His Dark Materials

This cool embossed edition only available at Book People, I've found.

I finished the last of the 3 books in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series. No more nights of running to Book People at 10 AM to pick up the next book. It was a tremendous read, full of adventure, love, and loss. And it is a book for children! Those are the stories I swallow best. The theological and philosophical content in the book couldn't have come at a more appropriate time. It was as if the book knew..

“When you stopped believing in God,” he went on, “did you stop believing in good and evil?”
“No. But I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are. All we can say is that this is a good deed, because it helps someone, or that’s an evil one, because it hurts them. People are too complicated to have simple labels.”
“Yes,” said Lyra firmly.
“Did you miss God?” asked Will.
“Yes,” Mary said, “terribly. And I still do. And what I miss most is the sense of being connected to the whole of the universe. I used to feel I was connected to God like that, and because he was there, I was connected to the whole of his creation. But if he’s not there, then…”

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““What work have I got to do, then?” said Will, but went on at once, “No, on second thought, don’t tell me. I shall decide what I do. If you say my work is fighting, or healing, or exploring, or whatever you might say, I’ll always be thinking about it. And if I do end up doing that, I’ll be resentful because it’ll feel as if I didn’t have a choice, and if I didn’t do it, I’ll feel guilty because I should. Whatever I do, I will choose it, no one else.”
“Then you have already taken the first steps toward wisdom,” said Xaphania.”

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