Phillip Pullman and other ramblings

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?

Suggestions?

So, after finishing 'Crazy in love' I started reading a book I just got, 'Dreaming of Amelia' about a ghost or something? But it's not really very good, so does anyone have any book suggestions? Or any topic they want to see me cover on here?

Or, if you're stuck for ideas, pick on of the list at the end of this blog for me to read next, and I'll r&r it. Burned isn't out for another few weeks. The next book in the Private series has another month. I need more material, lol.

In other news - finished the first rough draft of Budding last night. The last chapter's crap, but I'm giving it a rest and typing up some stuff written in notebooks/on my laptop in third person. I'll go back to it in a week and edit, then send it to whoever wants to proof-read/Cassie and Joanne.

The options I have to read at the moment (starred books I've read a little of already):

The Good Man Jesus And The Scoundrel Christ - Phillip Pullman
Revenge - Sharon Osbourne
On The Road - Jack Kerouac*
Dreaming of Amelia - Jaclyn Moriarty*
This Bleeding City - Alex Preston
Dracula - Bram Stoker*
The Girl Who Could Fly - Victoria Forester
City of Ashes/Glass/Bones - Cassandra Clare
The Host - Stefenie Meyer

Ahhhhh

Becky Bloomwood, I needed you! Halfway through Shopaholic Abroad, but I think I was more thinking of Shopaholic Ties The Knot. Oh well, I'll just have to re-read them all ;)

I'm aware, by the way, that I've not blogged on a male writer yet. It's okay, I've got opinions on Philip Pullman, Ben Elton ... um, I know there's more, will have to get back to you lol. There's other writers too, but somehow it tends to be women? Maybe I just fit a stereotype.

I will write more about the TTP by the way, but I'm knackered, spent almost an hour on my wii dancing, and just generally wasting time. I wanted to write tonight ... I've got more ideas than last time, but I keep imagining scenes for future stories ... dammit.

I just wanted you to know I hadn't forgotten any of this. I'm off to upload some itunes, had CD's sitting around for ages waiting to be uploaded!

Stefenie Meyer

Blogging twice in a day? I know right? But someone pointed out to me that I didn't even mention Stefenie Meyer in my 'top 5' list and I thought I'd do a post in her honour (we'll call her Lizzy for now. So Lizzy, this is for you ... you've been warned).

I'll start with an anecdote to ease you in to my bizarre and contradictory view of Ms Meyer. I was in HMV and saw a spoof called "Nightlight" and decided to buy it. I've got Barry Trotter somewhere too, so parodies aren't completely out of my range. When I got to the counter, the guy told me that he was only just reading the twilight books, had I? And I said yes, and he asked the inevitable 'are they any good?'. My answer (and I paraphrase) was 'it's like a literary chocolate pretzel. You won't know if it's any good until you've finished.'

What I meant was, do you remember when chocolate-covered pretzels came out? And everyone was like 'they're gross' but invariably you got dared to buy and then eat a packet? And when you first take a bite, the combination of salt and chocolate was repulsive. But salt and sugar are two things your body craves, so you're not actually sure if you like them or not, because the connotations of savoury and sweet mixed like that are negative, but they fulfill the sweet vs savoury snack debate. So you eat the whole packet. And by that time, you know you don't like them, but you also know you're going to buy another packet.

But when I was reading them, it wasn't like Harry Potter, where I had to know, like underlined, bold, in italics, in CAPITALS, HAD to know what was going to happen at the end. I exercised extreme will power in not reading the end of those books (except in Tesco's the night HBP came out. I saw the page about Bill being a Werewolf, went 'Oh, poor Bill' in front of these 6 year olds who weren't allowed to even crack the book open and slammed it shut. Heehee). With Twilight, it was more reading in the hope I was getting somewhere good. And at first, it didn't disappoint.

I've always struggled with the 'getting to know you' scenes. I remember one guy I used to email used to talk to me about meeting people, and it was unfathomable to me. It had been so long since I'd met anyone new, I wasn't quite sure of the dynamics of it. And then I met my wonderful friends, but even now I'm not quite sure how I managed to pass off as normal (or maybe I'm like Carter in my fic, in that I'm a complete asshat but you just love the honesty); so for me to read someone constructing those getting-to-know-you scenes, it was like a revelation. I wanted more Edward and Bella too, at that point (I liked the chocolate pretzel). But then ... I don't know, the baseball game was an over-reaction, it was their first date! And whatever happened with Jacob and the Wolves just seemed to be padding until she got to Breaking Dawn. I hated reading the Wolves conversations, Jacob was a douche (though Taylor Lautner does a great job making him likeable in the films) and Bella got even more irritating.

There's other things too. Bearing in mind that the first film came out around three months after I came out of hospital from a blood condition. Bearing in mind that even now, I'm considered in remission (Timothy Spall, the patron of the charity who support the hospital, said he's still in remission and it's been 14 years. I'm sure the count only went up to ten?). I'd heard of the books before, Claire had said girls in her year were obsessed and the message about celibacy was completely derivative - this coming from a girl who attends a church at least three days a week - until I decided I wanted to see the film, I didn't want to read the books. When I did, so many details seemed glazed over. The one thing that stands out more than anything is the lack of research she did. She puts 'coagulants' I think 'do you mean the Von Willebrand Factor?' (the coagulant that was in part responsible for my hospitalisation). Maybe that's too harsh.

But dismissing the silver and cross as symbols that vampires ... not exactly fear, but dislike, that was narrow-sighted. I know she's a mormon, I know she hates the very idea of going against God, but one Vampire myth I heard makes that very point. I heard that the first Vampire was Judas Iscariat, the man who sold Jesus to the Romans (sidebar, Jesus told him he would, wasn't he following orders? What's so wrong with Judas? Not to be blasphemous, I just don't see how he let Jesus down). That when he heard Jesus had been hung on the cross, he hung himself on a cross too, and he was visisted by the devil as the blood left his body and was told that God wouldn't admit him into heaven, despite the decree he would when his son died for him, and that the devil didn't want him in hell either, and he'd live forever more on the blood of the innocent. The silver comes from the 30 pieces of silver Judas sold Jesus out for, the innocents over time have been turned into Virgins ... she could have twisted that so it only affected Judas. (Sidebar again, did the bible have every type of storyline ever invented in it? Look again, I swear down someone was visited by the ghosts of the past, present and future. The first murder, prodigcal son and Joseph are in there after all).

I read another story when I was in year 6, a Victorian Horror book, and one of the short stories was about this village who accidentally opened this crypt, and their sheep started dying off, one at a time, then in twos and threes, and it spread to the pigs, then the cows and horses, and then the people. The Cullens aren't moral, they've just been sleeping a while.

So my point is, I know enough to know she hasn't done her research. Bella would've smelt weird after the Ballet studio for longer than a couple of days, blood takes 10 days to fully recycle itself. It would've taken her that long to replace the donated blood.

I think Twilight's good if what you want to read is the emotional aspect. I think it's poor if you have read so much into, maybe not precisely vampire lore, but other elements that contribute. I think it's poor if you want to read the narration as typical English prose, and speech as colloquial (well done Stefenie, for muddling them up!). I think it's poor that in a saga spanning almost 2000 pages with all elements of blood, horror, death, war, weaponry and practice fights, it ends the way it does. Especially with the themes throughtout Breaking Dawn (sorry, I know one person reading this who hasn't read Breaking Dawn and I promised not to say too much about it). If you're going for escapism, you can't get better than Twilight. It's the books I tend to read between Scarlett Thomas or Christopher Paolini or Phillip Pullman. The fluff between the heavyweights. I know that sounds awful, I do, but always bear this in mind:

I always liked the chocolate covered pretzels.