Nothing But Reading Challenges discussion

This thread is open to discuss The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman.



Synopsis
Lyra is rushing to the cold, far North, where witch clans and armored bears rule. North, where the Gobblers take the children they steal--including her friend Roger. North, where her fearsome uncle Asriel is trying to build a bridge to a parallel world.

Can one small girl make a difference in such great and terrible endeavors? This is Lyra: a savage, a schemer, a liar, and as fierce and true a champion as Roger or Asriel could want--but what Lyra doesn't know is that to help one of them will be to betray the other.

A masterwork of storytelling and suspense, Philip Pullman's award-winning The Golden Compass is the first in the His Dark Materials series, which continues with The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass.

      ~ Buddy Style Reads ~
    Three Ways to Enjoy a Book!

At NRBC we use three styles of buddy reads. These will be indicated in the thread title as “Buddy Read”, “Relaxed Buddy Read” or “Informal Buddy Read”.

A “Buddy Read” has a discussion leader and a reading date is set to start the book. A reading schedule is posted prior to the start date and discussion questions are posted each day regarding that section of the book. More information about these types of reads is below. An example is here, showing a reading schedule here.

A “Relaxed Buddy Read” is similar to our usual “buddy reads” except there are less questions and break points. For example, a book may be split into three sections and those reading the book should pause at the end of the section to answer some discussion questions, make comments, or ask their own questions to other readers. An example is here.

An “Informal Buddy Read” doesn’t have a discussion leader and participants are asked to consider some generic questions when making comments about the book. An example is here.

A “Read and Watch Buddy Read” may be set up as any of the above, but we will also watch the movie or T.V. series - or even go to a play! - and make comparisons, discussing what has been left out or changed as well as the actors and actresses. There is a long debate of what one should do first: read the books or watch the movie? We usually read first, but it isn’t essential. Also, if you would like to join in, but don’t want to watch the movie, show, or play, but only read the books, that is fine, too. An example is here.


MORE UNDER SPOILER
(view spoiler)[

“Buddy Reads” (“BRs”) include:

• A reading schedule which can range from 50, 75, to 100 or so pages a day.

• Discussion questions posted daily by moderators and occasionally group members
   who help one of us out. If you want to be a Discussion Leader, let us know.

• If the book is really long, we'll plan a break day.

• Members do NOT have to answer every question, they are meant to stimulate
   conversations about the books AND allow us to glance back upon them when the
   sequels come out. This helps us to remember what exactly happened in the previous
   book.

• We find the buddy style of reading to be more fun than just posting one or two
   sentences about a book. We feel this is what distinguishes us as being a ‘book club’
   rather than just another GoodReads ‘group.’

• If you can NOT start the book on time, feel free to join in at a later date. They are
   set up to make it easy to do so.

• Moderators are people too, so occasionally we get sick, have to work late at our real
   jobs, or have something that keeps us from writing the questions. Please forgive us;
   we're only human and we don't get any compensation for what we do--not even
   free books!

• Discussions and questions are set up to make you think, analyze, and see things you,
   or even we, may have missed. Feel free to add your own thoughts at any time, if you
   think we've missed something.

• If you've read the book, feel free to let us know what you thought about the book.
   You can do so at the end of the buddy read, or, if you can't wait, add spoiler tags
   before you comment like:

   **************BEWARE! SPOILER FOR THE END OF THE BOOK**************

   Or insert a (view spoiler)[spoiler (hide spoiler)]. If you do NOT know how to do so, just check out our
   GoodReads 101 explanation on how to Insert a Spoiler.

• If you are looking for a reading buddy, post an inquiry in our Buddy read requests thread. Use that thread, if you want to have a repeat read of a BOM
    or buddy read, too.

• Have fun! We always do when more than one person joins in. And we look less silly
   if someone else discusses a book with us. (hide spoiler)]

res

Thanks for setting up the thread. :)

I am so excited to read this finally

Shelby wrote: "Thanks for setting up the thread. :)"

No problem!

Count me in! It has been years since I read this one. Team Remus Lupin.

I am finishing up another BR, and will start this one tomorrow.
Listening to it this time, should be good.

I started this yesterday and got 17% in, but I'm still not really into it... I'll give it another shot today.

Team Myrtle 😊

I started. This one of best book trilogy ever apart from HP books, a Hobbit and LOTR.

Team Myrtle

39% / end of part 1

I'm enjoying it more now but I'm still not loving it - maybe I really should have read this as a child. The daemons are my favorite thing obviously but I don't think there's really been much insight into them so far (though I know what they are and how they work cause I've read quite a bit of daemon AU fanfiction 😅).

I am really curious to see (view spoiler)[what this Dust stuff is and what they're actually doing with the children. And how evil the Gabblers - and Mrs Coulter really are. (hide spoiler)]

It has been years since I read this, and I am loving it this time around too. The audio is great.
This seems to be a love it or hate it kind of book. I'm not sure why that is. The world building is interesting, the characters are compelling, and not cookie cutter versions of good vs evil. The writing is good as well I think. Oh well.

I read a few negative reviews of this to see why, and there seemed to be two camps. The ones who did not like the implied anti religious theme, and the ones who didn't like the fact that Lyra's parents are not typical or good parental figures.

I imagine that just not being swept up in the story is possible too. There have been more than a few popular books that I didn't love.

I do love this one though.

Jenny wrote: "It has been years since I read this, and I am loving it this time around too. The audio is great.
This seems to be a love it or hate it kind of book. I'm not sure why that is. The world building i..."

These are definitely not things that bother me! I think I'm just not gelling with the story and that frustrates me so much cause I have no concrete reason why. I was so excited to finally read this and expected to love it... But yeah, there have been so many popular books I don't particularly like.

I end up avoiding some of the more popular books because they almost never live up to the hype.
Personally I blame Oprah. When she started her book club with The Bridges of Madison County, and I had many people tell me how I would love it. One of the top five worst books I ever read. And that includes Taken by the T-Rex!

I haven't trusted an Oprah pick since. I probably missed some good stuff, but I'll probably live.

I think by now I'm pretty good at figuring out which (popular) books I'll actually enjoy so I'm a lot more picky - and nearly everything I read is pretty good.
That book really doesn't sound very good - and just the title of Taken by the T-Rex makes me laugh every time 😂

I am a big review reader. Publisher's Weekly, NYT books review, Washington Post book review, etc. I tend to end up reading really good books too. Sometimes I fall down the rabbit hole of popular but not good books, but not too often.

For some reason my notifications for this got turned off, so I apologize!

I started reading it yesterday. It immediately pulled me in and I'm in love with the story. And I want my own daemon now lmao (I actually just took an online quiz to see which kind of daemon I would have! https://nerdist.com/his-dark-material...)

I'm now up to chapter 7. some thoughts:

(view spoiler)[I was soo worried that Mrs. Coulter was going to find the golden compass. It seems like her daemon did though, so now I'm very nervous about that.

Thank god the gyptian people were there to save Lyra from the men with the nets! I thought they were going to be men that Mrs. Coulter sent, but apparently they weren't? But I guess I shouldn't rest too easy knowing that Lyra is with Ma Costa as it was alluded there is a reason why they want Lyra with them. Hopefully they don't cross her!

The idea that they are taking children to experiment on (if that's a correct interpretation) is really horrifying. I hope Roger is okay. (hide spoiler)]

In general though I really like the Lyra character.

Rachel, I think I took that quiz, or one like it, when I read this years ago. If I remember correctly, my daemon was a lynx. It was some kind of wild kitty anyway.

Mrs. Coulter's daemon creeps me out too.
It has been long enough since the last time I read this, that I have forgotten some events and nuances of characters. I agree that Lyra is a cool character.
I wonder if Pullman wrote that children's daemons aren't set to one animal until they mature because he wasn't sure what he wanted Lyra's daemon to be until he got to know her character well enough? Did that sentence make sense?

Finished!

I liked the second half a lot more but this still wasn’t for me. The characters were interesting and so were the daemons, but obviously I thought it was quite predictable - except maybe (view spoiler)[that Lord Asriel is as much of a nutter as Mrs Coulter (hide spoiler)].

So disappointed I didn’t enjoy this more, but I can see why so many people love it!

I'm almost done, about an hour to go on audio, which I will listen to while cleaning my house this morning.

There are so many disturbing and/or wonderful things in this story.

(view spoiler)[ The gobblers. Seriously, how creepy to steal children for whatever reason, but to experiment on them? Stuff of nightmares.

Mrs, Coulter. Just evil? I cannot find a redeeming characteristic in her- she isn't even very nice to her daemon, which is a part of her. Self loathing maybe?

The spy-flies. Now I need to add clockwork spy/attack bugs to my list of things I don't ever want to encounter. The way that Lyra uses the bug against Coulter is brilliant though.

The northern compound. Wow. When the scientists were talking amongst themselves about the procedure, I was horrified. It was very Nazi Germany like. The fact that the children were people did not enter the equation. I can't get over that.

The bear king. Power and ambition and stupidity writ large. I love how Lyra tricks him.
(hide spoiler)]

Just finished.
(view spoiler)[ The last scene is intense. So, the church views dust as original sin, and wants to keep children from what- sex, knowledge? So by basically giving them a lobotomy, they are protecting them? Or just making them more pliable? Yuck.
Clearly dear old mom and dad don't think that it is a good thing because they don't want it for Lyra. So people in power acting like hypocrites. I'm shocked.
But that last scene, with Asriel and Coulter passionately reuniting while talking about eradicating original sin is too much.
(hide spoiler)]

I have to reread the next two books soon. I barely remember what happens, and I want to know again.

Ok finally got to read this while on my vacation instead of beforehand liked I'd wanted to.

I really liked the daemon's as well. I mean who wouldn't want to have their own little daemon alongside at all time. This book falls into the good, but not great category for me. I enjoyed the second half of the book much more than the first personally.

I think my problems stemmed from (view spoiler)[the scientific elements of it actually. It's like they were trying to be all specific and create this new science in a way that made it unique and fit inside our ideas about science and then tied it up with religion. I didn't mind the religious elements for or against, but I found that the descriptions got overly technical at times without actually explaining anything and took away from the flow of the story. (hide spoiler)]

Lyra was an interesting character and I liked her for the most part. (view spoiler)[Her reactions to her parents was interesting and I am curious about this other world and what will happen next. What they were doing to those kids in their "research," both of her parents was absolutely horrid and makes me want to see her kick her father's butt! (hide spoiler)]

I'm about halfway through. When (view spoiler)[they found Tony in that shed, and Lyra realized that Tony was severed.. omg :( I feel so bad. That scene was very emotional. (hide spoiler)]

I'll definitely finish it by tomorrow night. So far I'm still really liking it. I'm so tempted to click spoilers but I'm trying to hold off. Lol.

Oh, another scene that disturbed me was (view spoiler)[when Lyra broke into that building and found all the daemons in the jars! OMG! (hide spoiler)]

And something else I really like: (view spoiler)[
I really LOVE the witches btw. I hope they won't be fighting any, I'd like to see the witches on their side. How cool when Lyra saw them flying in the sky though! I loved how the witch's daemon came to help her, too! (hide spoiler)]

Glad you are enjoying it! I need to reread the next two NOW, but I have a bunch of books ahead of them in my pile. Why exactly do we all have to work and sleep again?

Got up to chapter 19!
(view spoiler)[damn, a LOT has happened in the last 50 or so pages. The pacing definitely sped up. I was so nervous when Lyra was caught spying and it seemed like they were going to separate her from her daemon. And then when they were going to take the golden compass from her! Clever girl, I had forgotten that she had fashioned a fake one out of the tins with the spying bug. That was a great scene! (hide spoiler)]

Rachel wrote: "Oh, another scene that disturbed me was [spoilers removed]

And something else I really like:
I really LOVE the witches btw. I hope they won't be fighting any, I'd like to see the witches on their..."

I agree with you about both these situations. The scene she stumbled into just about broke my heart.

finished it!!! I LOVED IT!!!

it was a bit disturbing? i was surprised when (view spoiler)[Roger died. that was very messed up. (hide spoiler)]

damn, i thought i had until 11 pm tonight to finish the BR and claim it for tower teams, but i guess that was wrong. oops heh. but that's ok because i really wanted to read this book and i'm soo happy i did. i MUST read the rest of the series now!

We should set up BRs for the next ones too. No tower points, but it is fun to discuss them!

i would love to BR the rest of the series!

Do you want to ask in the request thread or should I? And, when? Not during Quidditch though.

Jenny wrote: "Do you want to ask in the request thread or should I? And, when? Not during Quidditch though."

Jenny, so sorry for my delayed response.

I wouldn't have been able to get to the book during the tower teams challenge, but I am definitely available now to read it! There was someone else in the buddy reads thread who had expressed interest in reading the second book as well. If you're still interested too, let's do it! I can make the comment in the request thread.

Hi Rachel. I forgot about this. Sure, now that TT is done, I actually have some time again as well. Go ahead and request it. If you have a time that you would like to start, we can use that.