His Dark Materials (Philip Pullman)

This is where HRH Charles was walking as he
talked about Philip Pullmans books.
(image from here)

My very favorite author! (Which is a fickle term, it may apply to several authors at the same or different times, but Philip Pullman definitely lives in that (fairly big) box in my brain marked "favorite".) You may have noticed him on the blog earlier, and I am sure he will be back.

This time I am writing about his  perhaps most well known books, the Dark Materials trilogy. And guess who reminded me of writing the post? That was Prince Charles! He was wandering about his garden (he is rather fond of gardens) talking with a film team making a documentary for his 60th birthday, and he asks them "have you read the Dark Materials trilogy?" and he goes on describing it in very flattering terms. He has flowers from exactly where Will in "The Subtle Knife" cuts his hole to another world! The Prince of Wales is turning into a favorite Prince now :)

I have altogether too much to write about these books. I love them so much. Instead of starting at the start, I will start with some disambiguation: The trilogy consists of three books and has been translated as by Torstein Bugge Høverstad (a favorite translator, after writing my thesis on his translation of Harry potter):

From Amazon (and yes, that is a hint)

• -"Northern Lights" - published as "The Golden Compass" in the US. It has been published first as "Nordlys" and then as "Det gyldne kompasset".
• -"The Subtle Knife" - published in Norwegian first as "Den skarpe eggen", later as "Den skarpeste knives"
• -"The Amber Spyglass" - published in Norwegian as "En kikkert av rav". 

The name of the trilogy in Norwegian is "Den mørke materien". 

The the beginning. I was quite young, perhaps 12, when my dear auntie Eli the librarian sent a box full of the new children and young adult books of the year, and "Nordlys" was among them. (That would make the year 1997 and i would have been 17! Which doesn't make sense at all! Oh well. I was quite young anyways. Eli, if you can shed any light on this, please do :)) I read this book, and I fell deeply in love. And I never fell out of love. I read the rest of the books in their original language, English, and I liked the language even better there (Sorry, Bugge Høverstad, Norwegian vocabulary is just a bit poorer than the English, none of your fault!). I have to admit, though, that I like the two first books better than the last. And I suggest that you at least start at the first book, and read as far into the trilogy as you like. 

The world is magical! It is, like many of the books I love, a familiar British world, with some magic thrown in. In the firs book we meet Lyra, who lives at Oxford University without parents. All people in Lyra's world have dæmons - an outside representative of themselves, connected strongly but invisibly. Children's dæmons will change shapes, from one animal to another in no time. As children grow up, their dæmons will find one animal shape that they will stay in for the rest of the person's life. Anyway, Lyra has a friend, Roger, who gets kidnapped. Lyra goes on a journey to find him, and it goes north. There she meets witches, and also armored polar bears, one of which become her good friend. 

The story is magnificent, the storytelling fantastic, the setting magical and I could go on that way forever! The language can be a little tricky for English learners to begin with, but I think any intermediate student would be able to figure it out pretty quick. Try it and enjoy!

Edit: Here it is, the book I read back in 1997 when it came out <3

Lord of the Flies (William Golding)

Hm, how do I start telling you about this book... It is a modern classic, written in the 1950s. A student recommended this book to me a few years ago, but I never wanted to read it because of its disturbing subject matter. It is about a group of boys on an island after being evacuated from the London area because of an atomic bomb. They are all by themselves, and we follow them through trying to find a way to organize their society. Some try to stay civilized, and others "go wild". It ends up being a struggle for their life for some of them, as Golding, based on his view of human nature, explores how they deal with the situation. As you can tell by now, this is serious business, and was not tempting to me.

You may wonder, now, how come it still figures on a blog having "favorite books" in its title. The reason is simple. I finally had to read the book, thanks to a fellow English teacher whose students I got to be external examiner for. This book was one of their options for their oral exam presentation. So I sat down and read. I expected depression and horror to be the result. But no. The characters have personalities I like, and following their adventures, challenges and crises turned out to be very interesting. The book grew on me as I read, and now I may actually have fallen in love with it.

It is a serious book, and it is a good book. At the same time it is quite easy to read, and the set they have of them at the school library has notes and some study questions in the back to help you along as well. I think this is a book that will appeal equally to boys and girls, if not a bit more to the boys. There we go, I recommended a book I didn't know I liked a week ago. And I am sorry, you Student a few years ago, for not taking you up on your excellent recommendation a long time ago :)