Second paragraph of third chapter: If there was any job that needed doing, it was always the elder son who had to do it. But there was one thing the elder son wouldn't do: if his father asked him to get something as night was falling, or when it was completely dark, and if his way took him through the graveyard or some creepy place like that, he'd ( Read more... )

Second paragraph of third chapter: The atmosphere in the Trout was subdued for some days afterwards. Malcolm went to school, did his homework, fetched and carried in the inn, and read over and over again the secret message in the acorn. It wasn’t an easy time; everything just then seemed hung about with an unhappy air of suspicion and fear, quite ( Read more... )

The second paragraph from Chapter 3:Meanwhile, she [Serafina Pekkala] looked down at the melting ice-cap, the flooded lowland forests, the swollen sea, and felt heartsick.
Sometimes you shouldn't revisit former favourites; I have to say that I have been much less blown away by the His Dark Materials trilogy on re-reading than I was first time round ( Read more... )

It looked as if someone had cut a patch out of the air, about two metres from the edge of the road, a patch roughly square in shape and less than a metre across. If you were level with the patch so that it was edge-on, it was nearly invisible, and it was completely invisible from behind. You could only see it from the side nearest the road, and you ( Read more... )

I must have read this over a decade ago - I seem to remember buying the first two books shortly before the third came out - and it's interesting to discover which bits have stuck in the mind and which seem new. Pullman's world-building is simply superb. It's not just the places - Lyra's Oxford, the Fens, the Arctic wastes - but also the rules of ( Read more... )

I was hoping for someone to write one that would pick ten interests at random; but this will do.

LJ Interests meme results

1. ( belfast )

From stellanova and subsequently daegaer:

Look at your LJ "interests" list. If you have fewer than 50 interests, pick every fifth one. If you have between fifty and seventy-five interests, pick every seventh one. If you have over seventy-five interests, pick every tenth one. If you have fewer than ten, pick all of 'em. List them on your LJ, and tell everyone ( Read more... )