weltschmerz

I've finished His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman; it took little over a week. It's not often that I can't put a book down, and I hope I haven't done any permanent damage to my vision.

 

I can't recommend the trilogy highly enough. "Epic" is tossed about terribly freely as a soundbite description nowadays, but I think HDM deserves it fully. The last book I felt so profoundly moved by was The Lord of the Rings trilogy, many years ago, or possibly The Great Gatsby and some of Douglas Coupland's works, more recently. HDM and LotR are alike in some ways, and different in so many others. It's also evident that Pullman and Coupland have a similar Weltanschauung; it would be rather interesting to sit them together at a dinner party.

 

I have no wish to dissect the text in minute detail, nor is it possible for me to do justice to Pullman's astonishing achievement with a review. But please do read HDM if you haven't already. And the next time I'm in Oxford, I may even pop by the Botanical Garden...

General update on various things:

• First draft of dissertation is done and under my supervisor's consideration. Fingers crossed that I won't have to change/rewrite/add much.
• Taking a break from the Discworld series to read His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman. Most of the way through the first book now, and it's fab! Could those in the know please tell me how it compares to the Harry Potter series, which I've somehow avoided (in book and film form)?
• Picked up Twin Cinema by The New Pornographers and I Am Kloot's self-titled at Fopp today. Pleasant surprises all round: I hadn't realised that the latest New Pornographers album was out in the UK already, and it was only a tenner.
• The British music press seems to like Stars' Set Yourself On Fire. From the songs I know, I think I prefer Heart (2003), but hopefully they'll perform a mixture of old and new at their gig on 7/9.
• Made my first mix in over a year, and it seems to have got a great response -- which is nice!
• Started playing regular tennis again.

Finished J.G. Ballard's High-Rise this evening. It's a pretty tedious and tepid read — imagine Lord Of The Flies and American Psycho rolled into one, but less compelling than the former and lacking the graphic horror of the latter.

In other, most excellent news, my Discworld books (The Light Fantastic and Guards! Guards!) have arrived. I expect to devour them rather quickly.

My internship at NEF ended on Friday. Michael gave me a bottle of wine, which was sweet of him. I'm not sure I'll ever work there again (though the door has been left open for me), because of the job offer I've accepted and the damned course, but I'll definitely stay in touch and I wish them the best of luck. They ought to make it into the papers with increasing frequency.

I saw a book today, entitled The Selected Prophecies of Nostradamus. Haha!

Any Discworld fans hanging around? I've read The Colour of Magic a number of times and loved it exactly the same number of times, but I've never taken the brave step of trying the other 20+ in the series. Jez recommended that I try out the City Watch books, the first of which is Guards! Guards!. Let me know your recommendation(s).

Finished reading The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time by Mark Haddon yesterday. It's a breath-taking piece of work, and I'd recommend it unreservedly to anyone who hasn't already read it. No spoilers, but to sum up, it's a first-person account of a boy (Christopher) with Asperger's syndrome/autism, who attempts to find the killer of his neighbour's dog and ends up in deeper waters than he expected.

There's an interview with Haddon which I found enlightening. It's significant that he never mentions a specific disability to describe Christopher's condition. Haddon says:

"We were sitting around in their offices talking, and someone mentioned autism and Asperger's, and this woman said, 'Oh, I didn't realize there was actually anything wrong with Christopher.' I've always treasured that reaction.

"It's kind of naïve but perfect. There is a very true sense in which there is something more wrong with the people around Christopher than with him. By the end of the book, although he hasn't profoundly changed — in a way, he hasn't changed at all — he has managed to restore order to his life. From his perspective, that's been a victory. But if you look at the people around him, they're still struggling with these huge problems. Their story is going to go on. They're the people who in some sense have something wrong with them."

I couldn't agree more. It doesn't make Christopher's 'hyper-rationality' any more tolerable though; some of the things he does really aren't nice. And that's the great thing about Haddon's work: he gives us insight into the workings of a mind that seems alien but is internally consistent throughout. (Insert digression into the philosophy of mind and how we can know about other minds.)

Not sure yet about re-readability. If it crosses that hurdle, it could make my favourite books list.