His Dark Materials - Phillip Pullman (re-read)

I've just re-read Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, and, as always, cried at the end. I felt compelled to pick up The Golden Compass the day I came home from seeing the third Pirates of the Caribbean installment, in order to purge that disappointing trash from my mind. (It didn't work! Come on, they KILLED ORLANDO BLOOM! I don't care if he's still technically alive, since Will's gory heart is in that stinky old wooden chest with Elizabeth on that island... THEY KILLED THE MAIN LOVE INTEREST IN THE TRILOGY! What a horrible idea! Not to mention that they also killed off Norrington! WAY TO GO, DISNEY!!)

Anyway... The film version of Compass is due out at the end of this year, and I'm hopeful that this wonderful story will come across well on the big screen. I think many of the elements would be difficult to convey visually - like the mental process by which Lyra reads the alethiometer, the way the children's daemons transform, the difference between severed and normal humans, and the way humans communicate with their daemons through shared feelings. And in the next book, the whole part about the subtle knife, and the things that Lyra and Will are thinking about, and then the third book, with the angels and the mulefa... I hope the movie found a convincing way to show all of these elements, because such an inventive, epic, and heartbreaking story deserves a really spectacular film adaptation. Could be as good as Lord of the Rings... should be at least as good as the Harry Potters! (Speaking of... I can't wait to see the Order of the Phoenix movie - just a month from today!)