dolorosa_12 | Entries tagged with philip pullman

The current

snowflake_challenge is one that I always find incredibly stressful: I don't really collect fannish merch (other than ... physical books? Dreamwidth icons?), and I'm completely incapable of taking decent photos of anything that isn't a) a tree or b) a body of water.

Snowflake Challenge promotional banner featuring an image of a chubby brown and red bird surrounded by falling snow. Text: Snowflake Challenge January 1-31.

So, with that disclaimer out of the way, here is the prompt:

In your own space, post the results of your fandom scavenger hunt. earch in your current space, whether brick-and-mortar or digital. Post a picture or description of something that is or represents:

1. A favorite character
2. Something that makes you laugh
3. A bookshelf
4. A game or hobby you enjoy
5. Something you find comforting
6. A TV show or movie you hope more people will watch
7. A piece of clothing you love
8. A thing from an old fandom
9. A thing from a new fandom

~~My photos can be found on Instagram.~~ Edited to add that the bad-quality photos were stressing me out so much that I deleted the whole photoset from Instagram, so the link here will no longer work. The descriptions of the photos remain below.

I have merged several categories.

1. A favourite character — Noviana Una from Sophia McDougall's Romanitas trilogy. This is the back of a t shirt which is possibly the only piece of fannish merch I own, a quote from McDougall's book referencing Una. (A picture McDougall drew of her own character, plus this quote, forms my default Dreamwidth icon.)

2. and 3. Something that makes me laugh + a bookshelf — a small portion of the Terry Pratchett section of our bookshelves. This is only a small portion of our collection as a whole — my copies are all still at my mum's place in Australia, and many of Matthias's copies are still in Germany. At some point, we will have all the copies in the one place and may have to discard the duplicates.

4. and 5. A game or hobby I enjoy + something I find comforting — swimming swimming swimming. I am, as I have said many times, half woman half ocean. Swimming is the only thing that stills the sea inside.

6. A TV show or movie I wish more people would watch — Babylon Berlin

7. A thing from an old fandom — the final lines of Northern Lights, the first book in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. This isn't my oldest fandom, but it was my first experience of fandom as an online community, and the HDM forum I joined still remains my gold standard for online fannish spaces. It was the perfect welcome and introduction to fandom-as-shared activity.

8. A thing from a new fandom — the extant books from Pat Barker's Briseis-centric Iliad retelling trilogy.

I read three more short stories yesterday. All are free and online at the Tor.com website.

( Short fiction )

It's a beautiful sunny day, and in a few hours' time, Matthias and I will be heading out to sit in the courtyard garden of one of the lovely cafe/bars in town, with

notasapleasure and her husband. The combination of springtime, and sunlight, and this slight easing of restrictions that permits outdoor socialising makes my spirits soar.

Today's book meme prompt is as follows:

17. The one that taught you something about yourself

( My answer )

( The other days )

It's been a slow morning at work today, so I thought I'd take an early coffee break while things are fairly quiet. I'm pleased to see more and more people are doing the thirty-day book meme — at last count, there are around five or six people in my circle writing entries in response to the prompts, and it's so nice to read people's answers to the different questions. We all read such different books, and respond in such different ways!

As for today's prompt, it asks for:

15. A snuffed candle of a book

( My answer )

( The other days )

This day of transition from daylight saving to standard time is my favourite of the year: I'm a morning person, I tend to wake up early, and I like waking to sunlight. The extra hour is always much appreciated as well. This time around, it meant that Matthias and I were up and off for our walk to Grantchester by about 7.30am, and back home — via the French bakery for a fresh, warm baguette and coffee — at about 8.30am. It was bright, crisp, and clear, and the cows were all gathered in the field closest to the carpark, ready to be moved out of their summer home, as always happens when daylight saving ends.

The rest of the morning was taken up with yoga (a fast flow sequence that was perhaps a bit more ambitious than I felt like, focusing heavily on core strength), a bit of food prep for dinner, cleaning empty fountain pens, and finishing up the final fifteen per cent of the book I'd been reading, Queen of the Conquered by Kacen Callender.

This was a book that was so ambitious and compelling in some regards, and so incredibly frustrating in other areas that I almost feel incapable of reviewing it. It's the first in a fantasy series grappling with the history of slavery and colonialism, particularly in the Caribbean, and it has really interesting things to say about revenge. It's essentially a revenge tragedy, and Callender does a great job of showing what it is to live a life solely motivated by revenge — how it corrupts and poisons everything, how it hollows out a person, and how it causes such a person to justify every injustice they perpetrate as working towards that ultimate end. I applaud Callender also for writing a book whose protagonist is so thoroughly contemptible (there are several things that she — the narrator, Sigourney — does that cross a moral line beyond which I am incapable of finding a character sympathetic) but for whom it is still possible to feel pity.

But at the same time, the book — which is supposedly adult fiction — was dreadfully let down by how closely it stuck to the typical US young adult novel formula. The first person present tense grated — I can see why the former was necessary, given the book was intended to bring its readers into uncomfortable proximity to the mindset of a woman so thoroughly convinced that 'the master's tools will dismantle the master's house', but present tense is almost never warranted, and certainly wasn't here. The obvious Designated Love Interest was unnecessary. And the twist at the end was so obviously telegraphed (it's basically Chekhov's Mind-Reading: if you have a narrator who has supernatural abilities to read people's minds, those responsible for the unsolved string of politically-motivated murders are going to be the people whose minds she refrains from reading out of respect, or dismissal of their importance, and I figured this out after I'd read about a third of the book). And from a structural point of view, it's really poor writing to have this great twist revealed in a huge infodump (secondhand, as the narrator reads someone's mind) for the final fifteen per cent of the book.

In other words, interesting ideas, shame about the execution.

My other recently read books have, with one exception, been a lot more satisfying.

( Two novellas and three novels behind the cut )

The rest of the weekend has been spent signing up for Yuletide, poking around the letters app (I now have a list of six potential requests I want to treat, and the only thing that's stopping me from starting is that I like to write my assignment first before committing to any treats), and trying to hunt down an elusive book which unfortunately has (to the best of my memory) an extremely generic name.

My obsession with fiction set in Al-Andalus (either when it was experiencing its glittering golden age, or in its dying days and collapse), particularly when the point-of-view characters are religious minorities, was kindled way back in my undergrad days, when my Jewish History/Religion/Culture lecturer assigned us an excerpt of a historical novel set in that period (alongside the typical academic books and journal articles). I'd always meant to track down this book, but its name eludes me, and while a lot of Googling by both Matthias and me yesterday unearthed an entire library of historical fiction books covering similar ground (now all added to my to read list), I still cannot find the book in question. Now my only hope is that all my photocopied course notes are still sitting in my old room in my mum's flat in Sydney, so that whenever international travel is possible again, I can go through said notes and find the reference to the book I'm seeking. At least I've got an interesting looking set of other books to read at some point in the future!

In the time it's taken me to write this post, the sun has completely disappeared. Any lingering hint of summer has definitely well and truly vanished!

The flatbread I'm making tonight needs to sit for half an hour and rise, so that seemed the perfect opportunity to post a handful of links that have passed my way recently.

Last Friday, I attended a Zoom book launch for Philip Pullman's new novella, Serpentine, and everyone who attended was given the link to the unlisted Youtube recording. I've embedded it below. It was a bit rambly, and Pullman is definitely verging on 'old man yells at clouds,' but given he's yelling at my clouds (namely: ranting about Brexit and about how awful Priti Patel and the entire UK Home Office are) I kind of forgive him.

Watch on YouTube

In honour of Black Speculative Fiction Month, FIYAH Literary Magazine and Tor.com have collaborated to bring readers a series of free flash fiction by Black authors. It's freely available to read on the Tor.com website.

I am coveting this coat desperately, but it is definitely not my size. I've had my current winter coat since 2004 and it really needs to be retired, but I hate almost all current styles of coats (and in-person clothes shopping), and am finding the whole prospect very frustrating.

This is the second of my January talking meme posts. I was asked to talk about the new Philip Pullman books in the Book of Dust trilogy, for

nyctanthes.

The first such book — La Belle Sauvage, a prequel, in terms of content and chronology, to the original His Dark Materials trilogy — was very much to my taste. I was so relieved that it was published at all, and that it was well written, and showed off Pullman's strengths — a vivid sense of place, gorgeous prose that danced on the page, and a rolicking, page-turning plot. I was full of gratitude and emotion, and delighted in celebrating the book with all my friends I'd made through the Philip Pullman forum that was my first experience of online fandom.

Sadly, I did not enjoy The Secret Commonwealth, the second book in the new trilogy — the first one to pick up Lyra's story after she's reached adulthood (save the brief glimpse we got of her as a teenager in Lyra's Oxford). It did things I disliked to Lyra's character, and unfortunately made me reassess my previous opinion of Philip Pullman as one of the few male authors who were able to write female characters well. Oddly, I disliked the book more and more the more I thought about it after I had finished reading it. I had finished it off thinking it was solid, but not Pullman's best work, but the more and more I contemplated several narrative and characterisation choices (and discussed these elements in verbose Twitter DMs with

McDougallSophia), the more I revised my initial opinion to something much more negative. It hasn't tainted my opinion of the original trilogy, which I still maintain is an absolutely extraordinary work of literature, but it does make me more cautious about reading every work that Pullman puts out into the universe and assuming it will be fantastic.

I've still got slots open for prompts for the January talking meme. You can leave prompts here.

Thirty Day Book Meme: Day 4. Least favorite book by favorite author

I don't think I really have a single favourite author (if we're going by a metric of 'like every single one of their books' it would have to be Sophia McDougall, if it's 'books by them have made me feel the most intensely, for the longest period of time' it would have to be Catherine Jinks), but let's go with Philip Pullman here.

I've read pretty much every book of his (apart from his first two novels for adults, which are out of print and by all accounts pretty dreadful), and although I like them all and generally think they're at worst competently written and achieve what they've set out to do, his contemporary YA fiction is really not to my taste. I'm thinking, for example, of The White Mercedes — a tragic, somewhat melodramatic exploration of class and privilege, set against the backdrop of a teenage boy's coming-of-age story in Oxford. (Interestingly, I first read this story as a teenager in Australia, and missed a lot of the nuances until I'd moved to Cambridge and suddenly a lot of the British, and specifically Oxbridge stuff in the book became clear to me.) As I say, it's competently written enough, and it has the typical Pullman tugging on the heartstrings emotional manipulation (I mean this as a compliment, but seriously, if you read the final chapters of The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass, or The Shadow in the North, you'll know what I mean by 'emotional manipulation'), but I really feel his strong point is fantasy, fairytales, and historical fiction, and The White Mercedes and his other YA contemporaries are his weakest work.

( The other days )

I wrote this two days ago on my Wordpress reviewing blog, but I thought it was worth reposting here on Dreamwidth as well.

Twenty years ago (or nineteen years, nine months, and about twenty days ago, if you want to get really technical), I was a restless thirteen-year-old, stuck inside during a rainy week on holiday down the south coast of New South Wales. It was the week between Christmas and New Year's Eve, which meant that I was carting around a massive haul of books, given to me for both my birthday and Christmas. I had read all my new books -- all except one, whose cover put me off. My younger sister, fed up with me moping around the house complaining of 'nothing to read,' made the very sensible point that I hadn't read that book. 'I don't like books about animals,' I objected. She insisted. I am forever grateful that she did. Feeling resentful, I sat down to read Northern Lights (or, as my edition was called, The Golden Compass), the first in Philip Pullman's sweeping, expansive children's trilogy, His Dark Materials. I was hooked from the first page, inhaled the book in one sitting, and, once I'd finished it, opened it up at the beginning and reread it without pause. I reread the book four times over the course of that one-week holiday.

It's hard to describe what it felt like, to read that story as a thirteen-year-old. I was already a voracious reader, and I had already encountered many beloved stories, books I would reread incessantly, or borrow repeatedly from the local library. There were already books I felt fannish about, and whose characters I identified with and drew courage from. But this was different. It was like being seen for the first time. It was as if ideas, beliefs and fears I had long felt but was not yet able to articulate had been given voice and shape on the page. As a teenager, my many rereads of Northern Lights (and, after impatient waits of one year and three years, respectively, for its follow-ups The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass) helped guide both my reading tastes, and my burgeoning sense of political awareness. My love of the series got me a paid newspaper reviewing gig at the age of sixteen, and I continued to freelance as a reviewer for various Australian broadsheets for ten years after that.

Ten years ago (or, if you want to get technical, ten years, nine months, and a couple of days ago), I was in a bad place. I had returned to my hometown after graduating university, and although I had a good job and a lot of family support, I was desperately unhappy, and felt isolated and directionless. All my friends seemed to have adjusted to adult life in a way that I was incapable of, and I felt left behind. In a fit of desperation I — who mistrusted the internet and who barely went online except to check email — typed 'His Dark Materials fansite' into Google. I found something that saved me. 2007 was not a good year, but it was made infinitely more bearable by the incredible collection of people — most of whom lived on the other side of the world — who hung out in the forums of that site. Most of them had been there for years, and were all talked out about His Dark Materials, so instead they analysed other books, shared music tips, or just vented about their daily lives. Although by their standards I was a latecomer, they welcomed me with open arms. For a long time, the only thing that got me through the day was the prospect of hanging out in the IRC chat room they'd set up — the international composition of this group of fans (plus the fact that most of them were students or otherwise kept odd hours) meant that someone was always around at all hours. This was my first foray into online fandom, and I made friends for life. Meeting the sraffies — as we called ourselves — was like coming home. Being with them was, like reading the books that had brought us all together, like being seen for the first time. I was able to relax and be myself and feel safe in a way that I hadn't really anywhere since becoming an adult. Ten years have passed since then, and the group of us have gone through so many things together. We've graduated from university, changed jobs and careers, had books and academic articles published, moved cities, emigrated, fallen in and out of love (in some cases, with each other), mourned deaths, and supported each other through whatever life threw at us. We travel specifically to meet up with each other, and if work, study, or holidays bring us by chance to each others' cities, we make a point to hang out. One of the friends I met through His Dark Materials was even a bridesmaid at my wedding.

I recently did a reread of the trilogy, wanting to refresh my memory before reading Pullman's much anticipated foray back into the world of His Dark Materials. I was anxious that it wouldn't affect me as it had when I was younger, that I would pick up on flaws, that its emotional notes would leave me unmoved. I shouldn't have worried. Reading Pullman's words again, returning to that world, was like falling into water. Like the best and most meaningful of stories, it gave me something different, as it had done with each reread, and reading it as a thirty-two-year-old woman was different to reading it as a thirteen-year-old girl, or when I was in my twenties. But, like Lyra relearning to read the alethiometer as an adult after losing the unconscious ease with which she read it as a child, it was a deeper, richer experience — not better, not worse, just different. In the years since I first opened Northern Lights and read those resonant first words, Lyra and her dæmon, I've finished high school. I've graduated three times from two different universities, with an Honours degree, MPhil, and doctorate. I've changed careers three times. I've emigrated, lived in two new countries, acquired a new citizenship, learnt two new languages (as well as many dead languages), presented at conferences, been published academically in two very different fields, fallen in love, had my heart broken, and fallen in love again. In those years, I found my home, and I found myself again. In other words, I've done exactly what His Dark Materials urges: live, as much as I can, feel, as much as I can bear, and learn, as much as I am able. On Thursday, I will collect my preordered copy of La Belle Sauvage, the first of Pullman's prequel trilogy that will return readers to the world of His Dark Materials. I will sit down and read it in a desperate, yearning rush. I wonder what the twenty years that follow will bring. I know that having read this new book — and those that follow — will help me cope with whatever those next years throw at me.

Crossposts: https://dolorosa-12.livejournal.com/238521.html

Day Twenty-Six: Favourite classical female character (from pre-20th century literature or mythology or the like)

Persephone (Greek mythology)

Look, I'm unapologetic about this. I love any and every iteration of this character (well, maybe not Twilight). There's something so powerful about a mother-daughter relationship that's used to explain the changing of the seasons. There's something powerful about the story of a woman who passes into an underworld, and is transformed and changed. I find it hard to articulate why I love this story so much, and I fear being misinterpreted when I say I identify with Persephone, but it's true. I've always been obsessed with crossing-places, turning points, identifiable moments of profound change, and with visible markers of transformation. As long as I can remember I've looked backwards to identify those tiny moments in my life which had reverberations for years afterwards, which unintentionally shaped and changed me. That's what Persephone means to me.

This post by

catvalente says it so much better than I ever could.

I can't leave this question without also mentioning biblical figures such as Esther, Leah and Ruth, and Briseis from the Iliad, whose stories have very personal resonances for me for various reasons.

( The other days )

Some other cool links today: a friend of mine, Ellie Barraclough (who was a PhD student with me at Cambridge and now has a permanent post at Durham), did a radio programme on 'The Supernatural North", featuring Philip Pullman and A. S. Byatt. In more Pullman news, he's releasing a new short story set in the His Dark Materials world. And I'm going to be raiding this list at

ladybusiness for book recommendations for next year.

Current Mood: enthralled
Crossposts: http://dolorosa-12.livejournal.com/205924.html

When I was a child and teenager, I consumed stories with an urgent, hungry intensity. I reread favourite books again and again until I could quote them verbatim,* I wandered around the garden pretending to be Snow White or Ariel from The Little Mermaid or Jessica Rabbit.** I had a pretty constant narrative running through my head the whole time I was awake, for the most part consisting of me being the character of a favourite story doing whatever activity I, Ronni, happened to be doing at the time. (No wonder I was a such a vague child: every activity required an extra layer of concentration in order for me to figure out why, say, the dinosaurs from The Land Before Time would be learning multiplication at a Canberra primary school.) The more I learnt about literary scholarship, the more insufferable I became, because I would talk at people about how 'URSULA LE GUIN WROTE A STORY WHERE EVERYTHING HAS A TRUE, SECRET NAME AND THEN ANOTHER USE-NAME AND ISN'T THAT AMAZING IN WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT IDENTITY?!?!' For the most part, I don't inhabit stories to the same extent, and they don't inhabit me to the same degree, although there are rare exceptions to this.

The rare exceptions tend to be things that sort of satisfy my soul in some deep and slightly subconscious way.*** And the funny thing is that although I can write lengthy essays explaining why something both appeals to me on this hungry, emotional level and is a good work of literature (indeed, I have been known to dedicate a whole blog to this), I can also remember a specific moment when reading/watching these texts and they suddenly became THE BEST THING EVER. I can remember exactly what it was for all of them.

The following is somewhat spoilerish for Romanitas, Sunshine by Robin McKinley, Galax-Arena by Gillian Rubinstein, The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper, The Demon's Lexicon, The King's Peace by Jo Walton, Parkland by Victor Kelleher, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Robin Hood: Men in Tights,
Ten Things I Hate About You, Cirque du Soleil, Pagan's Crusade by Catherine Jinks and His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman.

( Probably a closer look at my subconscious than is comfortable )

Do you have moments like that?
____________
*Which led to a very awkward moment in Year 5 when our teacher was reading Hating Alison Ashley out loud to the class, but would skip bits from time to time - whereupon I would correct her.
**(whose appeal was less that she wasn't 'bad, just drawn that way' and more due to the fact that she wore an awesome dress)
***I've seen people describe fanfic like this as 'idfic', but for me this tends to be a phenomenon of professionally published fiction.

Current Mood: pensive
Current Music: Young Empires - Against the Wall
Crossposts: http://dolorosa-12.livejournal.com/181611.html

So, if you've been reading this blog at any point in the last, oh, nine years, you probably know that there are certain series of books that I adore and rave about constantly. And if I had to narrow the list down to 'the most life-changing books I have ever read', to the books I would take with me on a desert island, to the books I would carry around in order to keep myself sane in a post-apocalyptic scenario, I would name three series: the Pagan Chronicles by Catherine Jinks, His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman and Romanitas by

sophiamcdougall. These series all came into my life at precisely the right time, and have affected, influenced and transformed me in various ways. I could read them again and again and again and still discover something new.

But what struck me this morning is how close I came to not reading any of them at all. The sheer crazy random happenstance that caused me to read all these series is completely ridiculous.

( memory lane is full of strange twists and turns )

Current Mood: pensive
Current Music: Empire of the Sun - Half Mast (Slight Return)
Crossposts: http://dolorosa-12.livejournal.com/169928.html

I haven't had internet at home for a while, so I'm just now catching up on all my feeds, There's been a lot of interesting stuff posted recently, so I thought I'd make a linkpost.

Sarah Rees Brennan posted this thought-provoking piece about what it means to be an author and have an internet presence.

And then, for a total change in tone, she wrote a hilarious liveblog of Teen Wolf, making it sound so funny that I might be tempted to check it out.

Catherynne M. Valente posted about how she was fed up with arguing about ebooks.

She also wrote about the misconceptions social conservatives hold about 'women's work', and the supposed golden age of pre-industrial times.

sophiamcdougall made a Romanitas playlist. I geeked out.

Here's an article from Rolling Stone about the effects of global warming in Australia. I found myself nodding away to pretty much everything being said.

It's been said before, but it needs to be said again: unpaid internships are exploitative and perpetuate inequality.

Our forum interviewed Philip Pullman.

Finally, I blogged about the start of the semester in Germany.

I'm talking about crime novels that explore contemporary political concerns (and more specifically, the erosion of freedom in pursuit of security) here. Spoilers for The Tiger in the Well, Farthing and the Roma Sub Rosa series abound.

Current Mood: nerdy
Current Music: Massive Attack - Inertia Creeps | Powered by Last.fm

Current Mood: nerdy
Current Music: Massive Attack - Inertia Creeps | Powered by Last.fm

Post on Geata Póeg na Dainann about the perils of recommending your beloved books, tv series, films and music to your friends.

Current Music: Armand van Helden - You Don't Know Me | Scrobbled by Last.fm

Ronni (in sing-song voice): Good mor-ning ev-ery-one!
Class (in same): Good mor-ning Ronn-i!
Ronni: For news today I'm going to talk about what I did on my weekend.

I hardly ever seem to talk about ACTUAL REAL LIFE RIGHT NOW in this blog. A quick flick back through old posts reveals the vast majority of them are reminiscences, book-reviews, or extended squeeing over whatever I happen to be fangirling at the moment. It's not that nothing ever happens to me, it's more that...other stuff is more interesting.

Well, anyway.

On Saturday morning, Mimi and I took Mum out to breakfast for a belated Mothers' Day. We usually do this, and we usually do it on a day other than Mothers' Day anyway, since Mum, who is the third-most impatient person I know, hates to be in cafes overflowing with the Mothers' Day crowd. Breakfast was a typically insane affair. I had to work at 10, and Mimi had to work at 11, but then wasted half the morning blow-drying her hair. Mum and I couldn't wait, and rushed off to the cafe and started ordering, whereupon Mimi rushed up, hair now blow-dried to perfection, to join us.

Then I raced off to work, which was its usual mix of calming, 'I've-been-doing-this-for-years' fun and 'I've-worked-in-retail-and-thus-lost-all-faith-in-humanity' bizarreness. Are people really so stupid that they think they need to ask me to put their cakes in boxes? It appears so. I wonder what they'd say if I responded to their 'do you have a box for that?'s with 'No, I was thinking of putting it directly into a plastic bag so it can get extra squashed in preparation for your big birthday party.' Morons.

On Saturday night I went to drinks celebrating the birthday party of one of the women at the school. After much difficulty finding the damn place, I made it. It was fun, but a bit bizarre. The men-to-women ratio was very skewed: there were about 30 women and only five or six men. I haven't been somewhere with so many single women since...well, since I have no idea when.

On Saturday we had a family birthday party for my grandfather and my aunt Lynne, the two May birthday people. Phillips parties are always fun, but a bit predictable in their insanity. My grandmother will fuss and worry (about the food, about whoever hasn't arrived yet, about...anything), the aunts will flutter about competently, organising the food, the table and the rest of the family, my little cousins will be cute and out of control, Mimi, the older cousins and I will help where we can, and my grandfather will miss out on most of what's being said. All of this will be done with everyone speaking over the top of one another, lots of rushing from kitchen to dining room, and minor disagreements about everything from the arrangement of the furniture to where the matches are. It was a bit of a smaller event this time, because

the_lil_spoon and my cousin, her fiance, are getting married this weekend and had to stay at home to do last-minute wedding preparations, Mimi was at work, and my cousin Lewis was at a birthday party. So, more food for all!

We got home around 6.30ish, and after a brisk editing of Mimi's Art History essay, I jumped online for a bit. I Skyped with Raphael for a while; it was good to talk to him, since neither of us have been around much.

Then I watched The Ruby In The Smoke on TV. I'd already seen this adaptation of Philip Pullman's fantastic book, as it showed in the UK ages ago and

paul_temple had sent me a DVD of it, as well as of The Shadow in the North, the next in the series. But it was nice to see it finally in the ABC Sunday night bonnet drama timeslot where it belongs! I thought they did a good job, ultimately, but I thought the casting was pretty woeful.

My quibbles:
It's all lovely and PC to randomly make some characters black, but the casting people should remember that this is an adaptation of a book set in the Victorian era. Nicholas and Matthew Bedwell are not black. It'd be nice to imagine a colour-blind late 19th-century England, but, unfortunately, a black clergyman ministering to a white congregation in Oxford would've raised a few eyebrows (to say nothing of an interracial relationship between a black Nicholas Bedwell and white Rosa Garland, which happens later in the series).
The guy playing Jim was too old. He's meant to be about 13 in the first book, not in his late teens/early 20s. I guess their reasoning was that people might not know that in the Victorian era, 13-year-olds had full-time jobs. I guess they thought that people might wonder why 13-year-old Jim was working at a shipping agency.
Fred Garland was played as too...well, I don't want to say poncy, but unfortunately, that was how he came across. Remember, this guy has to be someone who might credibly be able to kill Jonathan Berry (a monumentally strong murderer).
Sally came across as too weak and weepy. The point made continually in the books is that she's a very rational, calm, collected young woman. This serves as a contrast to the few times that she gets genuinely emotional, highlighting the deep significances of such moments.

What can you do? TV or movie adaptations never manage to get it quite right.

_______________________________________________________________________________
As you know, I've always got a few things with which I'm utterly obsessed at any given moment. Right now, in terms of TV and movies, it's Firefly, which is, being by Joss Whedon, beyond awesome. I've watched it before, of course, but not for a while. If I were as wittily quotable as the characters on that show...I'd probably have a successful career as a writer, but, oh well.
Book-wise, I'm desperate to read Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. I'm a young-adult reviewer, and this is probably going to be one of the best YA books of the year, and yet tracking down a copy (not a free download, I love the idea of free downloads, but I love holding a book in my hands even more) is proving rather difficult.
Music-wise, I'm going through a Massive Attack phase, again. Massive Attack has been one of my favourite bands since I was about 15 (I don't do change well, and once I love something, I tend to love it forever). I was enthusing before about Joss Whedon's brilliant wittiness, and Massive Attack has it too, in a different way. Mostly, I prefer music with interesting lyrics, and Massive Attack certainly is the top of the clever-lyrics brigade:
'I'm a little curious of you in crowded scenes/And how serene your friends and fiends/We flew and strolled as two eliminated gently/Why don't you close your eyes and reinvent me?' - Mezzanine
'I was looking back to see if you were looking back at me/To see me looking back at you' - Safe From Harm
My personal favourite comes from Teardrop: 'Love, love, is a verb/Love is a doing word'. Mimi scornfully said 'that's just about having sex, Ronni', and I got into a fight with Raphael and

romen_dreamer over whether this song is about drugs. (

romen_dreamer said, 'So, what, if you don't know what it's about, it's automatically about drugs?") I personally think most of the songs are about having sex while on drugs. While being completely witty about it, of course...

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Mezzanine by Massive Attack

romen_dreamer over whether this song is about drugs. (

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Mezzanine by Massive Attack

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Geata Póeg na Déanainn

June 2025

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Page Summary

Snowflakes and short fiction
Which of us is the tiger?
Dæmon voices
Take me over, take me out, give me something to dream about
Scattering some links in your general direction
No elsewhere?
Not really my cup of tea
Tell them stories, twenty years on
Following those pomegranate seeds
What the soul sings
A few words on the subject of serendipity
Belated linkpost
Belated linkpost
Crimes
Crimes
Fandom and its limitations
Le Weekend
Le Weekend

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Beyond Selidor

A song with a mission

Entries tagged with philip pullman

Snowflakes and short fiction

Which of us is the tiger?

Dæmon voices

Take me over, take me out, give me something to dream about

Scattering some links in your general direction

No elsewhere?

Not really my cup of tea

Tell them stories, twenty years on

Following those pomegranate seeds

What the soul sings

A few words on the subject of serendipity

Belated linkpost