First of all, sorry for yesterday's post. I wanted to talk more on plotlines and such, and I had this whole spiel in my head when I thought of making the post yesterday, but that was when I was in the car halfway through a 2 hour car journey. 10 hours is a long enough time for me to forget the essence of what was in my head (ten hours being both journey's, time spent at destination, time spent at home getting my rugrat to bed). I also realised, looking back, that there were only three days between me saying I'd picked up and read a chapter, and me saying 'I finally finished it'.
I think what I'd meant was that for what it was, it dragged out so much, that it felt like a challenge to read. Honestly, when I was packing for the trip yesterday, I had at least a third of the book, which made it look longer than Dorian Gray to read. I didn't think I'd need another book. It was a long journey after I'd finished, until I remembered I'd also brought my ipod.
It doesn't matter that I normally devour books ... and anyway, in the last 4 days, I've been to the beach, been to my 6-monthly-which-is-now-annually (yay!) hospital trip at UCLH (hungover too ... first time, and hangovers do not mix with trains), visited the zoo with my boy, been to three seperate parties (the first causing said hangover. It wasn't so much I'd drank a lot, but that I'd been the first one to agree to drinking this nasty concoction. Whatever was in that drink ... urgh, never trusting that guy again!) ... but you know what? I miss my books. I was bad today in that I was reading through the party, but since my boy would not sleep in his own bed and insisted on napping on my lap ... well, I had to entertain myself through that/the football, right?
So I read The Good Man Jesus And The Scoundrel Christ. It's got a lot of publicity for being blasphemous, but in all honesty, I thought His Dark Materials were much more so.
His writing is, as always, impeccable. I can't flaw him for characterisation or plotlines. His pace might be a little questionable, but when it comes to the crux of the storyline, the climax ... it becomes evident as to why he might have taken his time to set up.
I don't want to say too much on here, since it's a new book, and I'd rather not reveal plotlines of books I want people to read (yeah, you should totally read it). But he gets a good rhythm, like he's writing a bible story, but he adds some colloquialisms (did I make that up?) and uses more modern words to familiarise the reader. He added some interesting twists to the storyline, some of which I thought were plausible, some I didn't but made some sense from his angle.
Basically, he's split Jesus Christ into two people - twins. Jesus was loud and abrasive, and his brother, whose name's never mentioned, except for Mary's pet name, Christ, was quiet and studious. It resonated with me, I think, because I do know a fair few sets of twins, and there tends to be that sort of balance between them. One of them did the preaching, the other wrote the lessons down for an angel that kept visiting. He included some of the parables, and one of them, the Prodical Son, was meant to be based on the twins themselves. I'm not going to say much more than that - except I got this feeling after a while, and when I got to the end, I was right about what happened. And it's got me thinking of the actual bible, and whether that idea resonates throught the pages. Because there was a marked difference between certain stages in Jesus' life ... the twin thesis would fit for me. But Pullman was clever, because he doesn't blaspheme, whatever smoke-and-mirrors he portrays, he makes evident is for 'The Greater Good' (to steal a phrase from J.K.Rowling). It's really got me thinking anyhow.
In His Dark Materials, btw, everyone's soul is portrayed by an animal, called a daemon (if you've seen the Golden Compass, that's based on most of the first book, missing out when Asriel walked into the city in the clouds. They must have known it wouldn't be popular enough for the sequels, which is a shame because although the first half of Northern Lights does drag, when it kicks off it doesn't stop until the very end of The Amber Spyglass). One character, Lord Asriel, discovers a way of travelling between co-existing worlds, and after a while, he decides to take on the least known world of all - Heaven. But Heaven turns out to be a battleship hidden in clouds, and God is a frail being encased in glass - everything's ruled by the Metatron (I've watched Dogma, lol, the voice of God if you haven't heard of him before). God accidentally gets released and turns into vapour when he leaves the box, and Asriel and his wife take on the Metatron with their deamons and fall into this huge, never ending crevass ... basically they removed all deities so their daughter and her boyfriend could recreate Original Sin (in the form of a kiss).
Now is that not far more blasphemous than twins? Or have I lost you all in my mish-mashed attempt of showing my knowledge of the inner workings of religion and how they apply to Pullman's work?
I think what I'd meant was that for what it was, it dragged out so much, that it felt like a challenge to read. Honestly, when I was packing for the trip yesterday, I had at least a third of the book, which made it look longer than Dorian Gray to read. I didn't think I'd need another book. It was a long journey after I'd finished, until I remembered I'd also brought my ipod.
It doesn't matter that I normally devour books ... and anyway, in the last 4 days, I've been to the beach, been to my 6-monthly-which-is-now-annually (yay!) hospital trip at UCLH (hungover too ... first time, and hangovers do not mix with trains), visited the zoo with my boy, been to three seperate parties (the first causing said hangover. It wasn't so much I'd drank a lot, but that I'd been the first one to agree to drinking this nasty concoction. Whatever was in that drink ... urgh, never trusting that guy again!) ... but you know what? I miss my books. I was bad today in that I was reading through the party, but since my boy would not sleep in his own bed and insisted on napping on my lap ... well, I had to entertain myself through that/the football, right?
So I read The Good Man Jesus And The Scoundrel Christ. It's got a lot of publicity for being blasphemous, but in all honesty, I thought His Dark Materials were much more so.
His writing is, as always, impeccable. I can't flaw him for characterisation or plotlines. His pace might be a little questionable, but when it comes to the crux of the storyline, the climax ... it becomes evident as to why he might have taken his time to set up.
I don't want to say too much on here, since it's a new book, and I'd rather not reveal plotlines of books I want people to read (yeah, you should totally read it). But he gets a good rhythm, like he's writing a bible story, but he adds some colloquialisms (did I make that up?) and uses more modern words to familiarise the reader. He added some interesting twists to the storyline, some of which I thought were plausible, some I didn't but made some sense from his angle.
Basically, he's split Jesus Christ into two people - twins. Jesus was loud and abrasive, and his brother, whose name's never mentioned, except for Mary's pet name, Christ, was quiet and studious. It resonated with me, I think, because I do know a fair few sets of twins, and there tends to be that sort of balance between them. One of them did the preaching, the other wrote the lessons down for an angel that kept visiting. He included some of the parables, and one of them, the Prodical Son, was meant to be based on the twins themselves. I'm not going to say much more than that - except I got this feeling after a while, and when I got to the end, I was right about what happened. And it's got me thinking of the actual bible, and whether that idea resonates throught the pages. Because there was a marked difference between certain stages in Jesus' life ... the twin thesis would fit for me. But Pullman was clever, because he doesn't blaspheme, whatever smoke-and-mirrors he portrays, he makes evident is for 'The Greater Good' (to steal a phrase from J.K.Rowling). It's really got me thinking anyhow.
In His Dark Materials, btw, everyone's soul is portrayed by an animal, called a daemon (if you've seen the Golden Compass, that's based on most of the first book, missing out when Asriel walked into the city in the clouds. They must have known it wouldn't be popular enough for the sequels, which is a shame because although the first half of Northern Lights does drag, when it kicks off it doesn't stop until the very end of The Amber Spyglass). One character, Lord Asriel, discovers a way of travelling between co-existing worlds, and after a while, he decides to take on the least known world of all - Heaven. But Heaven turns out to be a battleship hidden in clouds, and God is a frail being encased in glass - everything's ruled by the Metatron (I've watched Dogma, lol, the voice of God if you haven't heard of him before). God accidentally gets released and turns into vapour when he leaves the box, and Asriel and his wife take on the Metatron with their deamons and fall into this huge, never ending crevass ... basically they removed all deities so their daughter and her boyfriend could recreate Original Sin (in the form of a kiss).
Now is that not far more blasphemous than twins? Or have I lost you all in my mish-mashed attempt of showing my knowledge of the inner workings of religion and how they apply to Pullman's work?
