The Golden Compass

So I just finished reading The Golden Compass trilogy, and let me tell you... those books have messed me up in deep and profound ways. Likely more deeply and profoundly than any other books I've ever read. I think I loved them, but at the same time they destroyed me. Does that make any sense? My thoughts on it are still fairly jumbled, but here are a few items of note:

- I usually don't like fantasy books, but J.K. Rowling and Philip Pullman have really managed to captivate me. The Harry Potter series and The Golden Compass trilogy are the only book series in history to make me resent working because it takes me away from reading the books. Not in a "gee, I'd rather be reading right now" way, either. In a "seriously, this sucks, I want to quit my job so I can read. Stupid work." way.

- These are NOT meant for Children. This is the only series that I would NOT let my children read. Actually, that thought is one of the things that has been messing with me, because probably in a lot of ways these books would make a lot of sense for kids, but I would probably have to approach it on an individual basis. If my child were brave and stubborn and over the age of 12, sure. If my child were a sensitive soul like me? Not on your life. Just knowing how badly they messed with my emotions? No way.

- Onto the emotions, gee, I don't even know where to go with it. It was a hard series to read, based on subject matter alone, and I'm not surprised that the church was pissed about them. There was nothing subtle about the church=evil aspect of these books. It wasn't even just the hard topics that came up, the often uncomfortable moments, but they also made me feel so dreadfully alone and hopeless at times. I cried on the bus, and spent an entire Sunday afternoon feeling heart-sick that I didn't have a daemon. It was rough, people! And I know I'm Miss Hyper-Emotional, but still, yikes. I know I have a tendency to get really emotionally involved with imaginary things, which is silly, but I was raised on imagination and empathy, so not really surprising. Sometimes I have trouble giving myself the appropriate amount of distance.

I now want to discuss these books with everyone, so if you've read them and have any insight then let me know. I haven't seen the movie yet, and I'm not sure I want to. Nicole Kidman? Really? I can't see it.

At any rate, on a similar note of getting too emotionally involved, I got TOO emotionally involved about an incident this weekend and spent Sunday moping around, needing The X-Files to cheer me up. Sadly, my DVDs are in Nova Scotia, so I had to make do with what I could scrape up on YouTube. I thought these little clips were raaaaather amusing (just fast forward through the trailer to get to the end.)





"Dark, gloomy forest!"
"yyyeah"

Oh those guys!
Love,
Gillian