Othello

After Romeo and Juliet, I have now just finished Othello from William Shakespeare. I must be getting used to the old language since I have been a lot faster to read it than Romeo and Juliet; I am getting used to refer constantly to the lexical at the end of the book as well so I'm not too lost when the text gets complicated.

Reading Othello has been much more interesting: the characters are more polished and their feelings are more detailed. I discovered the evil Iago (I am ashamed to admit that I only knew this name from the Walt Disney motion picture Aladdin... Better late than never I guess).

Obviously, everybody dies at the end of the book; Shakespeare likes to torture his characters... Well not everybody but the only guy who survives has lost a leg so... not too far from it :) Poor Desdemona though.

Romeo and Juliet

I thought it would be time now for me to start reading William Shakespeare's dramas. I remember I read a lot of William Shakespeare about 15 years ago in French but I can't remember what I read so now is the time to read it again, but in the original text.

Obviously I was foolish enough to believe that I would be able to understand the text... Oh boy was I wrong!!

The text is complex, the vocabulary is complex and not understanding one every two words makes the reading pretty difficult... It took me about half the book to get accustomed to the text, so when I arrived at around the middle of the play, I decided to start all over again from the beginning. The second time was a bit better as far as understanding is concerned but by then, I had unfortunately made an opinion...

I have been extremely disappointed in this play: I was expecting the magical, or at least powerful, love story and I was left with a boy getting enamored with the first blonde "rebound" girl passing, and some misunderstandings as a plot... The characters are as shallow as can be, which is disappointing knowing the aura of Romeo and Juliet… I guess I got caught up too much in the modern “interpretation” of the legend and expected too much.

A Song of Ice and Fire

This entry will cover all five volumes of the "A song of Ice and Fire" series

• A Game of Thrones 
• A Clash of Kings
• A Storm of Swords 
• A Feast for Crows 
• A Dance with Dragons

The "A song of ice and fire" series has come to me highly recommended by 2 persons so I purchased the first volume on amazon... A hundred pages before the end of volume one, I had ordered the 4 remaining volumes: it's that good. Every volume is around 1000 pages but it had been a long time since I've had such a consuming novel to read; there really were times where I could not put the book down.

To sum up the series very quickly, it is a fantasy novel, set in a medieval world, with just a hint of magic. Kings and heroes brutally clash in a story deeply set in reality: there is no good or bad, there are just characters living their lives, with their own ideas of honor and duty. And the most astonishing trait of the story is the ability of the author to depict a character, invent his history and prepare his destiny, make you love or hate him, and to just kill him at the most unexpected time, for the most unexpected (and usually ruthless) reason.

About the form: each chapter is told from the point of view of a character which sometimes brings false or deformed information. This adds to the un-Manichean side of the story, since the reader is the witness of the feelings that animate the characters, their biases which are often based on misinformation...

There is so much to say since I just spent more than 3 months reading these books.

*** SPOILERS ***
The first shocker in "A Game of Thrones" is of course Eddard Stark's death. After that, the story runs deep with an increasing number of characters, headlined by the Starks and Lannisters, surrounded by the Tullys, Targaryens, Baratheons, Martells and Tyrells and Greyjoys. The story continues in "A Clash of Kings" when 5 pretenders claim the iron throne.
The story culminates in the third volume which is (to me) the very best volume of the series: "A Storm of Swords" is the theater of the infamous "Red wedding" and the surprising events of Joffrey's wedding and such a non-stop series of events that there is no leisure to rest! I must confess that I was as incredulous as I was "happy" reading Joffrey's demise: so many important (and dear) characters die in this third volume that it comes as retribution!
The fourth "A Feast for Crows" and the fifth "A Dance with Dragons" volumes develop more stories around Arya, Jon, Daenarys, Brienne, Jaime, Cersei, the Greyjoys and of course, Tyrion. The story of Daenarys grows more and more important, as does the status of Jon on the Wall and all other stories gravitate around these two. That's why Jon's murder at the end of volume 5 comes as a stunner!
*** /SPOILERS ***

Now, there's only one problem: when will the next volumes come out? Apart from the main cliffhangers, there are still a lot of questions left unanswered: what of Arya? And Sansa? What of Brienne and Jaime? Rickon has disappeared in volume 3 and never been heard of since. What of Bran? Will Robert's bastards reappear? Loras? I guess we'll have to wait several years to find out the answers...