The Stories of our Lives

Daemons are cool. I’m talking about those little animal-shaped exteriorised souls of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. I just finished the first tome, and so tonight’s web surfing brought me to the upcoming movie adaptation’s website, which has the neat feature of creating one’s very own daemon, through a set of 20 questions. My result is what’s showing above. At the present time, it’s a crow, but it might possibly change if people start agreeing/disagreeing with the personality test included. We’ll see.

The reading list
Just to update my reading list…

I continued with “Reine de mémoire – 1. La maison d’oubli” by Elisabeth Vonarburg since my last update, but I still haven’t finished the book. It’s quite interesting, but just not engaging enough to keep me up late. I know Vonarburg’s works are really rewarding once read, they’re just not page turners… and thus I tend to cut it through with other novels:

The Tawny Man trilogy by Robin Hobb
I had gotten the first tome (”Fool’s Errand”) as a Brightweavings.com Secret Santa gift at Christmas, and read it during the winter, but due to time constraints and other great books at hand, I had not continued on with the rest of the trilogy, even though “Fool’s Errand” was engaging literature. I did so just recently.

When I first heard about Robin Hobb, I was looking forward to read her Liveship trilogy, but felt I should pick up her Farseer trilogy to begin with, as it was set in the same world at a prior time. I’m glad I did so. I loved both trilogies, in the end, for different reasons. I was not quite content with how the protagonist’s (Fitz) story ended after the last Farseer novel, and so I was glad to pick up the third trilogy, “The Tawny Man”, which follows through Fitz’s story some (15?) years later.

Oddly, though, it was the second tome of this last trilogy, “Golden Fool”, which I prefered – mainly because Fool became one of my all-time favourite litterary characters. And although the last tome manages a well done happy ending for Hobb’s whole series of books, it was not exactly to my liking so I was not quite as delighted as I should be. SPOILER ALERT : Mainly, I felt Hobb really pushed – pushed? crammed is more like it – Fitz and his lost love’s reuniting at the end of the story, while I’d been rooting for a good part of the book for Fitz to head into a relationship with a certain notable character – whose ambiguous gender let my imagination run and project a truly amazing pure and true love story in the works. I know this imagined ending might have ruined some of what the author was trying to achieve with this relationship, but on another level it would have been just SO romantic. Much more than this quick reunion with a long-lost character that’s just half-mentioned throughout most of the books. Anyway – maybe it’s just me.

Artemis Fowl book 5 : The Lost Colony by Eoin Colfer
A quick read (youth literature), I quite liked this fifth installment of Artemis Fowl – although that ending is getting me to wonder how much longer Colfer will be able to keep Butler in the run, the way he’s aging him every other book. It was better than the fourth (”The Opal Deception”), but it still lacked by Juliet’s absence in my opinion (I liked reading about Juliet Butler, even though she was far from being a main character).

His Dark Materials book 1 : Northern Lights (or “The Golden Compass” in the USA, I believe) by Philip Pullman – read in French
I started this one a long while ago, but was not engaged enough to finish it – probably because I had picked it up originally while in Harry Potter withdrawal, and was hoping for a similar fix, which it is NOT. The upcoming movie raised my interest in it again, and I’m glad to report the book proved worthy of this second chance. It might feel a bit slow in the start, but once one gets in the mindset of the work, it’s a nice piece of literature. I’m looking forward to the second tome, “The Subtle Knife”. The movie looks like it will gloss over the religion theme – and probably also some of the darker stuff in consideration of the kids’ delicate minds – but it should, nonetheless, play to its strengths and expand on the amazing imaginative and fantastic scenes of the book. Eyecandy à la recent Star Wars, without the tacky lasers and spaceships.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling.
I haven’t got my hands on it yet, but for sure it is on order and the next item on my reading list. And despite hosting Xavier’s first birthday party in 10 days, I’m sure to find some time to spend at Hogwarts in the next while.