Previously: We gushed over the intense sensory experience of season 1 of American Gods
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Sweeney: Longtime readers of the blog know how much we love a tracking spreadsheet around these parts. Something else you probably know by this point is that I adore Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series. And so it should be no surprise that one of the first things that I added to the podcast spreadsheet was these books that I love with my whole entire heart.
We also recently decided to start a book club in our Discord, and decided to make this book 1. We’ll be doing a His Dark Materials book every other month over there, hopefully finishing by the time the upcoming BBC adaptation starts. (This month’s book is Daisy Jones & the Six, if you want to join us!)
Not included in this episode: my panic over what to call it, as the book’s original title is Northern Lights but that was inexplicably changed to The Golden Compass in the US. It is definitely the inferior title but it’s also the title of the first copy of the book that I read? So here we are.
This wound up being a longer episode, in part because I was so excited to really dig into this thing. In addition to my many years reading and re-reading this book, I also had the advantage of a month’s worth of conversation in the Discord. On several occasions I started with one thought and ended up rambling like 6 thoughts at once and asking my lovely podcast companions to disentangle the mess of emotions. That said, this might have been my favorite episode ever to record. I know, I know, they are all our favorite. I said what I said.
In addition to Marines, the companions helping me disentangle those feelings were the Connor O’Brien and Sara Lewis. Connor previously joined us on our Romantic Comedies episode and he has a lovely YouTube channel where he talks all things books. Sara is a big consumer of media who just happened to answer the call on Twitter when I suggested that we were looking for a second guest for this episode, and we are incredibly grateful to both of them for joining us this week!
Hear all of our thoughts on this book in this week’s episode:
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As always, thank you to Stefan Chin for our delightful theme music.
For those of you watching and reading along, here is our planned upcoming media in the order they’ll be released: Slayer by Kiersten White, Unicorn Store, Shrill, Avengers 4: Endgame, and Daisy Jones & the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid.