Book readers: Whats your favorite book?

For me I'd rank them as follows,
A Storm of Swords
A Dance With Dragons
A Game of Thrones
A Feast For Crows
A Clash of Kings
If I hadn't seen the show before reading the first book I probably would have been more impressed with it. But I read Storm before I watched the show and it blew me away. All the crazy shit GRRM packed into that book, Jaime's characterization, Red Wedding, Joffery, Oberyn, and LSH at the end. ASOS definitely has my favorite epilogue as well.
What do my fellow readers think?
A Storm of Swords
A Dance With Dragons
A Game of Thrones
A Feast For Crows
A Clash of Kings
If I hadn't seen the show before reading the first book I probably would have been more impressed with it. But I read Storm before I watched the show and it blew me away. All the crazy shit GRRM packed into that book, Jaime's characterization, Red Wedding, Joffery, Oberyn, and LSH at the end. ASOS definitely has my favorite epilogue as well.
What do my fellow readers think?
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Comments
A feast for Crows = A Game of Thrones
A Clash of Kings.
Now... It gets really complicated if I were to talk about the Dunk and Egg novellas and the released Chapters from The Winds of Winter and the short story from Dangerous Women. Suffice to say there is a lot that I enjoy more than some of the novels!
A lot of people hold the opinion that A Feast for Crows is boring but I genuinely really enjoyed it, even on my first read through. Sure, it wasn't action heavy but it was still very secreted in exploration and politics.
So (for me)
4: Feast for Crows (weird, but the more I think about this one I love it more; also sets up new regions)
3: Storm of Swords (lots of action; love the way it completely reshuffles the board at the end)
5: Dance with Dragons (pretty interesting, bit large, but continues the "new regions" thread from 4 and sets up interesting new threads)
1: Game of Thrones (it's the setup, starts kind of slow)
2: Clash of Kings (wasn't bad, but seems the most forgettable of them all)
5. Clash of Kings
4. Feast for Crows
---------------
3. Dance with Dragons
2. Game of Thrones
1. Storm of Swords
"Clash" doesn't really works for me. There are a lot of great moments, but I think that it feels a little to static overall, while "Feast" is at least full of different characters and regions.
Here's my list
1. Storm of Swords
2. Feast/Dance
3. GOT
4. Clash
Taking them separately or as published
1. Storm of Swords
2. GOT
3. Feast
4. Clash
5. Dance
- Hey Victorian!
- It's Victarion.
- Nobody cares, Victarian! Fuck you
2 Game of Thrones
3 Dance With Dragons
4 Clash of Kings
5 Feast For Crows
I believe Feast and Dance read better the second time. It was difficult to connect with new characters the first time through. Frustrating. Storm was a great wrap up for the first half of a story that was probably meant to be a trilogy (which just became to big). Game was I terrific. I dropped the book when Ned lost his head. "WTF?!? GRRM just killed the hero of the tale!"
Once you're not in a hurry to find out what happens next you can sit back and let Martins world open up before you and just marinate in all the care he takes developing this rich world and all its characters. I never tire of reading anything in the ASOIAF universe.
A Storm of Swords
A Game of Thrones
A Dance With Dragons
A Clash of Kings
A Feast For Crows
The first two I've read multiple times as they just never seem to get old. Both of them are books that will always be fun to read. I didn't really enjoy Dance the first time I read it but after rereading it I immensely enjoyed. I don't pick up on stuff easily (it embarrassingly took me forever to put together that the singer in Theon's storyline was Mance) so it helped when I reread it after browsing the asoiaf subreddit that I knew Manderly was up to some serious shit and that there were theories out there like the Grand Northern Conspiracy that relied heavily on Dance. I don't really like Feast as a lot of it pretains to the Greyjoy's and the Kingsmoot and I don't find those storylines interesting at all.
Storm of Swords
Dance with Dragons
Clash of Kings
Game of Thrones
Feast for Crows
It's really hard to put this list together since I actually enjoyed Feast (even the first time) and yet I still have to put it on the bottom.
I think it's somewhat strange that SoS is almost everyone's favorite when you consider all the bad things that happen. The Arya chapter following the Red Wedding tore me up. I put down the book for about a week after reading that and literally mourned for poor Arya after getting so close to being reunited with Rob and her mother. Of course I mourned Rob too but wasn't very sorry about Cat
Dance has to come second because I'm a Stark-ist and nothing have me more joy then when I realised what was in Lord Manderlay's pie. I'm also a Stannis supporter. I've always felt that the reader gets a very one-sided picture of who Stannis is until we get to Davos chapters and until we see him out of the grasp of Melisandre. I feel that Stannis sees Mel as a means to an end. However she does weild more power over him then he realises. Now that she is at the Wall and he is about to lay siege to Winterfell, I think Stannis will come into his own and unfortunately die liberating Winterfell. I also really enjoyed Dance for the Barriston chapters. There were many good tidbits in those chapters.
I enjoyed the Victarian chapters. I prefer hearing about him rather then Euron who just creeps me out. Victarian is such a huge fool and I can't wait to see what horrible fate will befall him in Meereen.
Ive never read Tom Clancy so I can't attest to the accuracy of the assumption. But I do agree with @pavlovsbell that it's not the world's best writing. I do find it entertaining as hell tho and what he does well - he does really well.