I took some time off this summer to catch up on spending time with family, reading, watching TV.  I hadn’t updated my blog in a while so I figured it was time.

I discovered HBO’s Game of Thrones, merely by chance to be honest, I think one of my regular news sites had a posting about being able to watch the first 15 minutes of their new show for free and since I really loved Rome (and was pissed off that it was cancelled too early) I thought I would check it out.  The 15 minute preview was really well done and so I invested some time in watching the entire season.  Near the end of the season I bought the books and starting reading them and was seriously hooked.  I hadn’t read any fantasy novels since high-school/college with the Dragonlance series so it was nice to get back into 1) reading  2) reading in a genre that I had forgotten about.  During summer I read all the books including GRRM’s new book.  The new book I got digitally and was actually surprised how well reading on a tablet/ereader would be.  I expected (like a lot of people do initially) that reading on the screen would not be the same but in many ways it was better as the reader I used managed bookmarks, it was easier to take the tablet around than a bulky 1000 page book and it was easy to review and find parts within the story that I needed to re-read.  I can see eReaders being the future, something I never expected until I enjoyed reading a great book on one.

I also managed to pick up Coalitions End by Karen Traviss, which is the 4th Gears of War book based off the video game.  I enjoyed all her other books so it was easy to get into this one.  It ties in really well to where the 3rd and last? game starts of, to be released on XBOX360 tomorrow.  I’m a huge Gears fan so I’m really looking forward to going through the game story with friends and playing online.  Normally I wouldn’t really considering reading a video-game tie-in book but the characters and world created by Epic are so engrossing and Traviss has a great style of writing that it was easy to get reeled in.  I recommend her books if you are interested in reading something a little different.