... and also about daring

It either is my greatest deed or my greatest mistake. But in any case, I'll leave that for the gods - any gods - to decide.

Theft is about opportunity

As strange as it might sound, the strange thing about all this is not that it happened now, but that it only happened now.

It's highly unlikely that I'll get bored in the next two months

A Storm of Swords, 1: Steel and Snow (George R.R. Martin): 433 pages to go. A Storm of Swords, 2: Blood and Gold (George R.R. Martin): 579 pages. A Feast For Crows (George R.R. Martin): 852 pages. The Hobbit (J.R.R. Tolkien), 356 pages. Plus Foundation and Earth, Prelude to Foundation and Forward the Foundation!, all by Isaac Asimov, that must be already waiting for me at the regular bookstore, each book with roughly (this is a guess) 340 pages, the three with more or less 1200 pages. Page total: 3240 pages to read. I won't lack reading for sure.

The middleman

I suppose it is better than belonging nowhere. Being stuck in the middle has its bittersweet taste though. No matter what you do or how hard you try, you're doomed to be nothing but a shade, one that is met along the road between the departure and the arrival. You have a meaning, but a short-lived one - even if the wanderers take their time, you know they'll leave one day.

Thunder and lightning

After eight years living in the city, I could finally watch a storm lasting more than three lightning strikes and a handful of thunder. This one is running for hours, skies pouring heavily, restless wind loose, lightning crossing the skies followed by the rumble of the clouds. I remember the storms of May when I was little. They always came in the first days of the month, a last mockery of Winter to the incoming Summer: thick gray clouds slowly taking over the blue sky, a faint echo beyond the horizon. And then the rain, cold and heavy, breaking throught the warmth of the day, lightning flashes piercing the sudden dusk in violence, thunder so loud it made the windows tremble and almost seem to shook the very foundations of the world. How I missed it.

Fantasy: An Uncomparable Comparison

I've read recently (well, I'm finishing it anyway) The Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin first part of an epic fantasy series still in the making (four out of seven books published). I had friends telling me over the last years that it was incredibly good and truth be told, it is. In fact, their descriptions never did the story justice - yes, it is just that good. And now there's a television series coming too, around this month, on HBO. By the look of the trailers and the fifteen-minute preview avaliable, it looks truly outstanding. But there's one thing that kinda bugs me, and it's not quite related to the series or the books themselves, but with the comments I've been reading over the Internet - and we all know how comments are on the Internet - drawing comparisons between Martin and Tolkien.

Let's put it like this: the critic doesn't call Martin "the American Tolkien" for nothing. Yes, he is that good, but as one can easily see, Tolkien's still there. And truth be told, ninety-five percent of the fantasy literature walks down the road paved by Tolkien. Today we get the opportunity to read Martin's wonderful epic fantasy (or many other great fantasy stories, even Pullman's in a way) because an old English teacher of the twentieth century set his mind into creating the greatest literary world ever written. This doesn't mean that everyone else is under his shadow -Martin and his A Song of Ice and Fire surely isn't, just as Pullman's His Dark Materials isn't. They created immensely rich worlds of their own, rather unique and enjoyable. But at the end of the day, we all go back to the Shire, even if to draw silly comparisons. Yes, Tolkien's tales are rather "sexless", if I may put things that way - and if we compare with Martin's plunder-and-rape, the Middle-Earth looks as if locked into a monastery. But truth be told, the story needed no sex whatsoever, not even romance (and everyone who read the books know that the films have much more romance than their source material). It simply wouldn't fit. Whereas in Martin's tale, it fits incredibly well.

Plus the whole idea that The Lord of the Rings is all black-and-white, with "pretty Elves" opposing "ugly Orcs", while A Song of Ice and Fire is all about the shades of gray kind of falls apart when we think about the prime motive of Tolkien's epic: Frodo. Shades of gray? That little hobbit went through all possible shades of gray from the verdant Shire until the ash-riddled Mordor. There and back again, without never really coming back. Yes, Martin's tale is all about intrigue and betrayal, a constant prism with many different facets - and it's extraordinarily good and entertaining at that, while Tolkien, truth be told, focus more on the eternal "Good versus Evil" conflict, with archetypal heroes of the likes of Aragorn and Faramir and Gandalf opposing archetypal villains as Sauron and Saruman - and ultimately winning. Except for Frodo, who falls far and never really gets back on his feet. Of all the fantasy characters I've read about over the years there's only one that strikes me as Frodo did - Urza Planeswalker, a rather obscure protagonist of a rather (unjustly) obscure series of books based on a trading card role play game.

All in all, I for one I'm glad that one can read both authors. Comparisons are rather futile: the books themselves belong to their own time, to their own background, and (perhaps above all) to their own motive. I've read The Lord of the Rings (the three books) three times already, and I'm sure I'll enjoy the fourth just as much as the third. I've just read A Game of Thrones, and I can't way to read the second book, A Clash of Kings. Let the hardcore fans of each compare and struggle at will - read both, and you're in for a treat.

Any other girl

Sometimes when I look at you or even talk to you, I can't help but wonder how was it ever possible for me to ever fall in love with you. You have no idea of this, of course, but it doesn't make it any less true. I remember everything I used to like about you - your vivid intelligence, your fierce detachment from the irrelevant, your unyielding determination towards greatness, your untamed, unlikely beauty. To be honest, you still possess all that, but those features were corrupted and became into a shadow of what they once were. Your vivid intelligence switched targets somehow, and the good conversations of the past gave way to boredom You've embraced futility with all your heart, that matched with a strong contempt for the things of no importance to you. Your determination, perhaps tired of aspiring to the impossible, switched to the easy and always attainable mediocrity. And you've learned from others how to tame your beauty, and as you were always a good learner, you've just became like any other girl. And yet, for a very small part of me, still alive, you'll never be just like any other girl.

Rules of resentment

Given enough time, resentment always surfaces. It just takes the right oportunity; when it comes, it is as certain as the nightfall. We can hide it in full conscience, knowing it is just there around the corner, pretending to ourselves and others that it doesn't exist. We can hide without knowing it, feeling it without understanding the feeling. Either way, we can keep it inside for a long time; we may even sometimes wonder how righteous it would feel to let it go and shove into someone else's face, while we don't. But when the time comes, when the right moment is upon us, we are helpless to keep it to ourselves.

Sharper

“As I said, the S.S. is just a tool. Men are always for hire who like the dirty work. How dirty will that work become if you nudge Douglas out of his majority?”

“Jubal, are you saying that I ought not to criticize the administration?”

“Noe. Gadflies are necessary. But it's well to look at the new rascals before you turn your present rascals out. Democracy is a poor system; the only thing that can be said for it is that it's eight times as good as any other method. Its worst fault is that its leaders reflect their constituents – a low level, but what can you expect? So look at Douglas and ponder that, in his ignorance, stupidity, and self-seeking, he resembles his fellow Americans but is a notch or two above average. Then look at the man who will replace him if his government topples.”

“There's little difference.”

“There's always a difference! This is between “bad” and “worse” - which is much sharper than between “good” and “better”.

Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

Yes. Much sharper. Between you and me, one of us is going to find that out soon enough.