Note: This discussion will involve the novel A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin and the novel The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, though it will not delve deeply into the plots or developments of either. Therefore, worry not about spoilers, folks.

At the moment, I'm reading A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin, the first book in his A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series. Now, I don't read a lot of fantasy. I'm a sci-fi and literature (however pretentious that sounds... a lot pretentious) guy. It's not because I don't like fantasy, it's because my first experience with a huge, sweeping, fleshed-out fantasy story was Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. I loved it. And ever since my mom introduced those books to me, nothing in the fantasy realm has been able to come close. It all felt derivative. So I just stopped reading it.

CUT TO: 2006: Two of my roommates while I was in college could speak of nothing but A Song of Ice and Fire. Fantasy? I thought... no thanks.

CUT TO: 2009: David, my writing partner, began reading A Game of Thrones. I'd just finished the book I was reading, and knowing that the novel had been optioned by HBO to become an hour-long format fantasy series, I decided I'd put off reading this book long enough. A few clicks later, there it was on my Kindle.

In Kindle language, I'm about twenty percent through the novel. And even though while I'm reading I'm enthralled and captivated, when I set it down for the night I have no burning desire to continue reading. It's a great story with great characters and has convinced me that not all fantasy is as derivative as I first suspected, but there's something missing. I still haven't been able to create any sort of personal connection. Why?

It's all in the way the book is structured.

Each chapter of A Game of Thrones is written from the point of view of one of eight different characters. Therefore, each chapter presents events, new and old, from that character's POV, shifting the reader's own POV of the event as more and more information unfolds. It's brave and bold and quite interesting. But the real kicker is that Martin employs a third-person limited POV instead of a first-person limited POV from the chapter-character's POV. It's that distance that is keeping me at arm's length. Instead of being placed inside those characters, chapter by chapter, I'm told about the hardships and changes and emotions those characters are enduring from a distance. It's the difference between reading a memoir and an edited recorded history of that memoirist's life. While the recorded history is interesting and filled with useful information and tons of knowledge, I'd take the first-hand, first-person memoir every time. There's a connection there that speaks volumes more than any history book can. And while I'm reading A Game of Thrones I feel as if I'm reading a recorded history of Westeros instead of the sweeping tale of Westeros' inhabitants.

What's most frustrating is that I've seen the chapter-by-chapter-POV-shift structure used to such great success in the past. My favorite example is Barbara Kingsolver's novel The Poisonwood Bible. Each chapter is narrated, from that characters first-person limited POV, by one of the five women of a missionary family while living in British Congo. Each of the women are of different ages, of different maturity levels, and of different experience levels, and each chapter (much like A Game of Thrones) presents events, new and old, from each character's different perspective. But the main difference is that, because Kingsolver employs a first-person limited POV, I'm able to make a genuine, personal connection to each character. Even further, Kingsolver alters her writing style and voice from chapter to chapter, depending on which character's POV we're seeing the world from. Not only is it a brilliant marker for the reader's brain to decipher who's speaking and how we're now seeing the world, but it's another layer of distance eliminated. Whereas Martin is keeping me at arm's length, presenting an even, historical representation of his world as it happens to his characters, Kingsolver invites her readers closer, embraces that her characters will have vastly different (and often conflicting) viewpoints and embraces that the personal connection gained by seeing events wholly through the eyes of a first-hand source is unmatched.

I just can't help but feel like I'm opening a history book every time I (figuartively) crack the spine of A Game of Thrones. It's a shame, too, because the story is quite good. And Martin is an outstounding author. But it's his choice to keep his unwaivering writing style throughout the book while using a shifted third-person limited POV that has driven a wedge between me and his novel. Above all, I'm reading to be entertained and enlightened, not because I fear that I'm going to be tested on the political leanings of the Starks and the Lannisters on tommorow's The History of Westeros exam.

I love to read. In fact, I'm quite sure that I only love to write because I love to read. Creating, toiling away, writing is the work; reading is the reward. Knowing this (and because I just turned 23 a few days ago), a group of my family and friends chipped in to buy me the latest, greatest breakthrough in reading technology: the Amazon Kindle 2. It's an eReader. A digital, wafer-thin physical book-made-from-paper replacement. It can hold about 1,500 books in its memory stores, enough to make the question "What's the one book you'd take with you if you knew you were to be stranded on a deserted island without the hope of rescue?" obsolete. Its screen uses new-fangled eInk technology which arranges and rearranges negatively or positively charged microcapsules into patterns allowing for very low energy consumption (as it only draws power when the pattern needs to be changed, i.e. when you virtually turn a page) while also being very easy on the eyes. The eye-strain problems of the ever-ubiquitous LCD screen are a thing of the past with eInk. (And with my poor-excuses for eyes, that's important.) Though, the drawback is it can only display text and images in grayscale. No color whatsoever. But, since it's an eReader, meant for eBooks, that's hardly an issue. And it's especially easy to forget when you're staring at an electronic display that you'd swear is a printed page, with honest-to-goodness ink stamped on actual paper made from trees. It really is amazing.

But it's not the technology of Amazon's Kindle or the sheer glee of knowing I have the capability to carry around my entire library of literature in the palm of my hand, it's the abstraction of reading itself. Rather, it's the abstraction of what it is to be a book, to own books, to have a library. I know this feeling well, as I've experienced it twice now, first with music, second with movies, but with books it's different. Scrawling some grouping of symbols meant to represent ideas on a physical, portable surface has been a tried-and-true process since, well, the beginning of recorded history. It's this process that recorded history. Music wasn't portable until the 20th Century in any kind of ubiquitous portable format. Movies couldn't be carried around until even later. But books, well, they've been around for a while. They've been transported, the information within them shared for a long, long time. And while the process of creating a book has changed, become streamlined and more modern, the idea of a book is pretty much the same.

And now I'm just giving up on them? As much as I love reading, I love the experience of reading perhaps even more. The smell of new, crisp book pages. The cracking of a book's spine, that visual representation of one's love for a book, showing just how often it finds its way back into one's hands. The feel of the different weights of paper, always unique, always a new challenge to learn the pages' properties. Hell, even the bookmarks and the cover art. But now that I own a Kindle, all of that seems to be a thing of the past. I'm removed from that experience and left with only the ideas inside the book, which, at once, is a very interesting prospect in and of itself and a crying shame.

It's interesting because my focus will be fully on the words, sentences, paragraphs, and the ideas of which they're a part. From what I've noticed thus far, I'm reading faster than I ever had before, and I'm able to read multiple books at once with far more ease than was possible with actual, printed books. But I really do miss the tactile sensation that reading used to provide. The Kindle is cold, devoid of emotion. I can't foresee any future memories of me reading being quite as warm or nostalgic any longer. And though I've not finished a book on my Kindle yet, I can't foresee that moment being as satisfying as it always has been: watching the pages of one's book slowly creep farther and farther to the left on one's bookmark until SLAM, the book cover closes after that last sentence is read, the puff of air enveloping one's head as the closed book rests atop one's chest. With the Kindle, it's merely a press of the Next button as a status bar creeps along the bottom of the drab, grey screen, followed by an unceremonious press of the Home button after that last page is reached. I suppose I could clutch my Kindle close to my chest, but there's no cover art to stare at or heft to feel. Though this process may alleviate the plague of depression I feel every time I finish a book, distancing me somewhat from the emotion of finishing a book, leaving a group of characters. It may at least cut down on the amount of time I'm afflicted since it'll be so easy to start anew with my Kindle pressing ever forward like an emotionless little reading robot.

Apart from the emotional severance, the Kindle also presents an end to the library as I've always seen it. I was never one to display my records or CDs and only own a relatively small amount of DVDs, but books have always been both for reading and for display in my home. I'm proud of my book collection. I want them to be seen, studied, questioned, and debated. I love doing the same to others' collections. But if all of my future book purchases are to be of the digital variety over WhisperSync, stored electronically on Amazon's servers, I suppose my collection has come to an abrupt halt. I'll still be purchasing graphic novels, as there's no replacing those (yet), but novels, literature, anthologies, collected essays, books of poems, will they never reach my bookshelf again? Will Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood and Michael Chabon's Manhood for Amateurs be my last two purchased printed books? I suppose I'll get used to this abstracted definition of book ownership just as I got used to downloading music versus thumbing through CDs in a store and downloading movies or just watching them instantly via the Internet rather than searching through the available discs at my local Best Buy. I suppose.

What I don't think I'll be able to get used to, however, is the idea of pirating books. In the past, I've illegally downloaded myriad MP3s and a few (more than a few) movies. I didn't feel any guilt while, for all intents and purposes, stealing music. I felt a negligible amount of guilt after downloading a film (though, for the most part, I've generally only downloaded films I've already paid to see in theatres and want to/need to see again). But when perusing the pirate market of eBooks available, I was struck with an immediate, adverse disgust with myself. Books, it seems, are the form of artistic media (that are able to be pirated digitally) that I find most precious. I think this has to do with the time investment involved. One song is, what, around a four minute time investment. One album, an hour. One film, an hour and a half on average, three/four hours max. But I could spend weeks with a single book. Sure, the replayability of an album or a movie is greater than a book, but it's that first experience, the first read-through that's so precious. More precious, in fact, than a first listen or a first watch. I can't imagine stealing that. I don't want to.

So, overall, I love the Kindle's execution. How it's evolved the way I read. But this abstraction of reading, well, it's going to take some getting used to. Do they make a "new book smell" candle? That'd probably help. A lot.

When I write something that is published for a mass audience to read, scrutinize, and comment on, it's a bit like tossing a toddler who's only just learned to walk in front of a pack of wolves. Will the pack raise the toddler as their own, accept it and nurture it, fight along side it as if it too was canine? Or will the pack devour the toddler, flaying its skin amidst a deluge of hot, sticky blood? Of course, the former is always preferable, but, like the toddler, it can make the author a bit ferrel, albeit well fed on praise. The latter, though gruesome, has its advantages. Written in the blood is often exactly what I, or any author for that matter, needs to hear -- no matter if they admit it or not. Negative criticism is the lifeforce upon which writers must drink. I know that's the case for me. It makes me better and, more importantly, it makes me continuously push to be better. While words may not be able to break bones, they can often strike far more vulnerable areas of the body -- leaving bruises that last like meteor strikes; it may be concealed, overgrown with greenery, but the crater will always be there. But it's those craters that build character. Imperfection breeds interest. And one must always, if nothing else, be interesting.

This is why I often say that the negative comments I receive are my favorites. They don't cause me to recoil like a frightened armadillo or steam like a kettle about to boil over -- most often they make me laugh. But a few are able to fleck my thick skin and push me to be better -- to never be satisfied, never be complacent.

Because I write to impact people. Whether that impact is negative or (preferably) positive, to cause another person an emotional or mental or even a physical response is why I write. To know that the words that I've arranged in sentences that I've engineered into paragraphs that impart my thoughts and emotions onto another person is the utmost reward. And it's comments like this one from Timothy that keep me writing.

Mr. Tenney — I have read several of your more thoughtful works and I have to say, you are an excellent writer. I saved your article on Batman 3 (It Starts and Ends With Time) because I so thoroughly agreed with what you said, and I was as enrapt by the way you painted the words.

The same is true here. I don't smoke. My grandfather did. And his stash of stuff smelled sweet and aged and wise, with a hint of "leave me alone - I'm smoking". That line you wrote: "Spinning around that word were similes qualifying such a claim. Half-Blood Prince is like a fine cigar: a slow burn housing notes of brilliant character that linger long after the exhale."

That is a revelation to me. I could see it. I could smell it. I could see the smoke wafting this way and that, trailing into nothingness, while absolutely bringing home the comparison.

You are either older, British, or extremely well-read, or all three. In any case, I am still left to wonder how you are able to capture essence in this way and pass it lovingly to the masses. How?

And just for the record, I am neither an older gentlemen nor British -- and I'm not as well-read as I would like to be, but I do love to read. I am, however, a constant and avid seeker of knowledge and experience. As well as a lover of the English language. So, thank you Timothy. If I can create the sight, the smell, the emotion for even one person -- it's a victory. For millions, billons the world over -- well, all in due time.

Three more articles are up and awaiting your eager eyes at FS.net. Below, you'll find excerpts and a short description of each of the three pieces -- and enough links to keep you procrastinating for hours.

The first article equates Michael Bay to a drug -- and delves into why it's time for all of us to quit. I'm especially proud of this one because it was featured on /Film's Page 2 by the good man himself, Peter Sciretta. The article also hit the front page of Digg and has amassed over 200 diggs so far.

Then it ended, two and a half bloated, bombastic hours later. And I felt… dirty. Used up. Spent. And most of all, conflicted. Now, I've seen every Michael Bay film. I'm a self-proclaimed Michael Bay apologist. I own both The Rock and Armageddon as Criterion Collection DVDs. I know exactly what the man is. I know exactly what I'm going to get when I come across Bad Boys II or The Island on HBO. And there's something about that that I really love. The man can direct action. Every one of his films are just beautiful. Visually dynamic (sometimes - ahem, Pearl Harbor - to a fault) and always packed with adrenaline. Sure, his sense of story may as well not exist. His sense of pacing (as of late) may as well be a belt sander, cranked up to 11, grinding away at my eye balls. But Michael Bay is a drug with predictable side effects. Well, at least he was.

It's with ROTF that I think I may have OD'ed. No, I know I OD'ed. Todd Gilchrist of Cinematical says "this must be the most movie I have ever experienced." I'll take that a step further - ROTF is the most movie I ever want to experience. It's completely, utterly, unapologetically Michael Bay. It's everything that I expected (and my expectations were subterranean). The film hit every beat, showed every explosion, panned around every inch of Megan Fox, but it just did it too much. And that's why I just can't wrap my head around this damned movie.

I should just be able to accept it and move on. Just think to myself quietly as I walk out of the theatre, "Great action. It's not Summer without Michael Bay," and then continue whatever conversation I was having before the lights dimmed and the previews started to roll. But for days now, it's like Optimus Prime is tearing at my brain. Skids and Mudflap make me hate the movie - a lot. The "forest fight" makes me love it - perhaps the most redeeming factor for the film was this scene viewed in IMAX. John Turturro, Orci and Kurtzman, and that Cylon-wannabe make me hate it again. The Fallen on top of the Great Pyramid make me love it and hate it, but by that time I'd had too much, I didn't care, I was overwhelmed and tired. And Megan Fox — well, she makes me love it and hate it to such a degree that my eyes go blue and I have to Ctrl-Alt-Del myself back to consciousness. Are you seeing the dilemma here?

The second, providing all of you wonderful readers a full rundown on M. Night Shyamalan's adaptation of the best TV series you've never seen, Avatar: The Last Airbender. Yes, it's a cartoon -- the TV series, not Shyamalan's adaptaion -- and YES you do need to see it. Immediately -- like, now.

All-in-all, I've watched and re-watched that The Last Airbender teaser countless times. Shyamalan's visual style, his direction, and young Noah Ringer's martial arts certainly bolster my anticipation. But there has yet to be any indication of character. And, at its heart, Avatar: The Last Airbender was always about its characters. The series was never dumbed-down, even while targeting a demographic aged 6 to 11 of Nickelodeon. It gracefully juggled serious morals, fun action, goofy humor, and characters that stood as real role models for its viewership — both male and female. Its representation of its female characters as strong, intelligent, self-sufficient equals, Katara especially, set it admirably apart from most other kid's properties.

Avatar: The Last Airbender is the first television show that I want to show my daughter, or son, for that matter. Even before Star Wars. I know. I just hope that The Last Airbender will retain that brilliance amidst whatever plot changes Shyamalan has made. This decade's first great martial arts film from an American filmmaker, as Dan Trachtenberg of the Totally Rad Show puts it, will hopefully be as impacting on the world of kid-targeted cinema as its catalyst was on the world of kid's television. I hope. I really do.

And the third is an exploration of what I call Modern Animation Overload -- The Magic vs. The Magical, where I attempt to figure out just what has happened to the live-action kids' films that I remember so fondly from my childhood -- and why this current generation of kids just doesn't have 'em. And, for the record, I absolutely love what Pixar has done for animated films, for film as a whole. But, because of that, they do stand as the figurehead for the entire movement away from live-action kids' movies -- so, they do play the villain in the article. But villianous they are not. Not at all.

When I was growing up in the late 80s and early 90s, the majority of my film entertainment came by way of VHS tapes. On those tapes were amongst some of my favorite films then and now: The Goonies, Willow, E.T., Hook, The NeverEnding Story, The Wizard of Oz, The Sandlot, Benji, Homeward Bound, Harry and the Hendersons, The Dark Crystal. Notice anything? Not a single animated film.

Sure, I watched the Disney classics — The Jungle Book being the one to which my fondest memories are attached — but the quantity of live-action kids' films with which I connected is far greater than animated ones. And I think you'd be hard-pressed to talk to any eight-year-old whose favorite movies aren't on the complete opposite end of that spectrum. It's just not what they're exposed to now and, frankly, it's not what they want. They're used to animals who, right before their eyes, actually speak, emote, and feel like they do — and haven't just had some voice thrown on top of their actions. They're used to seeing everything in the closest of detail, not just in suspense-inducing glimpses. They're used to connecting with toys and robots and monsters more than they're used to connecting with actual human beings. It's just what they know.

And that's a shame.

As a kid, when a magician pulled a rabbit out of his top hat, it was baffling — even when it happened right before your eyes. Where did the rabbit come from? Does it live in the hat? There are infinite possibilities. It's magic. For all the beautiful, heart-warming, spectacular storytelling in Pixar's films — they've shown me the inside of the hat. They've shown me the very tip-top that opens, hinges down, providing access to the rabbit's cage below the table upon which the hat rests. Amazing mechanics, sure, but the magic is muddled. There are no longer infinite possibilities for the impressionable audience. There's only the one right in front of you. And while it still may be magical, it is certainly not magic.

As always, thanks for reading.

I just returned to Los Angeles from Chicago yesterday. Where I was exactly, what I was doing there, and why -- I can't say. I can say, however, that it was a wonderful experience, one that I soon won't forget and one that I hope to repeat even sooner.

And like the recent, albeit short, change in my physical location, this post is an update of my words' location on the Internet. I've been writing for FirstShowing.net for about eight months now. Within that time my words have been relegated to the day's latest film news. Providing the masses with their fix. And I enjoy it. Though, within the past week, I wrote two articles that I am particularly proud of. One, an obtiuary and commemoration of the recently late King of Pop, Michael Jackson. The other, an editorial waxing on Christopher Nolan's prospective third, and final, Batman film -- a film that would complete his Batman Trilogy and, in my opinion, complete what could very well be the greatest superhero trilogy to date.

Below, I've included excerpts from both pieces, as well as links to where you can read them in their entirety. I hope you enjoy both, though hopefully both for different reasons.

King of Pop Michael Jackson Dead at 50 from Cardiac Arrest

Michael Jackson ascended from child star to megastar to king. Jackson is the epitome of the modern-day multi-media megastar.

Best known for his illustrious music career where he wailed and moon-walked his way to over 750 million records sold and 13 Grammy Awards, Jackson also had a long-standing film career. From his breakout performance in Sidney Lumet's The Wiz where he played the innocent Scarecrow to his epic music video crossover films Thriller and Bad, the latter directed by Martin Scorsese, as well as the unforgettable Captain EO in 1986. Always full of life, even when his life was full of turmoil, Michael Jackson even had a brief, yet unforgettable, cameo in Men in Black II — poking fun at himself, the very man he so often wished to change.

His life was far from normal, though Jackson never truly had a chance to attain any semblance of normalcy — but it will be his successes outside the norm for which he is remembered: his signatures on the world of music and movies. Michael Jackson was one — neither one in one million, or a billion even — but one, wholly unique and never to be repeated. Nor should he be.

Christopher Nolan's Batman 3 -- It Starts and Ends with Time

Batman Begins is Batman's birth. The Dark Knight is both his rise and fall to a place even darker than he thought possible. Should, as I expect, Batman 3 continue to follow this classic biblical structure, it would be Batman's resurrection, his transcendence. The bread crumbs are there, resting atop Gotham's pavement.

But it is there where my thoughts, my ideas, my suggestions branch away.

It starts and ends with time. Time, rather a time jump, is a two-fold solution when applied to Batman 3. Batman Begins and The Dark Knight are not separated by much of it at all. Bruce Wayne returns to Gotham and brings Batman with him in Batman Begins. We see the first effects of Batman on his city. We're hopeful. We're excited. Crime recoils, unsure and afraid. But, like Bruce Wayne, we are naive. Batman's very presence causes Gotham to descend even further into madness. When The Dark Knight begins, we're left to fill in the blanks: Batman has garnered a dedicated following. He's the very symbol he set out to be. He's more of a welcomed celebrity than the caped and cowled, distrusted vigilante. And then we see him fall, with Gotham close behind and the people of Gotham being pulled in tow. The small amount of time between the first two films is of necessity. They are two halves, each a side of the same coin, one polished, one scarred. But Batman 3 needs not follow that same dynamic. Could circumstances have been different, sure, Batman 3 could have easily picked up shortly after Batman speeds into the night. But it never had to. And it shouldn't have to now.

Batman 3 should take place years, if not decades, in the future. Who says resurrection has to be three days? By aging Gotham, it ages the characters (thus avoiding a contemporary recasting of The Joker). By aging Gotham, it raises the stakes. Gotham, the fallen city, having been sunk for years now. A city without any hope. A population without a hero. Batman, still a distrusted wild card. Batman, still torn apart by the loss of Rachel. Of Harvey. Of Alfred - he has to go. But we gain a more mature Batman. One who, in the decades passed, has now seen it all. One who has been continually hated by the very people he protects. One who won't let himself become good in their eyes, become that celebrity. One who truly knows how to use his rage, his torment, rather than the Batman we've seen who only thinks he does.

A longer stretch of time affords the creators a sizable amount of leeway. Sure, while we must lose Alfred, perhaps Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox would then fulfill that role. Not a butler, but a confidant and engineer behind-the-scenes working from The Bat Cave beneath the long-since rebuilt Wayne Manor. Perhaps The Joker was, in fact, captured and contained in Arkham for however long it has been between The Dark Knight and Batman 3, but he has only now finally escaped. The Joker wouldn't need to look the same, in fact he shouldn't. His already warped mind would be even more twisted. And Batman and Bruce Wayne both would finally have to confront the very catalyst of their descent. The singular reason for their own madness over the unseen time between films. Open old wounds that (though fresh for us, the audience) have been long scarred over but never healed underneath.

Time passed is story gained. It is permission to complete a tonally structured trilogy as originally intended — though perhaps not as originally conceived. It's also structure gained. It opens the story to the possibility of a more fractured narrative where we can be filled in through flashbacks about the state of Batman while also providing natural places within the film to include some more classic Batman fare — flashbacks that, while in tone, would further the story, explain the status quo, and also show us some action of his years passed.