Day Four

4/4

The Book: The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman.

ISBN: 978-0-440-41832-0

Suggested By: Sissy Vaughn, Audrey Scott

Where: Home

When: 11:50A - 12:40P

Music: Explosions in the Sky - How Strange, Innocence

Company: Alone

Pages: 201-282 (81)

The Lead In: The movie really poisoned this book. I see it more and more the older and more well-read I get. Its not just that things get left out of movie adaptations. Its that people watch the movie and assume the movie and the book are equal. And even when people say “Oh, I know they aren’t the same,” in practice they still believe they are. Take for example No Country for Old Men. The movie, by the Cohen Brothers, was amazing, and, as someone who read the book and saw the movie, was as close in detail as I have ever seen a movie get. The book however, was written by Cormac McCarthy, a recent winner of the Pulitzer for his The Road (soon to be a movie as well). McCarthy is a master of poetic description and stream of consciousness , some refer to him as the new Faulkner. The Cohen brothers did a good job, but the book is still in another class. The fact is, that no matter how good the movie is, it still removes the beauty of the words, the strength (or lack) of description, the character-crafting that great authors practice. It is a shame, in this era of weakened mental capabilities that so many choose the easy route with movies and miss out on the ability of writers.

The 411 on the 55: Lyra begins travel with the Gyptians, Iorek and Scoresby. During this trip, she discovers a young boy and what is going on with the Gobblers is revealed. They are removing daemons from children. The boy dies the next day and soon after their party is attacked.

In the attack, Lyra is kidnapped and dragged off to the basecamp/research facility. She discovers Roger and several other children she knew before. While being help prisoner, she finds where the daemons are kept and releases them. All is going well until Mrs. Coulter shows up. (I forgot to mention this prior, but it is revealed earlier that Mrs. Coulter and her uncle, Lord Asriel, are actually her mother and father). Lyra is discovered and is now revealed for who she actually is.

Line of the Day: The Silver Guillotine (actually a chapter title) pg 265

Fact on the Fiction: For some time during the pre-publication process, the series of novels was known as The Golden Compasses. The word compasses referred to a pair of compasses—the circle-drawing instrument—rather than a navigational compass. Pullman then settled on Northern Lights as the title for the first book, and continued to refer to the trilogy as The Golden Compasses. Like the eventual title for the trilogy, the original title The Golden Compasses comes from a line in Milton’s Paradise Lost. Wikipedia