The Golden Compass, p. 376 (Spoilers, Naturally)

After spending almost the entire book struggling to bring an alethiometer to her father, who’s being kept in an ice-bound prison in Svalbard by her evil mother’s henchmen, and after surmounting a host of obstacles — which include evil bears, the Oblation Board, trepanned Tartars and their malevolent daemons — in the process, Lyra meets Lord Asriel for the first time since she learned she was his daughter:

• Her father was lying back in his chair, lazy and powerful, his eyes as fierce as a daemon’s. She didn’t love him, she couldn’t trust him, but she had to admire him . . .

So real! Philip Pullman, what have you done to self? Turns out Lyra was never meant to bring Lord Asriel an alethiometer. The alethiometer was for her. She didn’t realize it at the time the Master gave it to her because she didn’t think anyone could be as important as her father. So she’s come all this way for, basically, nothing. Not to mention, she realizes her father will be her last opponent. Because he is mad.

GAAAH! Can’t you cut this kid a break, Philip Pullman? So much angst, self can’t even.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

The Golden Compass, p. 283

Self understands how Philip Pullman works his magic: he writes about evil in the most blank, affectless way. His main character, Lyra Belacqua, has grown up an orphan, but she has NO ANGST WHATSOEVER, or has none she cares to share with us anyway. So her thoughts are not muddled.

And his villains! His villains are people who used to be good, like Mrs. Coulter, and who remember how to act like they are good. So they are extremely convincing, to everyone but the main character.

Self understands how hard this would all be to translate to film. So she doesn’t think she’ll ever see a movie based on His Dark Materials or The Book of Dust. The books will always be better. In this case, anyway.

Here’s a scene between Lyra and Mrs. Coulter:

“Darling,” she said, “some of what’s good has to hurt us a little, and naturally it’s upsetting to others if you’re upset . . .  But it doesn’t mean your daemon is taken away from you. He’s still there! Goodness me, a lot of the grownups here have had the operation. The nurses seem happy enough, don’t they?”

Lyra blinked. Suddenly she understood their strange blank incuriosity, the way their little trotting daemons seemed to be sleepwalking.

Say nothing, she thought, and shut her mouth hard.

What’s so great about Lyra is, she’s so quick to recognize a lie.

She truly is her father’s daughter.

Stay tuned.

The Guardian’s 100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time

There is very little overlap been self’s reading list and the 100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time by The Guardian.

Below, books on The Guardian’s list that self has read:

2. The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion

5. Dreams From My Father, by Barack Obama

9. Dispatches, by Michael Herr

15. The Double Helix, by James D. Watson

20. Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson

23. The Elements of Style, by William Strunk and EB White

33. The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child-care, by Dr. Benjamin Spock

42. Testament of Youth, by Vera Brittain (for a course on the Literature of World War I, taught by Prof. Albert Guerard at Stanford)

44. Goodbye to All That, by Robert Graves (for a course on the Literature of World War I, taught by Prof. Albert Guerard at Stanford)

65. Roget’s Thesaurus

83. A History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon

92. The Diary of Samuel Pepys by Samuel Pepys, via Claire Tomalin’s excellent biography of Pepys’ life

The Hedgehog: THE GOLDEN COMPASS, p. 72

Self began The Golden Compass having already made the acquaintance of Lyra and Lord Asriel in La Belle Sauvage (Volume One of Pullman’s new trilogy, which takes place ten years before the events of The Golden Compass).

In LBS, Lyra’s an infant. When The Golden Compass opens, Lyra’s a feisty little girl whose best friend is a boy named Roger. Together, Lyra and Roger go ranging over the rooftops of Oxford and exploring in crypts. This part of the story is sheer delight.

It’s not until Chapter 4 of The Golden Compass that she meets two other characters from LBS: Dame Hannah Reif (who is described as “an elderly, gray-haired lady” — a far cry from the woman she was in LBS. How could a person have aged so much in just ten years?) and Mrs. Coulter (who doesn’t seem to have aged a day, despite the 10 years etc)

Now, these two women (accompanied by a third, mystery woman) appear for dinner at Jordan Hall, and Lyra learns she is being sent off with Mrs. Coulter, the very next day. It doesn’t take long for self to google “Mrs. Coulter” and discover that Nicole Kidman played her in the movie adaptation, which then causes self to dislike Mrs. Coulter because self never could abide Nicole Kidman in anything, just saying.

There is a lot of cloak-and-dagger stuff even at this early stage of The Golden Compass, and self really loves how deftly Pullman navigates between the simple certainties of childhood and the edges of terror. Before Lyra leaves Jordan Hall (forever), the old Master slips her an alethiometer which isn’t actually as fabulous as it sounds because the device reveals who is lying to you, and that information always hurts because it is never who you expect.

Self loves that Lyra’s daemon is called Pantalaimon because it sounds like a cross between Shakespeare and Don Quixote, and also it is such a mouthful compared to other daemons’ names, like Ben or Asta. So the reader will never, ever forget it. And after a while, when you succeed in getting Pantalaimon to roll trippingly off your tongue, you will feel so smart. Like you’ve just aced your finals.

The daemon Pantalaimon has a tendency to shift into the most amusing animals, such as a hedgehog:

“she snapped at him, when he became a hedgehog out of pique.”– p. 72

Has self ever shared with dear blog readers that she has a special fondness for hedgehogs? She even used “hedgehog” as the worst cuss word on the planet, in her story of the far future called “Spores” (published in decomP Magazine)!

An excerpt from self’s story:

“We be needing foxes,” I said once.

“You lousy hedgehog,” the boss said, giving me a good one. My right eye swelled up almost immediately.

Would you believe that at the time self wrote the story, she had never laid eyes on an actual hedgehog? A few years ago she was at the San Francisco Zoo and finally got to see a hedgehog. It was all by itself, huddled in a far corner of a kind of pen, and it looked positively miserable.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.