would definitely recommend reading them to fans of the show.  

Would you recommend them to a fan who hasn't watched the show? And is the show worth watching?

 

 

The book and the show are definitely worth your time. I watched Season One before I read any of the books and even though I enjoyed it, I found it much easier to follow all the characters and individual threads of story after I'd read the book. I've now read them all so far and it does nothing to dull my experience with the TV show. I know some people aren't really book people and they think that by reading the books first, it spoils the TV show, but it really doesn't with me. Then again, I find books just as entertaining as TV and movies so it's personal preference. I think the only reason Book 4 is considered a weak point is because it follows from Book 3 which is filled with action. If I recall, I think Book 4 is supposed to happen at the same time as Book 3 and so Season 3 of the TV show is half book 3 and book 4, so Season 4 will be the other half. I could be wrong though, it's been a while since I read the books.

 

Any one ever read lord of the flies?

I'm waiting for it to be delivered I dont know why I've never bothered to read it before

 

At the moment I'm going over some of the older classics, just re-reading turn of the screw, then I want to revisit the catcher in the rye, to kill a mocking bird and the haunting of hill house

 

quite looking forward to lord of the flies though

 

I read Lord of the Flies in school but only really appreciated it when I went back and read it a few years later. It's a great book, chock full with symbolism and metaphor for society and the nature of people.

I personally found Catcher in the Rye a little dull, which is probably some kind of literature sacrilege, but each to their own. To Kill A Mockingbird is absolutely fantastic though, highly recommend it. If you're going down the classic American literature route I'd also recommend Of Mice and Men. It's a really short book that you'll blow through in no time at all.

Edited July 31, 2013 by Ginko

[mjmooney]

Fukkin hell, Levi, another book I have to read. They just keep coming.

 

This.