(no subject)
The His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman
tried reading the Golden Compass as a kid, thought it was a crappy fantasy novel.
Started rereading Golden Compass over the summer, thought it was a really good children's fantasy novel.
Just over this weekend finished the Amber Spyglass (3rd in the series)...a great trilogy, i am no longer surprised that it is a classic. This series has a lot of stuff in it. The first one is almost entirely just a fantasy story. Girl wants to rescue her friend, goes on an adventure, we don't really know the back-story or anything, its cool, they have weird animals with a letter/character that doesn't exist in the normal english alphabet (ae, except combined). Then, somewhere about halfway through the subtle knife, there's a switch flipped, and all of a sudden we are talking about the nature of religion, the deterimental affects of the Church on religion, allegories on religion, the interplay between religion and science, all sorts of crazy stuff. Not so much kids stuff at all. And then, ever so slowly, he starts defining and developing love, but oh ever so slowly, until the very end of the last book when he drops all pretenses and throws it at you. And then [spoiler alert, by the way], in case we still thought this was a happy-ending children's book, he goes and breaks it! And then he ends the book without anyone really knowing what was going to happen next. Though, it definitely leaves even real people with something to think about.
The religion stuff is really weird. At the same time, he credits it and discredits it. He clearly has a negative view on the Church, they are the villians pretty much throughout. But then he boosts science, but then makes Angels real and "the Authority" just be a once-powerful angel who did not actually create anything, but took power over the other angels, and since then gotten old and ultimately disintegrated into nothing. And then he has this Dust, which still leaves me very confused trying to think about it, and what it is, and what it means. And he talks about the afterlife, and ghosts, and which parts of your body or soul do or do not persist into the afterlife. The most interesting religion analogy, however, and the one that he leaves the most understated is, that the opposite of religion is love. In the prophesized parallels with the biblical story, Lyra is said to be Eve, and it is slowly revealed that the temptation that caused Eve's expulsion is in the form of the scientist Dr Mallone. However, at the very end, the only temptation that Dr Mallone does is explain love to Lyra. It doesn't explain how this affects the war between Lord Asriel and The Authority at all, which was where it seemed to be going at the beginning, because the plot sort of gets preoccupied with Lyra. But, thanks to storytime with Dr Mallone, Lyra discoveres love, and then they part ways, so that must be the temptation, the fall from the Authority's good side, love. Why does that make sense? This same then also changes her interaction with Dust in ways that do not make sense. she loses her innate understanding of the Alethiometer, and her daemon suddenly takes on its final form. The daemon is supposed to be some aspect of the soul or something...when somebody else touches your soul for the first time, a part of you never changes ever again? Not gonna lie, this "children's book" actually brings up a bunch of points worth thinking about.
So yeah. My vote is thumbs up. The ending, I think its hard for anyone to read it and not get sentimental (I got all sentimental, and that certainly contributed to post-4AM bedtimes 2 nights in a row, with pre-8:30 wakeups those following mornings...). Makes you think about things.
Next in queue, finishing A Soldier of the Great War. Also sleep, and trying to not fail BME301. This is the first time that i'm seriously worried about failing a real class. Below the mean on the first 2 (out of 4) homework assignments, at mean for the first (of 3) lab reports, we forgot a whole chunk of the 2nd lab report (not graded yet, but expected to be bad), and I left 60/135 points either blank or 100% BSed on the first exam (of 2, also not returned yet, but I cannot forsee that being good). nearly 9 hours of working on biochemistry today, really glad I skipped hockey.
Good night
tried reading the Golden Compass as a kid, thought it was a crappy fantasy novel.
Started rereading Golden Compass over the summer, thought it was a really good children's fantasy novel.
Just over this weekend finished the Amber Spyglass (3rd in the series)...a great trilogy, i am no longer surprised that it is a classic. This series has a lot of stuff in it. The first one is almost entirely just a fantasy story. Girl wants to rescue her friend, goes on an adventure, we don't really know the back-story or anything, its cool, they have weird animals with a letter/character that doesn't exist in the normal english alphabet (ae, except combined). Then, somewhere about halfway through the subtle knife, there's a switch flipped, and all of a sudden we are talking about the nature of religion, the deterimental affects of the Church on religion, allegories on religion, the interplay between religion and science, all sorts of crazy stuff. Not so much kids stuff at all. And then, ever so slowly, he starts defining and developing love, but oh ever so slowly, until the very end of the last book when he drops all pretenses and throws it at you. And then [spoiler alert, by the way], in case we still thought this was a happy-ending children's book, he goes and breaks it! And then he ends the book without anyone really knowing what was going to happen next. Though, it definitely leaves even real people with something to think about.
The religion stuff is really weird. At the same time, he credits it and discredits it. He clearly has a negative view on the Church, they are the villians pretty much throughout. But then he boosts science, but then makes Angels real and "the Authority" just be a once-powerful angel who did not actually create anything, but took power over the other angels, and since then gotten old and ultimately disintegrated into nothing. And then he has this Dust, which still leaves me very confused trying to think about it, and what it is, and what it means. And he talks about the afterlife, and ghosts, and which parts of your body or soul do or do not persist into the afterlife. The most interesting religion analogy, however, and the one that he leaves the most understated is, that the opposite of religion is love. In the prophesized parallels with the biblical story, Lyra is said to be Eve, and it is slowly revealed that the temptation that caused Eve's expulsion is in the form of the scientist Dr Mallone. However, at the very end, the only temptation that Dr Mallone does is explain love to Lyra. It doesn't explain how this affects the war between Lord Asriel and The Authority at all, which was where it seemed to be going at the beginning, because the plot sort of gets preoccupied with Lyra. But, thanks to storytime with Dr Mallone, Lyra discoveres love, and then they part ways, so that must be the temptation, the fall from the Authority's good side, love. Why does that make sense? This same then also changes her interaction with Dust in ways that do not make sense. she loses her innate understanding of the Alethiometer, and her daemon suddenly takes on its final form. The daemon is supposed to be some aspect of the soul or something...when somebody else touches your soul for the first time, a part of you never changes ever again? Not gonna lie, this "children's book" actually brings up a bunch of points worth thinking about.
So yeah. My vote is thumbs up. The ending, I think its hard for anyone to read it and not get sentimental (I got all sentimental, and that certainly contributed to post-4AM bedtimes 2 nights in a row, with pre-8:30 wakeups those following mornings...). Makes you think about things.
Next in queue, finishing A Soldier of the Great War. Also sleep, and trying to not fail BME301. This is the first time that i'm seriously worried about failing a real class. Below the mean on the first 2 (out of 4) homework assignments, at mean for the first (of 3) lab reports, we forgot a whole chunk of the 2nd lab report (not graded yet, but expected to be bad), and I left 60/135 points either blank or 100% BSed on the first exam (of 2, also not returned yet, but I cannot forsee that being good). nearly 9 hours of working on biochemistry today, really glad I skipped hockey.
Good night