Game of Thrones - End

The ending of this book really shocked me, and seeing how easily a main character is killed off changes how I will read the next books in this series. I also like how all of the individual plots come to a fairly definitive ending even though this is book 1 in a long series. This helps to give the book a strong ending and strengthens the series overall.

Game of Thrones - Middle

After reading more of the story I have come to appreciate the greyness that each character represents. This uncertainty in the morality of the characters really keeps you on your toes and even further helps to aid the feel of the book. My only real complaint is the true purpose of the story is sometimes lost in the characterization.

Game of Thrones - Intro

So far I am really enjoying the Game of Thrones. The introduction was very strong, and it gives you an immediate feeling of urgency. This also really got me into the story right away. Additionally you can see betrayals right from the get go, and it really aids the reader in knowing what direction the story is going in.

A.S Eddington

“The sanction for correlating a “real” physical world to certain feelings of which we are conscious does not seem to differ in any essential respect from the sanction for correlating a spiritual domain to another side of personality” (page 460)

A. S Eddington looks at science from a very interesting perspective. It is very apparent here how looking at things from a new perspective can give you new insights on the topic you are studying. I find it fascinating how Eddington takes a very complex topic and breaks it down to more manageable parts. By looking at the authors thinking process, it really helps the reader to understand the overall meaning of their work.

René Descartes

“Good sense is, of all things among men, the most equally distributed; for every one thinks himself so abundantly provided with it, that those even who are the most difficult to satisfy in everything else, do not usually desire a larger measure of this quality than they already possess.”(Page 158)

The quote above is from the French philosopher René Descartes. He is trying to make the point that as men we are all equal in terms of our level of judgment. It is rather our opinions which change the decisions that we make. Descartes starts off his paper with this line to display that he does not believe himself to be better than anyone else in terms of intellectual reasoning. However due to the life that he lived, he claims to have been given the opportunity to “augment his knowledge”. Descartes believes it is because of this that he has the ability to comment on the past present and future. I find it interesting that Descartes would start off his paper in a way that proves why his opinions are ones that should be looked at.

Nicholas Copernicus

The Diagram you see above was drawn by Nicholas Copernicus around the year 1540. Now what I find remarkable about this diagram is how Copernicus was able to find out so much about the planets with the rudimentary equipment that was available to him at the time. Furthermore it is primarily through a mix of mathematics, and an unbelievable process of deductive reasoning which leads Copernicus to place the sun in the centre of the universe. Here is an example of this way of thinking. “I also say that the sun remains forever immobile and that whatever apparent movement belongs to it can be verified as due to the mobility of the earth” (page 67). It is this amazing thought process which makes Copernicus one of the top thinkers of his time.

The Past

Personally I strongly agree with the authors main point in this chapter about how stories from the past strongly influence the current literature of the time. Our society is one that is based strongly on what our forefather's teach us and the stories that are passed on to us. (Hansel and Gretel etc.) This then means that all the writers of today have decided to become authors or poets because of their love for the stories that they heard as children or even as adults. Thusly their writing is directly or indirectly affected by what they have read in the past.

The Human experience

“One person by himself is not a complete human being…” (p.6)

This quote to me summarizes how our society today works. Northrop Frye is suggesting here that part of what makes us who we are is the way in which we interact with those around us. Without the influences of the people around us we would act differently, and it is how people interact together which forms our society.