A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one. George R.R. Martin

The author of A Game of Thrones was born on this day in 1948.

From Wikipedia: George Raymond Richard Martin (born September 20, 1948), sometimes referred to as GRRM, is anAmerican screenwriter and author of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. He is best known for A Song of Ice and Fire, his bestselling series of epic fantasy novels that HBO adapted for their dramatic pay-cable series Game of Thrones. Martin was selected by Time magazine as one of the "2011 Time 100", a list of the "most influential people in the world".

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: