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Post by JoeP on Aug 20, 2014 20:50:52 GMT
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Post by raspberrybullets on Aug 21, 2014 9:30:57 GMT
Now finish book 3.
And then you need to pick up Lyra's Oxford and Tales of the North or however that one is called.
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Post by Moose on Sept 15, 2014 2:40:18 GMT
I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings but really this series bores me to death. I will finish it because I started it but how it became a classic is beyond me
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Post by JoeP on Sept 15, 2014 11:08:54 GMT
My feelings are hurt.
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Post by Moose on Sept 15, 2014 16:57:31 GMT
I am sorry I will finish it anyway
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Post by juju on Sept 15, 2014 18:27:21 GMT
I do have several major issues with the books (which was one of the reasons I was interested in your opinion, Jo) but I never thought them boring. Both times I read them I rattled I though quite quickly, back to back, because knowing me I'd forget who the characters were and what was going on if I didn't.
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Post by Moose on Sept 15, 2014 21:19:50 GMT
I am about a hundred pages from the end so will post a fuller synopsis when I am finished. I don't hate the books but they just don't grab me as the 'classics' that they are supposed to be. Also the 'are these good people or bad people' thing is driving me mad but again, please no spoilers.
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Post by Miisa on Sept 16, 2014 9:24:30 GMT
Not a spoiler as I am about as far as you are, but what do you mean about the 'are these good people or bad people' thing?
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Post by juju on Sept 16, 2014 10:12:51 GMT
I'm guessing it refers to Lord Asriel and Mrs Coulter?
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Post by Moose on Sept 16, 2014 23:48:25 GMT
Yes. But if anyone spoils the ending for me I shall be jolly cross so don't.
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Post by Miisa on Sept 17, 2014 14:46:07 GMT
Hmm, I kind of like the fact that they both seem villainous when seen by others but almost heroic when we see it from their own perspective. Like so many real life influential, powerful and charismatic people.
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Post by Moose on Sept 18, 2014 18:57:12 GMT
I have fifty pages to go will respond then
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Post by Moose on Sept 22, 2014 19:45:34 GMT
i have finished ... just marshelling thoughts
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Post by Moose on Sept 25, 2014 20:16:50 GMT
Hmm okay so where to start. Prob will be spoilers to follow but as we've all read the books now that does not matter. FIrstly, I was not as taken with the series as I had hoped and thought I would be. I did not hate it but I did not find it anywhere near as gripping as, for instance, the HP books. I found that there was a good deal of inconsistency in the characters (for instance Mrs Coulter and Lord Thingy) and also that characters kept on being introduced and then disappearing, rarely if ever to be see again.
I liked the last fifty pages a good deal more than the rest of the book incidentally. It was sometimes hard to follow exactly what was going on but I felt that in those last chapters, the greatness that the book COULD have reached but to me did not were hinted at. I liked knowing that Mary was not, as she might have been, a 'serpent' but still a good human being. I felt a little confused at the whole Lyra and Will could not be in the same world ever again thing - will have to reread.
I will say that I found the romantic attachment between them a bit disturbing. How old were they by then - 12? Yeah twelve year olds date and kiss and whatever but I think it's a bit young to decide that you've met and then lost the love of your life. Just sayin.
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Post by Miisa on Sept 26, 2014 10:46:26 GMT
Not sure why you though "serpent" would be a bad thing, she simply introduced into their heads the idea and temptation of love and the feeling that that's ok. Because the church said that the serpent was evil does not mean that is so.
I think the series dos a good job of showing how, even if some of the bible stories had truth in them, the original happenings and ideas got so twisted by specific religions to seem morally the opposite of what they are, or how they were interpreted in other worlds that had essentially the same thing happen. The way a "serpent" (probably not literally) introduced "temptation" into the world thousands of years ago, i.e. knowledge and innovation and "dust", which other interpreted as "sin".
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Post by Moose on Sept 26, 2014 17:57:15 GMT
The consequences of the serpent's actions were human misery though. Although that does not in itself make the 'sin' of eating the apple a Bad Thing.
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Post by Miisa on Sept 26, 2014 19:07:04 GMT
The human misery of knowing vs. the bliss of ignorance? The original "fruit" in question was (not an apple but) the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good adn evil, so sampling of that is really what separates us from the other animals, who don't know "right" from "wrong". Are we better off knowing or not knowing?
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Post by Moose on Sept 26, 2014 19:09:57 GMT
I do not know. That depends on whether you think Right and Wrong are arbitrary constructs or not.
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Post by juju on Sept 29, 2015 7:54:59 GMT
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Post by ProdigalAlan on Sept 29, 2015 21:51:53 GMT
As for point 12 of that article - it is well in excess of five years since BigSleep J and I were discussing it and noting the Book of Dust would be published next year according to Pullman.
Next year my scabby butt !
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Post by Moose on Sept 30, 2015 0:31:05 GMT
Well I wasn't holding my breath frankly. To be honest I'd forgotten about these books and I can barely recall what happened in them.
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Post by Moose on Sept 30, 2015 0:38:01 GMT
i could, I suppose ( having read the article) start ranting about how it's astonishing to criticise a (mediocre at best in my mind but that's irrelevant I suppose) book for 'promoting backdoor atheism to little kids' when most religions promote themselves to little kid and to anyone who is dumb enough to listen - frontdoor, left and centre but honestly .. I can't be arsed.
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Post by Moose on Sept 30, 2015 0:38:36 GMT
Apologies for poor grammar ... it's late and I am in bed.
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Post by juju on Sept 30, 2015 6:29:50 GMT
To be honest, I don't think many kids world make the connection anyway, I think they'd just see them as fantasy, full stop. Believe it or not, I didn't even know the Narnia books were about Christianity until years after I first read them. Came as a bit of a shock, actually.
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Post by JoeP on Sept 30, 2015 10:33:37 GMT
How old were you then Juju? And are you including The Last Battle in that? I agree you can miss the symbolism in TLTWATW ... blatant as it might be once it's all explained ... because it's a kid's story and a really good one in its own right. Battle kind of forces it on you, though ...
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Post by Miisa on Sept 30, 2015 11:01:37 GMT
I didn't realise it either until I was told, as an adult. I actually count the Narnia books as quite an influence for me in becoming an atheist, as I saw the religion depicted there as an alternative to Christianity, a competitor even. And one that would appeal to children, making them less likely to want to be Christian. I had assumed somehow that the church thought the same way and perhaps even tried to ban them. So I was surprised they are though of as "Christian".
I have read them all, but the ones I read at an early age were really just the first three ones, and the others I think I read only once (and was rather bored with those, so I probably wouldn't have noticed allegory).
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Post by Moose on Sept 30, 2015 18:22:03 GMT
I was an adult when I realised that the Narnia books were Christian allegory too. Don't think I managed to finish TLB as a child though .. I found some of them quite dull at that age and only really enjoyed LWW. Yes, there was a certain clumsiness about it also... that the children worshipped a lion without realising, at first, that it was meant to be Jesus.
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Post by juju on Sept 30, 2015 21:50:14 GMT
I actually read The Silver Chair first, without realising it was anything to do with TLTWTW. Then I went back and read the others, but never realised at the time that they were Christian allegories.
As far as HDM is concerned, I find the deliberately anti-religious/inversion aspects of it rather clunky - I think it works best as a pure fantasy. but then I dislike any books with an overt message, religious or otherwise.
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Post by Moose on Oct 1, 2015 0:59:43 GMT
i might not have even noticed them had I not heard of them before hand... or if I had, I might not have considered them to be anything significant. As I've stated so many times though I just felt that that story itself was a letdown. It might be - it's entirely possible; it's happened before - that one day I will reread it and think - whoa, this is great, how come I did not realise it before?! But I doubt that's going to happen anytime soon.
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Post by juju on Oct 1, 2015 7:09:26 GMT
Both times I've read them the same thing has happened - it feels like it's building up to something great but in the end is really unsatisfying. I have no idea what I would have preferred to happen, I just know I've felt a real sense of disappointment both times.
He's a great storyteller with a great imagination - I did feel immersed in that world, and in the characters (although I still don't like Lyra very much) but something about the last book leaves me feeling let down.
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