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
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