On the Alethiometer and Mrs. Coulter

It's time for a new post! I really have wanted to write again for the last couple of days, but I think the weight of my sadness spread over my body and made it feel heavy and sleepy, so I couldn't write about "how much I read" if I kept falling asleep and not reading much at all. It's a most unfortunate thing for a book-lover to have such an easy sleep.

Anyway, I've been focusing on reading Northern Lights for now, because I was half-convinced it was really good, and half-curious to check whether or not it would have a touch of dystopian that I should be aware of. It turns out that my suspicions were completely false, and this book, so far, is completely lovely. It is set in a parallel universe - in a different type of Oxford -, but for now I've found no hints of world destruction. I have a bit more of faith on what the Dust project will be, far ahead in the book, but really, what I've read so far has given me so much trust in the whole book and so much eagerness to just keep reading.

Along with reading, I've been trying to challenge myself to make at least a drawing a day and keep it strict for a month, so I can recover the skill I used to have prior to becoming depressed and lazy. I've been trying to draw out of my mind and without references, and more variety from my usual portraits so I'm drawing scenes from whatever I read. My drawings are just sketches, though, at least for the challenge... I'm usually so much better when I put more effort into improving an image rather than to just try and make out one.

From the last post, I've read two chapters (take note that chapters in Northern Light

s tend to be very long, but they're distinguishable from others). The third one, Lyra's Jordan, deals with how Lyra sees the college where she lives. It speaks of its grandiosity and its architecture, so one could have a very good idea of how it looks like. I really like it when authors make descriptive (but not tedious, to the point you forget you are reading a story and not a geography book) ideas of the things that are the clearest only in their imagination. I think it's rather generous when an author is willing to reveal so meticulously a world that was once an intimate thought. And the way he does it, you don't lose the thread in the story - it's connected to it, you still know what is going on and it's not like reading, for a while, a separate book about the world's geography while you're reading a bigger book. The descriptions are cleverly blended into the storyline.

Another thing that is explained in Chapter Three is Lyra's leisurely life in the Jordan. Every detail about her wild, yet safe life is explained exquisitely, from her fights with the children from other colleges, to her carelessness about her looks, to her absolute lack of fear.

The most important thing about the third chapter, though, is that that's where the story really begins - with the kidnap of a boy named Tony, somewhere in England. The Gobblers are introduced for the first time with the misadventure of Tony, who was lured by a certain lady with a fox-fur coat and dark hair. We get to see how they are seduced, where they are taken, and what this awful lady does to them - she makes them write letters to their parents, which she said would be delivered, but in the end, she burns them. Are these kids going to be taken to the Arctic? What is the point of working with them, and why so many of them are stolen? An important thing to remember, beware, is that none of these kids are pubescent. I wonder why this is as important as the book makes them out to be...

The story of the Gobblers is spread all over England, though people are doubtful about what purpose they serve and where the children are taken. Lyra, meanwhile, is safe... until a certain point. The Gobblers reach Oxford, where a giptian children is stolen, and at first she thinks it's fun to fancy herself a detective, but in the end, when she sees all the women cry and all the daemons desperate, she realises it's a serious business and that the Gobblers really are there. Still, she has a childlike mind, and interprets the Gobblers in play. In one of her adventures pretending to be one, she is lead under the subterranean area of the Jordan, where she finds the coffins of all the Headmasters that have been in the Jordan, each with the name and picture of their Daemon engraved in their tombstones, as well as the skulls of several people that had studied at the Jordan, which hid coins with the engraving of their daemons to accompany them in their afterlives. I wonder if this scene will have any further meaning in the book.

Lyra's carefree life in the Jordan comes to an end when she is invited to dine with the Headmaster, along with other guests which happen to be only ladies... among those is Marisa Coulter, the same woman who lured Tony to the haven full of stolen children.

In Chapter Four, The Alethiometer, Mrs. Coulter seems to give a contradicting image in

contrast to what we saw in the last chapter. She seems to be good and knowledgeable, and she is genuinely interested in Lyra, and (fortunately or unfortunately) the feeling is mutual. The Headmaster arranges this dinner with the purpose to make Lyra know other women that will tutor her. She is either too old, or too unsafe for the Jordan, or something has to be hidden from her in the following years. I am more than willing to find out.

Lyra, at first, is completely appalled to the idea of leaving the Jordan, but once she realises she could opt for being with the alluring Mrs. Coulter, she feels determined to leave the Jordan for more adventures (she is also determined to fix her hair and clothes like a lady). She is sent to sleep, as she'd leave the Jordan right on the next day. But right before dawn, something extremely important happens...

Lyra is sent to the Headmaster's office in the middle of her sleep. When she is there, she is presented this small, but heavy object, covered in velvet and looking like a big pocket watch with mysterious engravings... it's the Alethiometer, an object "to help you find the truth". She has to find out how it works throughout the book. It's a practically unique object, and it seems to be lusted after - she has to hide it from everyone, including uncle Asriel. But one would wonder why, why give it to her above all people, and what is its use? Why can't she show it to the people she trusts? Pantalaimon warns her not to show it to Mrs. Coulter. Does he know about her job at kidnapping children?

Lyra has to leave, right after that moment. She is sent on a Zeppelin (there is a lot of anachronism in this story, like blended things from the 16th to early 20th century) from Oxford to London, where they arrive at the luxurious home of Mrs. Coulter. It is nothing like what she knew at the Jordan - it is vast and covered in shiny decorations, statues, chandeliers; her clothes are cosy and fresh and new, and she even seems to enjoy the baths. She is so relaxed while taking one, in fact, that she forgets about the Alethiometer (it is hidden near her coat), but to her luck it is safe. For how long will it be safe, though? She'll have to be careful, because Mrs. Coulter seems to distract her very much with constant trips to the clothes' store and to fancy restaurants. I wonder if she purposely wants her to feel distracted.

The first thing I thought after reading those two chapters was "what the hell". Why is she being so kind with Lyra if she stole the other children and tore their letters? Will she be even meaner to Lyra, or is she genuinely fascinated by her? Is she keeping her safe from something - and why, if she has an uncle and why, if she's the one that manages all the mischief, from what I understand?

I'll have to see.

Josephine x

(PD: Today we're supposed to order from Barnes and Noble. Mother, if you're reading this, we have to!)

November darlings

My November wishlist. I hope I find a good used book shop online because I only have $40, and most of it will go so the idiots at the post don't lose my packages. Sigh.

Turning on a new page

(...don't wonder why the post is named "meow". I was testing with previews, okay?)

Welcome! As I type this, I should be reading, but I've been setting up this blog since maybe 7 AM (darn it, HTML!) and have been extremely excited correcting its glitches and adding new things. I am excited to begin and really enter the online literary community, but for now, I write for myself.

Anyway, as for what I've been reading.

Last Friday I started Northern Lights by Philip Pullman (also called The Golden Compass in America), the first book in his famous trilogy, His Dark Materials. In short, it's the story of a girl called Lyra, who travels up north to rescue her friend, Roger, from a team of scientists conducting experiments with a mysterious substance named Dust...

...from what I know, because I haven't finished it. In fact, I've barely started it. Yes! A book reviewer that starts from the very beginning! And yes - I'd like to always talk about the progress I make with books.

So far, I'm afraid this turns a bit dystopian, more like science fiction instead of fantasy. I know it's a fantasy novel, and fellow friends that read fantasy said they've loved it, too, but... the beginning is so strange! Lyra's uncle, Lord Asriel, holds a meeting where he talks about the city he finds above the sky in the North, and he shows them the head of a certain person of importance, and so far... I'm confused, and I'm afraid it will be this way all along. It's too technical for now. I'm afraid I'll lose the thread on what the experiment is about and whatnot, but I guess the other two books from His Dark Materials will deal more with the city therein and the actual fantasy world.

Though there's something that gives me a sense of optimism - the way the book deals with the character of Lyra, who sounds like a rightful story heroine, and her daemon Pantalaimon, of whom I'm looking forward to knowing more. The author speaks very differently from when he talks about Lyra to when he talks about the experiment.

Another book I've been reading (I have a horrible habit of

reading more than one book at once, but we all know the feeling of wanting to know more, and more, and more...) is The Fellowship of the Ring, from J. R. R. Tolkien's trilogy The Lord of the Rings. I'd meant to read it for quite a while, but like I've said in my information page, it's hard for me to come by books in English and I rarely pick up the same book but in a different language, as much as it urges me, for fear of awful translations and for fear of not fully understanding what the author wants to convey. But luckily, my usually crappy school library had this book. My family is surrounded by Tolkien imagery and inspiration, and as a tiny, tiny person, I've always been interested in taking up his books, and after taking up Letters from Father Christmas on my fifth grade Christmas, I was hooked to Tolkien's worlds and words.

Anyway, it's fascinating so far, though it's a lot of information to process! The prologue alone has so much about the lives of hobbits that you feel the need to write it down as to not forget, and I'm afraid it will be like that with the rest of the book (books...!) and that I'll lose thread of what goes on (you probably can tell I have an awful memory for detail, in spite of liking it). But I'd rather not focus on that for now, or at least as I read, and instead turn my mind to wonderful things like the way Tolkien describes landscapes. He has such an intricate vision of the geography of his lands! Luckily, his books come with maps. I thoroughly enjoyed, too, the way Tolkien describes social situations. Bilbo's 111st birthday party felt very palpable, like I was there, dancing on the tables and then whining about his speech...

A notable thing that happened to me while I read this book is that I felt I was there... chained not to the book as a physical thing or an object with feelings, but to the scene, like I was really there and my eyes weren't hovering over words but feeling the ambient of tension of Bilbo upon the touch of the Ring, the concerned eyes of Gandalf fixated upon me, the darkness and then abrupt light again. I really felt I was in the story, and the world outside me didn't exist. It's extremely hard for an author,

in my opinion, to really bring the reader right into the book, and so far, Tolkien has done that with just a simple scene. I'm definitely looking forward to reading more.

For school, I've been reading Sophie's World, by Jostein Gaarder. It's a brief retelling of the history of philosophy, but not as a non-fiction work - the way it works is that Sophie, the girl of whom the story is about, gets a paper course and eventually face-to-face lessons with a mysterious philosophy teacher called Albert Knox, and we get to learn from the lessons because we read what Albert said or wrote to her, as though we were Sophie. The way you can tell apart the lessons from the story in itself are by the font styles, but that isn't really my point - the philosophy leads you to a mysterious case of a girl named Hilde Möller Knag. We don't know who she is, what she does, and how she's related to Sophie. Sophie gets sent postcards and letters for her, for Hilde, from her father who is in an expedition in the Lebanon and that are supposed to be sent back by her. I'm at the part of the Renaissance philosophers and we have barely figured out that Hilde's father is there. See? It's a very intricate story, and we have to reach our century to finally figure out who Hilde is! But we've got some parts figured out: we know who the philosophy teacher is, we know where he lived, we know who delivered the letters (a dog named Hermes... see the pun?), and we've seen all people, dogs and locations mentioned. Now that I write this, I really want to keep reading... once you begin finding out about Hilde, it's very hard for you to let go of the book. It's a very gripping one, and I highly recommend it, especially for people that haven't been or are barely introduced to the world of philosophy (if you think 600 pages are too much, you should read actual philosophy and tell me too much is TOO MUCH).

BUT! There's something mandatory when it comes to reading this book, especially if you're reading it for school like I am: take a notebook with you (and obviously, a pen). There is a LOT to write down, tiny little details and comparisons and whatnot that are useful and can help you figure out the mystery of Hilde, and since each philosopher is summarised very shortly but all of the important details are tucked in, it's important to take note. The philosopher won't take his time explaining one single thing, he'll narrow down the complexity in one or two paragraphs, so you have to have a willing mind before reading this book. You'll have to crumble the book with your mind and chop each of its parts (how gruesome it sounds!).

You probably feel the need to read after you've read this, and so have I, so I'm off to read.

Josephine x