Shelfology Book Pairing

by George R. R. Martin

In the latest installment of Daniel Abraham’s masterly adaptation of George R. R. Martin’s fantasy classic, the bonds of family and sanity are tested. At last, Catelyn Stark and her prisoner, Tyrion Lannister, have reached the Eyrie, the lofty citadel of Catelyn’s sister, Lysa, the grieving widow of Jon Arryn. Because Lysa believes that the Lannisters were responsible for her husband's death, Catelyn had thought to find an ally in this forbidding refuge. Instead the refuge seems more like a prison . . . and the “ally” a fearful and vindictive madwoman. Meanwhile, across the Narrow Sea, Daenerys Targaryen is also faced with a sibling’s madness—her brother, Viserys, impatient for the crown promised him by Khal Drogo, grows increasingly unable to hold his rage in check.

by graf Leo Tolstoy

Often called the greatest novel ever written, War and Peace is at once an epic of the Napoleonic Wars, a philosophical study, and a celebration of the Russian spirit. Tolstoy's genius is seen clearly in the multitude of characters in this massive chronicle--all of them fully realized and equally memorable. Out of this complex narrative emerges a profound examination of the individual's place in the historical process, one that makes it clear why Thomas Mann praised Tolstoy for his Homeric powers and placed War and Peace in the same category as the Iliad": " "To read him . . . is to find one's way home . . . to everything within us that is fundamental and sane."