I've just started re-reading the "Dark Materials" trilogy and had forgotten just how good they are...certainly too good for children! So brilliantly written and utterly spell binding...

Did a bit of research into the film of the first book "Northern Lights" and have discovered that filming starts next month and that the child playing Lyra is a complete unknown which I think is a good thing...(although spotted by the same casting agents that found the Harry Potter kids - not sure if that is a good or bad thing!!) I can see the films being a bit controversial since the director is attempting to cut all references to the church as not to offend fundamentalist Christians...not sure how that will work but still....

Anybody else read them? If you have, how much would you love a daemon?

I'm still trying to figure out where Pullman is coming from as the end of the trilogy was very confused (though this might be cleared up in The Book Of Dust, when it comes out!). And a lot of the Tolkienists don't like him. So I've read a lot of his lectures, essays and interviews and he often contradicts himself depending on his audience!

Firstly, he has said he is an Atheist, but then again he has said he is not! His idea of The Republic of Heaven is that while we might get rid of God we can't get rid of god, i.e. spirituality.

Then he says he hates fantasy and wats to subvert it, yet in a later interview he admits he likes fantasy and is a fantasist himself!

Well, no wonder the end of the book gets a bit odd. ;)

They're amazing books though, and I love the daemons - I reckon they're external expressions of the anima/animus. But we'll apparently find out more in BoD.

I loved the books, killed quite a few commutes to Manchester on the train!

I don't understand at all how they are going to get rid of the references to the church though, its one of the most central themes in the books :confused:. That’s put me on a bit of a downer to be honest, doesn't sound like it’s off to a great start. I would think a lot of the scarier parts are going to be edited out anyway to make it a PG, if they do the cutting of the daemon part too well it'll be the scariest kids film of all time!

I agree the end of the books was a little odd - almost anti-climatic - found myself thinking - "after all that? thats it????!!!". I found the theology of the books a bit hard going at times and I have a degree in theology! I'm guessing the films will be massively simplified - which is a shame....but I agree some bits will have to be tamed down, agree GazE the intercision scenes - also the bear fight - turns my stomach reading it!

Book of Dust - should be interesting, wish I understood a bit more about science, might get it more then.

Yup, and I reckon you can tell that he hasn't got a degree in Theology! he has a lot of ideas about faith but gets things seriously mixed up towards the end. To be honest, if you just read it as a straight story, or focus on the scientific ideas, it makes a whole lot more sense.

I actually agree with a lot of what he seems to be saying e.g. why do we demarcate 'God' as the Christian God only when the concept of God could mean all kinds of things, some of them nothing to do with faith (but I don;t want to argue that with a Theology graduate - scary! ;) ). But its the way he does it, getting his ideas confused, and I think it was a bit cynical that one of the big ideas behind the book seems to be that kids just have to grow up and forget about things like magic and fantasy.

It's one of the few kids' books, though, that I've read as a grown up and felt real distress at certain points in the book. Namely in the scientific base and when Lyra goes to the land of the Dead. I think that's because the Daemons really get to you on an emotional level.

I agree the end of the books was a little odd - almost anti-climatic - found myself thinking - "after all that? thats it????!!!". I found the theology of the books a bit hard going at times and I have a degree in theology! I'm guessing the films will be massively simplified - which is a shame....but I agree some bits will have to be tamed down, agree GazE the intercision scenes - also the bear fight - turns my stomach reading it!

Book of Dust - should be interesting, wish I understood a bit more about science, might get it more then.

I think I read that all the anti-God stuff will not be included.

I read them very quickly and think I need a re-read.

Will deffo go to the fillum though

Love Pullman, His Dark Materials is fabulous although I'm less keen on his other stuff. Makes for interesting reading with the science stuff about matter having memory and response, can't quite recall the proper term for it but I was fascinated. It's string theory, quantum physics and the chaos theory for teens and I think it's great to do that.
It actually inspired me to to read more about physics and then write a screenplay based on string theory... yadda yadda....
When balanced against GP Taylor, Pullman becomes the better of the two in my opinion, GP Taylor seems almost fanatical in his writing with regard to religion and it isn't even subtle. CS Lewis you might miss the obvious relations but GP Taylor, no chance.
Garth Nix whacks Pullman for six as far as the depth of fantasy goes, in my opinion, but Pullman is the superior craftsman.
JK Rowling does better for dragging out the story into juicy sections and consecutive books but then Pullman has a more academic text.
So, I have a great appreciation for young fantasy and fiction (Mum's a writer) and I think HIs Dark Materials was fabulous, it's worth reading JK Rowling , Garth Nix (all of it, especailly Lirael, Sabriel etc), Darren Shan (The Vampire stuff not the new stuff), GP Taylor (if you can stomach the religion) and Robin McKinley - just because she makes stories what they should have been in the first place!

GP Taylor (if you can stomach the religion)

Oh I can so stomach religion....any recommended titles please??:)

Yeah start with Shadowmancer and work on the others after http://www.shadowmancer.com/ here's the titles and more info.
Hope you enjoy.
Have you read any of the others I mentioned? You strike me as the kind of person who might like Robin McKinley :)

Will look her up....need new books to read - thanks for the tips...love anything vaguely religious. Anti - religious even better!

In that case, have you tried Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow and it's sequel Children of God? If you're after a mixture of SF and theology, there it is.

I can't get on with GP Taylor, despite his books being set in one of my favourite places. Is he really heavy handed with the religious message?

A lot of people nowadays get the wrong message about CS Lewis and his Narnia series. Its been all over the media that they are religious allegories, but if you read them without knowing that I doubt it would be at all obvious what the deeper meaning was. Lewis didn't intend for them to be read as allegories anyway. He believed that myth revealed deeper truths and that when kids read myth they remember the tales and as they grow up come to realise the true meaning. So Narnia was intended just to be a series of fantasy tales for kids who as they grew up and encountered Christianity would realise that they'd 'seen it before' in Narnia.

Mind, I prefer it when religious allegory and message of any kind is just left out of fantasy.

I totally agree Mathom, as adults we recognise symbolic characters and events but as children we read it purely as it is, I certainly did and will read it to my children in the same manner.
I tend not to look for the obvious or even the subtle similarities and read each book for what it is but GP Taylors writing does stand out to me, as an adult, as having religious overtones. To a younger reader, I doubt it would be quite so obvious.
That's one of the things I truely hated about English Lit A levels, the fact that everyone was looking for what was influencing the writer and what they 'really meant'. Sometimes they mean only what they write on the page and I hate it when people decide it must mean so much more.
Who was the war poet, John Donne? Urrrghhh, analysing his work was hard at best but to have to try and read into a dead mans mind about his personal difficulties and how a pool of water he wrote about in passing, is a literary reflection of his emotions about the war of the time.... codswallop!
About how Susan Hill was obviously a closet lesbian because she wrote a short story about two women who ived together - get a life!
The highlight was when studying Maya Angelou and the tutor told us that a certain seciton of the book was about something or another, late that night there was an interview with Maya Angelou on TV which I watched and recorded and she told her own story, nothing like the tutor said, caused an amusing scene in college later that week!
Writers have imagination, hence the story, not everyone writes about things with double meanings designed to be ripped apart by A level lecturers in years to come.
At least Nancy Drew was just some girl solving crimes and having fun too and The Famous Five were just a group of kids having great adventures together, not a modernistic approach to educating young ladies in women's liberation and the right to vote, nor how team work can gain better results, especially when involving a canine companion and whilst always maintaining that although Uncle Quentin was a strange chap it must be that the writer was abused and must have been missing her dead childhood pet, a chihauhua called Buddy!
Hmm, rant over I guess :D

There's the 'old school' of literary criticism which seeks to find meaning through biography and so on, Authorial Intention. So you might say that wars in texts echo real wars authors experienced. Then there's the new school, the Post Modernists, Structuralists and Post Structuralists, which is basically all about saying what the hell you like about a text because it's your response as the reader. That way lies nutters who come out with all kinds of rubbish about Gandalf being Jesus and other assorted ramblings; they don't give a damn what the Author intended (in this example that Tolkien said he wasn't writing allegory) because The Author Is Dead.

What drives you mad is the same as what drives me mad - when people think that they can read what the heck they like into something as its all their response. The Author Is Dead, and all that stuff by Barthes and Derrida.
It's how you're expected to analyse at university and its passed down to schools now, and beyond. And it takes all the fun out of reading. And that's why you get all that rubbish about the Famous Five being political.

My rant over. :D