Maybe you do or don't want to know, but the butchery was somehow connected to her crazy affair that she had, but now she's back together with the husband from J&J. I think -- I couldn't pay too much attention, but I'm pretty sure that's the gist.

Yeah, I hadn't heard that. I'm just reading the part where she talks about missing the series finale and I thought oh crap, what if she reads literary buffistas?

I still think reading the recipe before you go shopping is kind of important.

I am a TOTAL sucker for that.

Understandable. But IIRC, I thought that, beyond that trope, the characterizations weren't very complicated. But you know, I should reread it instead of keep talking about it. It'll have to wait, though: I'm 1/3 of the way into Hat Full of Sky right now, and I'm sorely tempted to do some filing so I can put on my headphones and listen to more...

They weren't especially, though at a typical level for his lighter-toned work, which this falls into. (Which is why Feet of Clay and Night Watch remain my favorites in Discworld proper.)

Feet of Clay was my least favorite of the Watch books, huh! And I was hoping to love Night Watch more than I actually did, I think.

I got one more thing to say about this book and then I'll shut up.

...for nearly eleven months Julia had resided in my brain, in those drafty, capacious, hopeful apartments where the ghost of Santa Claus still placidly rattled about, along with my watchfully dead grandmother, and reincarnation and magic and everything else that couldn't survive out in the brighter hard highways of my mean metropolitan mind.

that's beautiful.

Seriously, NYT? [link]

The true perversion, though, is the sense you get that all of this illicitness has been tossed in as a little something for the ladies, out of a justifiable fear, perhaps, that no woman alive would watch otherwise. While I do not doubt that there are women in the world who read books like Mr. Martin’s, I can honestly say that I have never met a single woman who has stood up in indignation at her book club and refused to read the latest from Lorrie Moore unless everyone agreed to “The Hobbit” first. “Game of Thrones” is boy fiction patronizingly turned out to reach the population’s other half.

Stay classy, Grey Lady.

Oh hell. I DID belong to a book club where that exact thing happened. What a fucking idiot.

While I do not doubt that there are women in the world who read books like Mr. Martin’s, I can honestly say that I have never met a single woman who has stood up in indignation at her book club and refused to read the latest from Lorrie Moore unless everyone agreed to “The Hobbit” first.

Dude, depends on the book club. They're gonna get a shedload of letters about that. Also, apparently they missed the memo about how men read SF and women read fantasy (even though it's not entirely true).

What I find frustrating about the whole ASoF&I thing is how much more attention Martin gets than female writers who are doing the exact same thing. Kate Elliott's got a number of meaty complex plotty fantasies with good world-building, but she doesn't get nearly as much slavering fannish adoration--even though she does, in fact, finish her series.

I have to admit I have a lurking suspicion as to why that is...

IO9 rebuts the NYT, saying Game of Thrones is obviously for girls.