Yesterday I finished Phillip Pullman’s The Golden Compass in the His Dark Materials trilogy. When I bought the book I wasn’t expecting very much to be honest, but as the movie is coming out later this year and as a general rule I like to read the book before I watch the movie, I picked up The Golden Compass a couple of months ago. Back to the book…I had a business trip the last two days (more about that in a bit) and I took it to read. It was far more than I expected to find.
Brief plot synopsis is that a young girl Lyra Belaqua lives in an alternate version of late Victorian Earth where the Church rules all and where the United States doesn’t exist, but many technologies of that era are coming in to common use. She’s been raised by the scholars at Jordan Collage at Oxford University where her uncle Lord Asriel has left her while he does his exploring in the Artic. He returns with fantastic proof of Dust and convinces Oxford to sponsor another expedition just as roomers of a dark threat begins to threaten Lyra.
I found the story engrossing and the narrative really kept a really good pace the entire time and I genuinely found the characters engaging and sympathetic. But what is the real driving force behind at least this first book (haven’t even looked that the other two yet) is the concepts that form the frame-work in which the story is set. Pullman set up Lyra’s world as an alternate Earth to our own that we live in and by the end, I was expecting to hear of strange invaders from the Arctic. I loved the subtlety that the book uses. I know it was written for a young adult audience, but it really is about consequences for everyone and choices that we all make in our lives. Unfortunately we don’t have alternate worlds to relive our lives, but we just have to make the most out of the ones we currently do have and try to live the live we’ve got the best we can.
So I promised to say something about my business trip. It’s not so much about my trip as it is about where I stayed. I was at a large chain business class hotel where they put me on a “Quiet Floor.” When I got off the elevator they even had a sign that told me so. It even had the following words:
The hotel promises that the following will not be staying on your floor
· Tour groups
· Bands
· Circus animals
Now as far as needing my sleep, I really appreciated the first two. But when I got to the third line, my thought was, “I’ve stayed at this hotel before and not been on a quiet floor. Was there a chance I was sleeping next to a tiger?” Seriously! I had no idea that circus animals actually stay IN the hotel. Don’t they have like—trailers or something. I mean even the “celebrities” on Dancing with the Stars get one and they’re almost the same, right? So next time I stay at a hotel, I’m for sure going to ask about their circus animal policy when I check in. Cause I sure as heck don’t want any camels crashing through the walls in the middle of the night.
That makes me wonder about what sort of things people really bring into hotels that they would never bring into their own homes. I did watch Welcome to the Parker on Brovo and I know people will do things like have really drunk ping-pong tournaments and ruin Gene Autry's house, but I’m not really the adventurous type in that way at all because I’m usually way too tired by the time I get back to my room because all my adventures usually happen outside of the hotel room.
Brief plot synopsis is that a young girl Lyra Belaqua lives in an alternate version of late Victorian Earth where the Church rules all and where the United States doesn’t exist, but many technologies of that era are coming in to common use. She’s been raised by the scholars at Jordan Collage at Oxford University where her uncle Lord Asriel has left her while he does his exploring in the Artic. He returns with fantastic proof of Dust and convinces Oxford to sponsor another expedition just as roomers of a dark threat begins to threaten Lyra.
I found the story engrossing and the narrative really kept a really good pace the entire time and I genuinely found the characters engaging and sympathetic. But what is the real driving force behind at least this first book (haven’t even looked that the other two yet) is the concepts that form the frame-work in which the story is set. Pullman set up Lyra’s world as an alternate Earth to our own that we live in and by the end, I was expecting to hear of strange invaders from the Arctic. I loved the subtlety that the book uses. I know it was written for a young adult audience, but it really is about consequences for everyone and choices that we all make in our lives. Unfortunately we don’t have alternate worlds to relive our lives, but we just have to make the most out of the ones we currently do have and try to live the live we’ve got the best we can.
So I promised to say something about my business trip. It’s not so much about my trip as it is about where I stayed. I was at a large chain business class hotel where they put me on a “Quiet Floor.” When I got off the elevator they even had a sign that told me so. It even had the following words:
The hotel promises that the following will not be staying on your floor
· Tour groups
· Bands
· Circus animals
Now as far as needing my sleep, I really appreciated the first two. But when I got to the third line, my thought was, “I’ve stayed at this hotel before and not been on a quiet floor. Was there a chance I was sleeping next to a tiger?” Seriously! I had no idea that circus animals actually stay IN the hotel. Don’t they have like—trailers or something. I mean even the “celebrities” on Dancing with the Stars get one and they’re almost the same, right? So next time I stay at a hotel, I’m for sure going to ask about their circus animal policy when I check in. Cause I sure as heck don’t want any camels crashing through the walls in the middle of the night.
That makes me wonder about what sort of things people really bring into hotels that they would never bring into their own homes. I did watch Welcome to the Parker on Brovo and I know people will do things like have really drunk ping-pong tournaments and ruin Gene Autry's house, but I’m not really the adventurous type in that way at all because I’m usually way too tired by the time I get back to my room because all my adventures usually happen outside of the hotel room.
Why would someone really need to bring their 500 pound gorilla with them on a business trip? Would the baby elephant really need to stay on the pull-out couch and watch the television all night? Do the dancing poodles really need to have access to the mini-bar? Okay, for the last one, I’d had to give it a definite yes because even this bitch needs a kings size Snicker's bar at 2 am sometimes.
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment