I just wanted to note that instead of watching the Super Bowl, my dad went to a symphony and I went to a dance performance. And you know what? We loved it. And everyone else who was watching football was bored and/or falling asleep. Irony.

A Feast for Crows, by George Martin. Martin continues to be one of my favorite authors; the novels in this series are high fantasy, but Martin continues to write it in a very down to earth manner, and furthermore I think he's a master of character development and character-driven plots. I'll note quickly that his writing may at the same time be a bit too violent and sometimes even too brutal - for example, the gal who gave me my copy wrote on the inside cover, 'Hope your favorite characters don't get killed off!' That's another thing to note, actually, if you've been keeping up with this series, Martin took the interesting route of actually splitting the myriad and complex plot threads into two, as he put in an afterward (paraphrasing): "the whole story of half the characters rather than half the story of all the characters."

As usual, he has continued to expand the setting in relatively original ways and go further into the various characters; where the first few novels were mixes of violence, sex, and intrigue, I'd say this one was weighted more intrigue-sex-violence. The most interesting part of the story for me is the Frank Herbert-like exploration of a contrast between religion as an uncontrollable force (Jihad-principle) and religion as a political tool. The one thing I'd say he could have toned down was the occasional tediousness of listing the characteristics of every last banner in a given situation, though I suppose that might be a necessary aspect of high fantasy.

Random Quote of the Day: "Descartes declared, 'I think, therefore I am.' But yogis say, 'I think, therefore I am confused about who I am.'" - a little tongue-in-cheek, but apt, I think