The Leaning Pile of Books is a feature where I talk about books I got over the last week – old or new, bought or received for review consideration. Since I hope you will find new books you’re interested in reading in these posts, I try to be as informative as possible. If I can find them, links to excerpts, author’s websites, and places where you can find more information on the book are included. This week brought two books […]

As quite possibly the most talked about fantasy release of 2011, A Dance With Dragons probably needs no introduction.  Just in case you somehow haven’t heard of it for some reason, it’s the fifth book in the series A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin, which has gained a lot of popularity this year with the airing of the first season of Game of Thrones on HBO.  The first four books in the series are as […]

This week brought some pretty exciting books since I finally got my copy of A Dance With Dragons, the fifth installment in George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series.  Better yet, I got it signed along with a new hardcover copy of A Game of Thrones (because I really needed a third copy of this book, but oh well – it’s signed and it’s one of two books in the series I didn’t already have in […]

GRRM signs the book that you can win in a giveaway below! Yesterday I did something crazy and made the trip from central Maine to Burlington, Massachusetts – all to be at the release day event of the A Dance With Dragons book tour!  Was it worth it?  I think so now that it’s over, but I’m not completely sure since I drove about 8 hours total to spend about 3 and a half hours mostly outside in the heat […]

A little while ago I decided to actually go to the signing on the A Dance With Dragons tour nearest me even though it’s 4 hours away.  Before deciding to go down, I called the bookstore to make sure I could reserve a book. After all, it would just be sad to cancel my Amazon pre-order, get the time off work, and go all the way down there to come away with no signed book!  It turned out I was […]

For now, at least, it’s all over but the wailing*: tonight’s episode of Game of Thrones on HBO was the season finale.  But for those of us who have been four books ahead of the television series all year, the main event is still to come.  The fifth book in A Song of Ice and Fire, A Dance with Dragons, is set to be released on July 12th.  But oh, it’s been a long, long wait–long enough that I’ve forgotten […]