Books to Read Twice

Just got done with my second pass at George R R Martin's A Game of Thrones.  I read the four books that were out at the time, oh, a while ago.  I let a buddy of mine borrow the books and they've just come back.  I thought I'd crack open the first again, and, dang, it is so much more interesting on the second read.

Already being familiar with the main characters helps a lot.  Also having some time pass before reading the book again let me rediscover plot points and minor characters totally forgotten or never noticed.  I actually laughed a couple times when some obvious foreshadowing jumped out at me or a connection between characters was plainly stated that I didn't notice before.

All this points to the fact that George R R Martin is a great epic fantasy writer.  I'd like to take a stab at the genre sometime, but seriously, there's something wrong with the genre if you have to read the book twice to really appreciate it.  I'm not saying that the first read should always be enough.  There are plenty books out there of all kinds of genres that deserve a second read.  The reader will always pick up on the subtleties that he or she missed the first time around.  But I missed SO much on the first read of A Game of Thrones that the very surface of the story had to hold everything together enough for me to be interested in the second book... and a later second read.  Martin succeeded.  That's craft.  But if that's the standard I have to hold myself to get into the genre, well, I think I might have to approach it differently.  In fact, I know I'll have to approach it differently.

Here's the thing, with A Game of Thrones, there are just way too many people and plots to keep straight.  I guess that can happen to anyone when they write a paperback that's more than 800 pages long.  Yeesh.

Hm.  Might be time to figure out how I'm gonna crack into the fantasy genre.  I figure it's gonna form into some free online serial that just grows and grows.  It would be a first book that I didn't care about (check), it would be practice (check), and it would be out there for anyone to read (check) while playing with the idea of getting people familiar with the grand scale of an epic one chapter at a time.  Hm.  If I get good at it, monetizing options are limited, but I can't imagine that the publishing houses are going to be doing much better than the music labels soon.  They're gobbling each other up already.

Hm.