The Game of Thrones book series (officially known as 'A Song of Ice and Fire') has certainly had a large fan following for a considerable amount of time now. Long before it became a hit HBO show, the first book - A Game of Thrones - was released in 1996. By the time the series had aired, there had been four books in the series - A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, and A Feast for Crows - with the fourth book being released six years before.
Luckily for the book fans, shortly after the first season aired, the fifth book - A Dance with Dragons - was released, with a monumental 1040 pages for us to work through. However, in the last few years, author George R R Martin has yet to put out another book, with the next entry in the series - The Winds of Winter - likely not to be on store shelves for another year.
This means the TV series has not only caught up with the books' story, but has overtaken it, and will conclude in a final season next year, maybe even before the penultimate book in the series is finished. This is frustrating for a lot of people, but on a positive note - at least you have plenty of time to catch up on the books if you haven't started reading yet. However, not everyone will get a chance to.
In jail, no one is expecting to have huge 4K television screens to watch Game of Thrones each week, but you can expect some entertainment and escapism through books. Yet for the inmates in this prison, they would have to find their solace somewhere other than the land of Westeros - for a pretty ridiculous reason.
The entirety of George R R Martin's series have been banned from the Maryland Correctional Institute for Women, it has been revealed. In an article for The Marshall Project, Kimberly Hricko - who is serving a life-sentence for first-degree murder and arson - spoke about the "weird, arcane rules" of prisoner contraband. According to Hricko, this includes no greeting cards, no stickers or glitter, no magic markers or crayons, and no Polaroid pictures - no books about dragons and ice zombies.
"Pictures of my daughter’s wedding reception were withheld because alcoholic drinks were shown," Hricko explained, all because alcohol is forbidden in the prison. But the most ridiculous thing to count as contraband were the books she wished to read.
"A Game of Thrones book was withheld because it contained maps," she wrote. "Maps are contraband. I guess I won’t be escaping to Westeros!"
On top of that, when she donated to The Arbor Day Foundation to help out the environmental cause, the reply envelope was withheld - with the message "Trees are contraband". Eventually, the inmate figured out that this was all because, as a thank you, the charity had sent her a seedling.
