Northern Lights

As for the Oxford thing, I like books set in places i know. The first one is in an 'alternative Oxford', much more mediaeval, and the second starts off in 'real Oxford' - i even went out of my way to see the place where Will finds the opening between worlds! But enough of my sadness - why not borrow them from the library if you're not sure you'll like them?

And anyway you would have to go into the kids section and risk the wrath of raised eyebrows.

Terribly evocative song, though. Philip Pullman is one of those writers I always intend to read and find out more about than I know (what generally ends up happening is that I stick with Peter Dickinson).

mason and dixon, eh?

pynchon vs. pullman - FITE.

Recall mentioning "Northern Lights" to a 40-ish work-colleague during my undergrad year-in-industry. "Bah", he scowled... "the *hit single*?" Meaning: there was far more to them that *that*, you silly little boy.

Real Life is STILL on the jukebox in the Crown in Oxford. Along with TWO Status Quo best-ofs and TWO copies of the 'Magnificent 70s' 2CD set.

Tom Cruise was really good in Days of Thunder.

I so hope this is true, as Northern Lights was also the name of Canada's attempt at USA For Africa.

blimey a series of books triangulated by sam delany, c.s.lewis and richard adams!! (yeah yeah also milton)

(more with spoilers when you've finished!).

Has anyone read the Lemony Snicket books? They're hilarious, and so short that you can just whiz through them in one sitting.

what i found exciting abt the third book was the way that — having opened (or revealed) all the holes between worlds (which is also a way of turning his ferocious and wide-ranging trope-theft from a drag to a power — he could create a sense of place-pace which meant you too were jaunting between all his juggled ideas, like leaping from peak to peak, too fast entirely to follow why he was doing things (except i think he was travelling that fast also: don't look down or you'll fall)

given that HDM is narnian through and through, it's nice — though signalled almost from page one — that closure sides w.banished susan and her lipstick

who is the SF writer who wrote abt the river of the dead: philip jose farmer?

if the subtle knife is the writer's penned style ("stylus" = cutting point or prow blah blah), then the holes-into-other-worlds are books (or anyway pages): so why is he so fixated on their being closed at puberty's arrival? (admittedly it's the same story-arc as LotR: that immersion in the lyrical adventure quests — in the end — for the passing of lyrical adventure from life's world into memory's => the ring that made this time-and-space, this fellowship, these encounters, these sights and sounds and smells and passions, is being taken to be unmade)

attempt at a reason why the last battle is actually as good as it is, despite susan's exile and lewis's occasional timidity and the whole YES YES THE LION IS JESUS aspect => i think he, perhaps because actually theologically learned, recognised that the war between the xtian promise of an eternal bryter-layter (which of course can drain vitality and joy from the now) and pullman's or tolkien's powerful love of ordinary time-bounded life (which manifests in great waves of brilliantly written desolate partings and endings, of bonedeep resignation as the paid-price for current intensity of emotion) is a more evenly matched battle of like things that pullman or tolkien entirely recognise

ie the gap between that patient inner resignation and the Authority's bid to control and limit is not quite as far as it seems

eg tolk and pullman are both very very wary of the idea of "deathlessness", and how it pollutes and betrays: lewis turns this on its head, and says eternity o'bliss means being in the shape of yr actual lived life, when you loved it, at an unfettered level of grasp of its loveliness

why do the spectres of cittagazza (sp) ignore MARY MALONE and FATHER GOMEZ? it's stated as a phenom, re both, but not explained... (ps i am still only halfway thru AMBER SPYGLASS second time round so maybe it will be)

my guess b4 liz linked it to sex wz that it ties up with why will breaks the knife = he thinks of the "silver fox" (as in, "for a magic spell to work, you have to run round the house 50s times and never think of the silver fox") (only he says "crocodile" instead of "silver fox", and his crocodile is his mom: meanwhile his mom fends off spectres by counting railings and not thinking of HER silver fox, whatever it is...)

in other words, it relates to (actually active) desire in some form, the form having a definable relationship to a spectre-target's destiny? (spectres = actual real manifestation of being torn between desires?)

i don't know if the geometry of this actually works though => what's nice is that it's an axiomatic mythos with a lot of unfolding still to be done, towards proof or otherwise of completeness AND consistency