Somehow, I don’t feel quite so bad about buying the first book back in 2002 and never getting around to reading it. But I feel it’s kinda daunting to start now, I should have started back then.
Don’t start Lost if you haven’t already. It’s terrible, and only has value at this point if you’re already hooked. It’s a wild meandering pointless ride through pop-culture existentialism. If you can avoid it think of it more like an addiction than something worthwhile.
As for Song of Ice and Fire, it’s fabulous, it’s great, but you won’t be satisfied. If you wait for it to be finished you’ll probably not read it for a few decades.
Thank goodness I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. However, unlike you, I didn’t actually like it. By the end of the first book, I hated the ending and also realized that I didn’t give a damn about any of the characters – which is annoying after so long a book. Obviously, I didn’t bother to pick up the second.
This was how I felt as well. This is one of those epic series that I just don’t care about.
I like the series, but I realised once when trying to read the first one again, that unlike many other books, it’s not a good one for re-reading. It’s so dense with events, and dark character moments, that it doesn’t have re-read appeal for me. There’s no joy in reading what happens, and there’s no longer any sense of discovery as the page turns, both of which are what make fantasy entertaining for me, so it’s not going to happen.
I personally have re-read the series several times, though I’ve only read the fourth book (A Feast for Crows) the one time. I was a bit disappointed in AFFC overall, mainly cause as someone pointed out earlier it was focused more on the characters I wasn’t as interested in, but I’m seriously looking forward to Dance with Dragons, which will be the other half of the 4th book focusing on the characters I really do enjoy reading about.
I love the series as a whole, that he treats people like people, with flaws and strengths, and they get hurt, sometimes badly. I also like that you can start off hating someone cause you only read about them from another’s perspective, but you slowly get more and more of an understanding about where that person is coming from and sympathize with them a bit. There are very few “bad guys” per se, just rival families with their own interests
though that’s obviously changing a bit now
anyway, great series, I definitely recomend giving it a whirl, though you might wanna wait till after the next book, A Dance with Dragons, comes out, whenever the hell that’ll be.