Quite simply: a blog about books by a literature student. May include brilliant insights, not-so-brilliant insights, cover designs, articles, frustrated rants, quotes, and passionate arguments about which Austen man is the dreamiest (spoiler alert: it's Mr Tilney).
My personal blog has a lot more Doctor Who on it.
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So much lust for the Folio Society edition of His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman. Illustrated by Peter Bailey
Thank you so much, I’m glad you liked it!
His Dark Materials is very heavy stuff for children (but nothing they can’t handle, I loved heavy stuff as a child)! I reckon it would be young adult fare these days, but that category didn’t really exist at the time Northern Lights was first published. I first read the books about a year ago, and found them incredibly dense and full of things I wanted to explore further (including, as you say, the Paradise Lost and William Blake aspects).
Oh, and I haven’t read the Discworld novels myself, but I do know that The Colour of Magic is the first one! I really liked Good Omens, Pratchett’s collaboration with Neil Gaiman, and Discworld keeps popping up whenever I look into the fantasy genre, so I figured this series would be a safe bet for the list.
I will love you forever; whatever happens. Till I die and after I die, and when I find my way out of the land of the dead, I’ll drift about forever, all my atoms, till I find you again.
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books you should read : His Dark Materials (Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass) — Philip Pullman
it’s about : Lyra is an orphan girl living in Jordan College, Oxford, where she was raised. For a while now, she’s been hearing rumours about the Gobblers, an unidentified group of kidnappers, taking children in various towns ; now they say they’ve come to Oxford. One day, she spies the Headmaster trying to poison her Uncle Asriel ; she saves his life and, hidden in a cupboard, learns for the first time about Dust. She later leaves Jordan College with the mysterious and beautiful Mrs. Coulter, to live with her ; as she left, the Headmaster gave her the alethiomether, a symbol-reader, urging her to keep it hidden.
She soon finds out that many secrets are being kept from her ; and it all seems to have to do with Dust. She engages on a journey that will take her far from home, far from her own world even, unaware of the part she has to play in every world’s fate and the war to come.
you should read it because : Pullman’s writing is fantastic ; this is not your average fantasy novel ; it is moving, clever, beautiful, daring, and should stay with you for a while.“We have to build the Republic of Heaven where we are, because for us there is no elsewhere.”
Lyra’s Oxford Map
Will Parry (His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman)
…he knew she’d be safer if he was there to look after her; but he wanted her to look after him, too, as she’d done when he was very small; he wanted her to bandage him and tuck him into bed and sing to him and take away all the trouble and surround him with all the warmth and softness and mother-kindness he needed so badly; and it was never going to happen. Part of him was only a little boy still.
Neverending list of books that everyone should read ∟His Dark Materials, by Philip Pullman
“All the history of human life has been a struggle between wisdom and stupidity.”
Lyra - The Golden Compass, Kate Bush
And her soul walks behind her
An army stands behind her
Lyra. Lyra.
And her face; full of grace.
- John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book II
