Despite the fact that a few of the novels on my short list of the best fiction I've ever read were read in translation, I have this gnawing uncertainty about whether you can really tell anything about an author's work through the intermediary.

I never forget Michael Chabon's skewer, in an essay I think about August Derleth or somebody like that, of MFA short fiction "sparkling with epiphanic dew".

and hell, the packaging. So many jazz and classical CDs have had indifferent at best cover images, it stands out when a company like ECM puts real thought into the aesthetic, even if sometimes it's just white letters on a green background.

The point wasn't that the person didn't know what EVOO was, the point was that the person just avoided ever ordering anything that said EVOO rather than … asking a waiter what EVOO was.

Dragonstone was an outpost of the Valerian Freehold; the Targaryens made it their home base a few years before the Doom, and stayed there MOSTLY but not entirely keeping to themselves for something like a hundred years before Aegon conquered Westeros. So it was comfortable enough for that. Aegon started his conquest…

(1) Two calendars. A local calendar configured in a way that works for local life, synced up to a trans-stellar standard. (For my own creative purposes, I've stolen Vernor Vinge's notion that such a calendar would be counting in seconds.)

I've read Heart Shaped Box, Nos4a2, and Locke & Key; liked them all well enough, I think the comic is the most special, though I thought Nos4a2 was an effective tribute to his dad's style (and the acknowledgements at the end made me grin).

He started out using the "Joe Hill" name - his name is Joseph Hillstrom King - because he was trying to see if he could sell without the connection to his father. I don't know how secret any of it really was inside the literary world, and in any event a lot of people must have been remarking on how much he looks like…

I also think it plays into a recurring theme of W&B either not connecting with, or assuming the audience won't connect with, the dynamics of a society where the orderly transition of political power happens along hereditary lines. The biggest legal problem with Cersei's infidelities isn't the sexual deviancy, it's…

That I've re-started my comment trying to expand on my thoughts about five times before giving up speaks to the difficulty of the issue. I do think sometimes people talk about grown men expressing (or acting on) attraction for older teenagers in exactly the same terms as they would if we were talking about grown men…

Basically I feel like people who take pains to distinguish pedophilia from ephebophilia are correct, and also revealing way too much about themselves.

Go tell that long tongued liar
Go tell that midnight rider
Tell the rambler, the gambler, the back-biter:
Tell 'em God's gonna cut you down.

Which is a weird thing for the show to have invented. Dragonstone is not large or especially fertile, so it can't support a huge population, but the Targaryens and their supporters lived there just fine for a hundred years between the Doom and Aegon's conquest.

the Walkers aren't going to make it anywhere near King's Landing and wildfire is too unstable to transport over such a long distance, so it probably doesn't matter.

After the end of the most recent season of BoJack, "That's too much man!" references are too much, man.

I stopped watching after season 5, so I didn't see what happened to him after they imprisoned him (though obviously I'm aware of the broad strokes), but … yes. I spent most of Season 5 wondering what Weiss and Benioff thought they were getting out of what seemed to me like some of the more unnecessary deviations from…

cabspaintedyellow means in the books; Loras led the Lannister/Tyrell effort to take Dragonstone from Stannis' garrison, and hasn't been since, though we've been told (or "told") he was injured in the successful battle.

I don't think the details are that plausible, though the "Wylla wasn't at Skyfall until Eddard brought her there" is a good idea. As you say, the show disconfirmed it, though, and since this is almost certainly the question Martin asked them which they answered correctly to win his seal of approval (actually, since…

I see below you mentioned you're a non-reader, a lot of this comment is stuff that never made it into the show. This isn't going to be as informed as the people who've done the research to debunk the possibility that any of the Lannister kids could've been fathered by Aerys II, but there's also this to consider about…

Well, depends what you mean by "justify". What Cat does isn't right, but it's explicable. Ned actually perpetrated a pretty substantial violation of the customs between lordly men and their wives - not in fathering a bastard, but in bringing it home and raising it in his household as the equal of his legitimate son.…