(no subject)

[shadowkat]

That cool daemon meme swiped from superplin.

His Dark Materials is amongst my favorite childrens fantasy novels. And in my opinion far better than some of its predecessors. Also amongst the few that feature a strong, independent, female heroine who is a little girl. Most of these books have boys - Narnia, Harry Potter, Earthsea, the Hobbit. It was Pullman's response to a lot of the themes he found troubling in the Narnia series.

Really looking forward to this film, far more actually than Harry Potter, or Spiderman.

Comments

[embers-log.livejournal.com]

I'm ashamed to say I've never heard of this book...
it does sound interesting, and I hope the movie is good!

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Don't be...

Lots of people haven't.

I found out about them through two sources - I frequent book stores a lot. Have two within walking distance, and one of the two book stores is an indie and displayed these books as staff pics and best-sellers for that store. The other source was the ATPO board which is frequented by a lot of copy-editors, writers, librarians, teachers, and professors - who read for a living - and adore fantasy. They talked about the books quite a bit. Several, in fact, preferred the books to the Narnia ones.

I do. Narnia has some really disturbing themes - that I didn't notice as a child, but were obvious to me when I saw the film. Pullman's book addresses those themes as well as some of the more disturbing bits of Judeo-Christian religion. In some ways it is a critique of Christianity and Judeaism by an athesist.

His Dark Materials is the anti-Narnia.

[embers-log.livejournal.com]

I'm going to request it from the library right this second!
Since I don't have kids I never really knew many of the children's books (I do hang at bookstores, but I am always in 'mystery')
So this will be fun to try something new, thanks... and I am also enjoying the daemon thing.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

It takes a little while to get into, but be patient. The second book may well be my favorite of the series. I don't remember the third real well.
I gave mine to a friend for his birthday several years back - I was unemployed that year and it was the only thing he would let me give him.
I may get them again - for my neice to read when she gets older. Her parents are athesist/agnostics - so they may approve of it. She's tough to buy for b/c her parents are against anything that is commericial or branded. They don't let her watch tv for example and their television is high up and out of her line of vision.

[arethusa2.livejournal.com]

Oh, the spider is cool. Pocket-sized, unlike the tiger. It's funny how most of us are both retiring and assertive. I think that's a good thing, because you end up doing a lot of observing, but feel confident enough to assert ourselves when we really want to. (Except then we second-guess ourselves; at least I do.)

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

LOL! Yep, big on the second-guessing. Been doing that a lot this week.
Worrying that I'm doing all the wrong things, and maybe if I were doing these things instead...but I don't want to do those things. I want to do these things. Sigh. The conflict between want and should keeps rising its nasty little head.

Yeah, but I'm afraid of spiders can't even look at pretend ones - arachnophobic - so went back and played a bit with it. Got a lion and a lady-bug this round. First round was a fox, spider, and mouse - and Achlenon or some pretty but unpronounceable name that I can't spell. It said "inquisitive, assertive, solitary, modest, and spontaneous." This one may be better with dependable.

I think most people who on the internet/writers tend to be like this.
The non-observant, extroverts - don't have the patience or the interest. I know - two of my close friends are extroverts or the opposite from me in this regard - and neither can quite wrap their heads around why I'd write a blog, spend time reading one, or interact on fan discussion boards. They only use the net for quick discussions or to get info fast.