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Saturday, May 23, 2020

Seven Books in Seven Days #2

This series will be running for the next six Saturdays, where I talk a bit about the seven books (or series) that most influenced me growing up. This will not be in any particular order, as it's hard to put these seven in any sort of favorite to least favorite order.


The second series I'm going to talk about is the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman. This trilogy consists of Northern Lights (or as I know, The Golden Compass), The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass.
I read these through a few times as a preteen, maybe 13-14? It introduced me to ideas I hadn't really considered, being raised Catholic. The idea that organized religion and god himself are evil and worthy of destruction was just... out there. I wasn't ever super into church or anything and had been leaning away for a while, but these ideas solidified it for me. I guess I'm the reason why the Catholic Church wanted these books banned, haha

More than just destroying religion, these books are just an exciting journey through worlds and choked full of science concepts. And boy, I love Lyra. She's spunky and brave. These books, apparently, weren't written with the intention of being young adult books, but they definitely appeal with the young protagonist. Though, it does deal with some deep matters I honestly didn't notice until rereads when I was older.

The movie adaption of the first book is SO bad. It leaves out so much - including diluting the abolishing of religion aspects of the book - removes scenes and characters and switching daemons around. Reading about the whys makes me roll my eyes hard because a true adaption would be wonderful. I haven't watched it yet (as I don't have HBO) but I've heard the new series is really good.

There's graphic novel adaptions are OK, but feel closer to the movie than book. There's a prequel trilogy, The Book of Dust. I've read La Belle Sauvage, which was a really fun look at when Lyra was just a baby. I haven't read The Secret Commonwealth yet. The 3rd book doesn't as of now have a name, but I'm looking forward to it!

See day one, here.

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