Reading, My Alethiometer

As a child, I got into science fiction early and read it often. Some of my earliest and fondest memories are of the adventures I had while reading, absorbed into the splendid, thought-provoking and artfully described places of another person's imaginings.

No fancy pants or frilly dolls for me, oh no. And when my collection of largely genre-specific books outgrew its three-level shelf, I advanced it across the top, and into a second row on each of the three levels after that, aided by length-cut-to-fit 2x4s hidden behind the first rows. Once the reading bug has bitten you, it's hard to shake the stubborn beast loose, and that goes at least double for the robot insect of science fiction—it also has deep-embedding fangs rather than tiny little bug teeth.

In the beginning, I believe there may have been an odd fantasy tale or two betwixt the mostly hard science fiction stories that lined my shelves like double-walled reality insulation. But I soon disdained that related genre, finding such things generally difficult to read, or beyond my brain's ability to fully saturate within.

The dragons, ye see, more often than not, spoke in riddles, peppered with undefined terminology, and their worlds were often over-spiced with political intrigue that frustrated my ability to comprehend it, and prevented me from enjoying it.

The intervening years, of grown-uppedness and child-rearing and mundane concerns like eating and paying the mortgage, have been largely reading-free. There's even a few parenting books sitting straight, alone, and dusty where the shiny legion of science fiction once reigned—science fiction, with cracked bindings to attest to great and frequent use. Somewhere after college, I ran out of time or will or perhaps even need to drown myself in worlds where I was challenged in ways that were sure to make me happy, and make me more than I was—worlds that, unlike this one, didn't stand a chance of hurting me or making me withdraw further into myself.

But the controversy over The Golden Compass, and the strong endorsement of The Righter for the quality of the story behind the heated debate of its thematic and/or designed heresy, overrode the practice and practicality of those lean science fiction years. And not even my discovery that The Golden Compass was of the personally-trying fantasy genre would deter me, no! I bought it while Little Girl was cheerfully engaged in obliterating her first Christmas bookstore gift certificate and moving right over to tap into the second.

It took me three days to read it, and considering that I can't recall the last time I blazed through a book with such fervor, that's saying a lot about The Golden Compass right there. I suppose you could argue that I was starved for a fortifying fantasy, or dehydrated for want of a quenching draught of theme. If you didn't like the book yourself, you might say I'm just a reading-deprived idiot, and that's fine, too, because I had so much fun reading that damn book that I don't much care what you say, whoever you are, because you probably don't like melodic death metal, either!

HERETIC!

I would've read the book in one day, frankly, but I doubt my boss at corporate would have approved of me extending my half-hour luncheon to an all-day, fantasy affair, and so it was two days before the blessed weekend, and on Saturday, I devoured the remainder with ferocious joy. It was good! It was engaging! It was clever and elaborate and intricate and it turned a few facets of our too-real world around and examined them from the perspective of an alternate reality, largely unbound by our feeble constraints.

Whatever else it may be to those who have—and have not—read it, to me, it was sweet release from a place where the basic rules of time and space are a lot harder to break, and it was so far removed and so clearly defined in its fantasy-ness that I had no difficulty whatsoever distinguishing it from reality. Not for a moment, not even that long, blissful succession of moments that I was plucked out of reality and suspended somewhere else, somewhere that tested my ability to comprehend things I had failed to imagine for myself, and tried my skill to do so even as it was neatly spelled out before me.

So what I'm saying, my invisible friends, is that I LIKED The Golden Compass. I liked it a lot, and I bought the two books that complete the trilogy rather than groceries yesterday, because although the supplies are running down, there's still some dry pasta in the pantry, but what I need right now is some rich, saucy food for thought.

(I'll comment on the controversy after I finish feasting, although that may take some time, because I'm not going to binge, no matter how difficult the temptation—otherwise, that darn novel is never going to get done!)