Day One

4/1

The Book: The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman.

ISBN: 978-0-440-41832-0

Suggested By: Sissy Vaughn, Audrey Scott

Where: Moonbean's Coffee

When: 10:30 - 11:22

Music: Pavement - Crooked Rain Crooked Rain

Company: Alone

The Lead In: The quest begins with The Golden Compass. Sadly I have seen the movie that recently came out, but I don’t know how it compares to the book. Though most people say, and I agree, that books are always better than the movies made from them. So I know a bit of where the plot is going, and that shapes my reading.

The 411 on the 55: The main character is Lyra, the niece of a great adventurer who is bored with her life in school. She spends most of her time with Roger, a servant boy from the kitchen.  This is looked down upon by those in charge of the school, primarily because they are from different levels of society. 

Her uncle has recently returned from the North where he discovered a mysterious city, yet unexplained in the book, outside of the fact that it is mysterious. Aside from this revelation, there is also the Gobblers. Not turkeys, of course, but a mysterious group who seem to be stealing children from the area with promises of treats and adventure. Where they go, no one is sure. And that is where I am in the reading.

I like Pullman’s style of writing, very much like a news reporter. He observes, gives the facts and allows you to piece together the mood. Lyra is an interesting character and her Daemon, Pantalaimon (an animal life-guide?), adds an contrasting element to her thinking.

Best Line from Today: Just as she was unnaware of the hidden currents of politics running below the surface of College affairs, so the Scholars, for their part, would have been unable to see the rich seething stew of alliances and enmeties and feuds and treaties which was a child’s life in Oxford. Children playing together: how pleasant to see! What could be more innocent and charming? In fact of course, Lyra and her peers were engaged in deadly warfare. pg 35

Fact on the Fiction: Christopher Hitchens, author of God is Not Great, praised His Dark Materials as a fresh alternative to C. S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien  and J.K. Rowling. He described the author as one "whose books have begun to dissolve the frontier between adult and juvenile fiction.”  Wikipedia