The Places You Will Go

Just Read It

The Star never reviewed any of the books in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials Trilogy so it decided to correct this oversight by running a review of Northern Lights to coincide with the 6th December release of the  New Line Cinema film based on the book (renamed in the States as The Golden Compass to avoid confusing it with Jennifer Donnelly's A Northern Light, this is also the name of the movie).

The reviewer, who loves the books, was not impressed with the film, saying, amongst other things, "they turned it into a cliched good-vs-evil thing, which is NOT what the story is about, and eliminated Pullman's technique of slowly giving out answers - instead they spent pretty much every moment explaining things!!! [It was] so dull and the dialogue was so cliched and completely missed out the variety of voices Pullman has."

I have yet to watch The Golden Compass and I think that even if I decide to, I can wait til it's released on DVD.

Philip Pullman told Roger Sutton, in a Horn Book podcast that, "To be truly happy with [a film adaption of a book] you have to be the director as well as the scriptwriter and the star and the composer and the producer and everything else because the whole nature of the film obviously is collaborative. It’s the work of many, many people and the writer, even of the script, is not at the centre of it. The director is at the centre of it, and the writer of the original book on which the film is based is a long way away from the centre of the action. So inevitably there are things that, as writers, we always think we’d have done that  differently, or “I wouldn’t have put the camera here, I’d have put it there."

You can read the entire transcript of the interview here and listen to it here.

Young Man Saves the World ... Again

I don't normally post other people's reviews, but I'll make the exception as it's The Dark is Rising by SUSAN COOPER. Also, links to the Star's website go unclickable after a bit and I'm too stupid to fix that ....

P.S The Dark is Rising Sequence is now available in a number of new editions, including a hardback omnibus with a rather nice navy blue cover and silver lettering, but rather tatty paper. I plan to get the box-set (as my softback Puffin omnibus is coming apart at the seams), which features not-too-tacky illustrations. Sorry, but the look of a book is quite important to me as an ugly cover might prove too distracting and distressing. When there's no hope for it, brown paper, or a page out of a magazine, does the trick.

You're Out!

Dumbledore is gay, so J. K. Rowling says, now. I guess it's obvious why she never made it clear in the books, but I'm all for giving kids some positive gay role models. His intense friendship with Grindelwald, in book seven, does hint at the old wizbang's sexuality though. Can you imagine what sort of fanfiction is going to get written now? It's already quite stomach-turning. OK, it turns my stomach. I read one about Harry and Draco and my eyes fell into my lap!

PS I interviewed someone yesterday who said that, reading my column, he'd always had the impression of me being school-marmish! Golly!

Looking for a Change?

The Seeker, which is the title of the film version of The Dark is Rising, opens today in cinemas worldwide (yes, including Malaysia).

The story has been changed a great deal so that I am certain that none of my favourite bits in the book have made it to the big screen.

Says author Susan Cooper in an article on the National Public Radio website, "You do have to do violence to a book to make it into a screenplay — the two mediums are so different. But the alteration is so enormous in this case. It is just different."

Here's an early review in the The Sydney Morning Herald. I'm annoyed that, so far, critics are saying that the story is nothing new after Harry Potter and the books that came after it ("franchise wannabes" says ign.com). The Dark is Rising was published in 1973.

Old but Always New

The late Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time deserves to be introduced to a whole new audience. Forty-four years after it was first published its contents still ruffle feathers.

Junior Reading Room

Differences count for nothing when it comes to true friendship, but in some circles, nothing costs something too!

Get 25% off the sticker price for this week's selection - only with the coupon on StarTwo.

A Lion, a Line and a Big Bad Wood

I took a break a month ago to review Harry Potter and the End of the Too-Long Series, but I am back this Reads Monthly with Tots to Teens' monthly must-buys.

After Harry

Yes, there is life after Harry Potter ...

Harry Potter and the Final Review

I'll never need to read and review another Harry Potter book for as long as I live. However, the last book in the series has given me a taste for more ...

Dark Delights

I read and enjoyed Marcus Sedgewick's The Dark Horse a few years ago. It was a relief to come across a fantasy novel that wasn't part of a trilogy or even longer series (it's rare that a series is consistently good from the first book to the last. Trilogies have a better chance of maintaining a high standard throughout and I also am less likely to lose interest, which I usually do after book three or four).

My Swordhand is Singing is another of Sedgewick's standalones.  His other books are Floodland, Witch Hill and The Book of Dead Days.