Read "His Dark Materials" by Philip Pullman [Northern Lights; The Subtle Knife; The Amber Spyglass]

My bookmark has been resting somewhere in the middle of The Subtle Knife for some time now. I haven’t had the chance to finish the book because of the non-leisure reading material I had to consume for the TESOL course and other things that came after that.

I did try getting back into it one weekend but alas, not a lot of success. I’m seeing now that it wasn’t particularly wise in my part to buy the 3-in-1 Alfred A. Knopf issue. The Amazon shipping weight was 2 pounds, it’s that heavy. With 944 pages, I should have toned my wrist and arm muscles first.

Finished reading Northern Lights (aka The Golden Compass) four days ago. I reached the last page as night was turning to day.

It took me quite a while to get into the story but once I did, I could hardly put the book down. My eyes were getting watery because my system wanted to call it a day and sleep already. But my curiosity got the best of me and I read until the point where Lyra walked into the sky. It was that riveting.

I didn’t get to start The Subtle Knife immediately after that so right now I’m just at the second chapter. I’m afraid I’ll be cutting down a bit on my reading-for-leisure time as I just started a course and there are tons of required readings for that.

Several friends have told me that this trilogy is a must-read but they did it in a non-cliché way that I actually took their word for it. Noteworthy because 1) I deliberately veer away from what most people deem as “must-reads” like the Harry Potter series or the Twilight series; 2) I read a Philip Pullman book before, The Butterfly Tattoo (re-issue of The White Mercedes), and was not particularly struck by it.

Anyway, I finally got myself a copy of the trilogy – all three books in one volume – the other day. I started reading today and I’m on page 18.