welcome!

No problem about coming late to the conversation. It’s an odd artifact of the internet that our time sense seems speeded up and also frozen at the same time.

I appreciated your comments, especially about book three. I did not personally care for many of the elements in book three, so it was illuminating to me to see a different perspective. It helps me appreciate the books more when I can see how another reader approached it.

One of the most interesting things to me about reading novels is that every reader will come away from any given novel with a different experience; no one experience is the “right” one — I think that’s part of what gives novels their depth and texture, the reason people keep reading them. The story is as much about our interaction with it as about the story the author things s/he wrote.

I hope you check out more recent Deep Genre posts, too!

Best wishes,
Kate Elliott

The site is still very active! Keep reading and posting here!
Its great having an open mind! Actually new comments are posted down the side of the page so people can still read/notice them even on the older blog posts.

Carol

But hey thanks for the support, I realy aprecate it. I’m currently reading The Underneath, ASOME book to. if you dont know its by Kathy Apelt and I happen to know her personaly(she goes to my church). I’m not christan, but find a open mind helps with alot of issues, not atheist either. I’m as a specific religon Druid, but am more of a all around pegan from the diffrences in my family. Open minds help alot with seeing the world for the beauty it gives us, in more appropreat words and open minded person is like a achitech of the Republic of Heaven. Heh!

(Sorry, I’m still using this year old blog site place, I’ll find another, thanks for your help!)

Sencirely, Joe

This post and the comments about it were made a year ago. So you won’t be getting any responses. Posts on blogs have a life and then everybody moves on to something else. Posts just don’t stay active for a year at a time.

But since I was the one who put up the post, the site forwarded me your comment, so I am responding to you, but nobody else will be scrolling down a year ago to find us, I don’t think.

I recently saw the movie “The Golden Compass.” They didn’t do such a good job with it, I think. Though it was splendid to look at, in the sense of expressing another rather recent development in what we call the sub-genres of science fiction and fantasy — Steampunk, that brings together styles and machinery from the late Victorian era with magic or technology from a later period.

It’s too bad the others won’t be seeing what you think about Pullman’s books. I’m so glad you’ve got a mom that you get to talk with about what interests you too. It’s important that you keep reading and learning the techniques for thinking for yourself and learning the techniques for communicating effectively what you think and feel too. (Spelling helps! But we all make spelling mistakes — we just call them typographical errors.)

Keep reading and thinking! Join in sometime, if something more recent strikes your fancy.

Love, C.

Pardon the misspelling(I’m a very bad speller)

Having just finished the books and read everyone of the entries here, I can agree with everyone on some points, but others I cannot. I personally LOVED the books and were fully imenced in the story and charicters lives, I have a bad habbit of lossing myself in a book and more or less felling the charicter’s pain and feelings as they are. I am 15 and living in the U.S.(suprizingly living in the most overly religos part of it, Texas!). I just haved to get my words in after reading all of your blogs! To me, I liked every book not having a favorite just equal. Starting, the conclusoin to the story did seem quite abit depressing, but after having a deep conversation with my mother, found the meaning quite clear; you dont always get a fairy tale ending, in the real world its not always they lived happly ever after, how as head before with a great deed comes great sacrifice. The story did not seem sexual to me in the least bit, physicaly showing your love for someone does not always mean sex or as much, it enchanted me deepely how they simply held each other and kissed knowing full well that they loved each other and silently gazing into their eyes just knowing that the other cares for them the same way they care for the other, nothing arousing or sexual about that is there, or at least thats what I got from the book and how you felt through the blogs!? When it came to the church I dint look and see a evil entity at all, it looked to me as it was simlpy a corrupted entity in scoceity, full of zelous old men selfconsumed in thier own power, the church as a entity seemed little than just a vessal for helping people know right from wrong(which in any case is what started christanity in the first place, not something to worship or fear, but simply lay the ground rules for a simple and humble existence with the world around you, right?) the people runing the thing were the bad guys and thats what I think was what Pullman whanted to show. In other words I have no quaril with anyone’s opinoin on the books, I’m simply giving my opinoin to ponder on for a bit.

Blog agian I would like to know what you think(good or bad)

It’s so interesting hearing the responses of people new to works one has liked. At least, for me it is. I shouldn’t try and speak for ALL.

Yeah, the U.S. title is rather different than the British one. Why? Your guess is as good as anyone’s!

Love, C.

I’m really enjoying it so far, actually. I usually wait until the end of a book before thinking about my opinion/reaction etc., unless it’s terrible, but I can share my 2 cents as I feel now.

In general, I didn’t really know what the books were about, though I’d heard Pullman does battle with the Church, so I was expecting a bit of that. I was surprised when it went as far as waging war against God, who turns out not to be a god but a greedy Angel. That side of things is a bit shaky to me, but I’ll have till the end to see if it works, for me.

I quite like Will and Lyra, and I love Iorek. Most of all, I love the exploration of other worlds, races and cultures. The pod-wheel people, for example, which first appear at the beginning of the third book, are fascinating. There are no bounds to Pullman’s imagination, and I think fiction - especially fantasy - is a great way of encouraging people to think about things they take for granted, such as religion.

There have been a couple of books recently that I’ve skimmed over chunks towards the end - Special Topics in Calamity Physics, for example -which I hate doing. And I agree, it’s a bad sign. But I read every word in His Dark Materials, and sometimes have trouble putting it down (all those people I’ve walked into getting off the subway, I’m sorry!).

By the way, I’d heard from a Dutch friend that it was called Northern Lights - but is that the other name for the first book or for the trilogy? I don’t usually like the American versions of book titles (Sorcerer’s Stone?? What the hell is a sorcerer’s stone??!!), but The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass - these work! I’m looking forward to the movie, and having seen the preview before I started reading, I could absolutely picture both Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman as Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter!

Oh, and as for pushing dogma - if anyone here has read Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth series, they’ll agree with me when I say that Pullman hardly makes a dent! Starting mostly with Faith of the Fallen, Goodkind has been banging all his readers over the head with his very unsubtle, highly literal, incredibly blatant propaganda. By comparison, Pullman is lighter and more refreshing.

Soooo, what is it about those Logic novels that has everyone gaga?

Love, C.

Wow. I don’t even remember Will and Lyra’s separation at the end. I must have really zoned on on book three. Obviously I lost emotional connection by that time to the story.

I skipped or skimmed parts ….

I find I do this more and more in these degenerate times ….

Nevertheless, I still believe the reason I do so is that I’ve read so many novels by now, I know what’s going on, just via the pointers along the way.

But still, yes, I’m bad.

Love, C.