Booking Through Thursday: Favorite Books

Do you have a favorite book? What do you say when people ask you?

This is from last week. No new post this week as of Saturday morning... :(

I actually do have a favorite book! I think this is an unusual thing among heavy readers because we tend to adore multiple books with equal abandon. However. There is one book and one book only that 1) makes me cry every time I read it and 2) is the perfect ending to a nearly perfect trilogy.

If you haven't read this series - His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman - you need to drop everything else you're reading right now.

The first book of the trilogy is The Golden Compass (aka Northern Lights in countries other than the United States). Someone turned it into a highly disappointing movie which I try to forget happened. Don't even bother with it. The book concentrates on the adventures of a girl named Lyra who lives in Oxford. Only it's not our Oxford. If you want a longer summary, click the link I provided in the previous paragraph. Suffice to say, Lyra is stubborn and hilarious and strong. Everything you want a good heroine to be. We become familiar with her world and get a good hint of what is going wrong in it in this first volume. It ends with a fantastic cliffhanger that will have you running to the library/bookstore for the second book.

The second book is The Subtle Knife. It begins in our world! What, huh? And we get a new protagonist, Will Parry. Will may be my favorite fictional character of all time and I may or may not have named my muse after him because he's not the stereotypical male hero. He's a kid who had to grow up too fast. He's intelligent, curious, and somewhat brooding. And he's just as strong as Lyra - but in a completely different way. They act to balance each other out quite well.

Okay, obviously I love these books for the main characters. But the world Pullman has put together is one of the most uniquely beautiful fantasys I've ever seen. Parallel universes, steampunk elements, polar bear warriors, witches, angels, magical objects, sentient creatures entirely unlike anything on Earth, and a serious Christian mythology / philosophy that is the backbone of the entire series... all of these things add up to something truly amazing.

The Amber Spyglass is my favorite book of all time because Pullman manages to write the perfect bittersweet ending. I have no words for it beyond that. I mean, everything about the book is fantastically done: bigger and badder than anything that happened in the first two books. He wraps up everything to satisfaction in a surprisingly realistic way that is nonetheless poetic. But it's really the ending that gets me every time.

Sigh.

Basically this is the series I wish I had written, especially The Amber Spyglass.. And though it might sound conceited, I can't imagine a higher stamp of approval for a book I've read than that.

The Beach in December

Ever since college, my favorite part of winter is when I visit my grandparents in New Hampshire. Usually this happens around Christmas, and my parents and brother and various aunts and uncles visit too.

But my favorite favorite part of winter is when we all go to the beach.

The beach in December is beautiful. Snow on the sand, and ice amongst the rocks. The water is bluer than the Hope Diamond, and the wet sheen as the tide rolls out is like glass.

New Englanders obviously have an affinity for doing summery things in the winter (see our fondness for ice cream all year round) because it's never lonely walking on the shore a few days after Christmas. Especially on an afternoon like the one on which I took this pictures.

I just wanted to share this feeling with the world.

Love is blindness -

I am obsessed with the soundtrack to Baz Luhrman's The Great Gatsby. I knew I would be before it was ever released because Baz is my favorite film director of all time (Moulin Rouge is always number one or two in my favorite movie list and his version of Romeo and Juliet is probably in the top ten) and he uses the most amazing music in his movies. When I saw the first trailer for The Great Gatsby with its opening notes of "No Church in the Wild" by Jay-Z and Kanye West playing over roaring 20s images of flappers and alcohol and fast cars, I almost died. I really think if Fitzgerald were alive today, he would've appreciated this take on his story with its crazy modern music, anachronistic costuming, and constant assault of color and emotion.

Right now, this is my favorite song from the soundtrack. Baz always introduces me to great music I had no idea existed. I love Jack White's version of this song, but I did not know it was a U2 song:

U2


Jack White


To no one's surprise, I like both versions equally. Bono's tragic, melodramatic version just as well as Jack's charged, primal screaming.