Excellent article from The Guardian

Neil Gaiman: Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming

A lecture explaining why using our imaginations, and providing for others to use theirs, is an obligation for all citizens

'We have an obligation to imagine' … Neil Gaiman gives The Reading Agency annual lecture on the future of reading and libraries." Photograph: Robin Mayes

It's important for people to tell you what side they are on and why, and whether they might be biased. A declaration of members' interests, of a sort. So, I am going to be talking to you about reading. I'm going to tell you that libraries are important. I'm going to suggest that reading fiction, that reading for pleasure, is one of the most important things one can do. I'm going to make an impassioned plea for people to understand what libraries and librarians are, and to preserve both of these things.

And I am biased, obviously and enormously: I'm an author, often an author of fiction. I write for children and for adults. For about 30 years I have been earning my living though my words, mostly by making things up and writing them down. It is obviously in my interest for people to read, for them to read fiction, for libraries and librarians to exist and help foster a love of reading and places in which reading can occur.

Sexual Violence and Myth-Making in ‘Game of Thrones’

Thinkprogress.org has a fantastic piece by Alyssa Rosenberg about 'Game of Thrones' worth reading. Just the way Martin creates characters, both "good" and "bad," is interesting enough. The depth of character is fantastic and leads you to reevaluate your feelings for each character and the environments that created them. This is especially true of Cersei Lannister and her twin brother Jamie, who are both typical, reprehensible villains until Martin delves into their lives and the very human reactions they have to their environment.

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Jun 25, 2012 at 2:06 pm

I’ve mentioned Beyond the Wall, a collection of essays about George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, to which I am a contributor, which isavailable on Amazon now and in stores tomorrow. I’ve got an excerpt of my essay, which explores sexual assault as a critical element in Westeros’s understanding of monstrosity, here (WARNING: WITH HEAVY SPOILERS FOR A DANCE WITH DRAGONS):

The first thing we know about Ramsay Bolton, born a bastard but legitimated by his father, is that he abuses his wife. After he is recognized by his father, Ramsay marries Lady Hornwood to gain control of her ancestral house, then leaves her to starve to death in a tower cell…the Bastard of the Dreadfort takes up the unpleasant habit of hunting down women in whom he’s interested: “When Ramsay catches them he rapes them, flays them, feeds their corpses to his dogs, and brings their skins back to the Dreadfort as trophies. If they have given him good sport, he slits their throats before he skins them. Elsewise, t’other way around” (A Dance with Dragons)…When Theon Greyjoy falls under Ramsay’s control, the sadist gelds him, partially flays him, and forces Theon to participate in sexual assaults, most notably on a servant who is impersonating the late Ned Stark’s younger daughter, Arya. So while women are not Ramsay’s only victims, his crimes sooner or later seem to involve them.

Eventually we learn that the Bastard of the Dreadfort is, himself, the product of sexual violence. Roose Bolton raped Ramsay’s mother in an exercise of his first night rights, a story he relates in A Dance with Dragons with a casualness that’s chilling: