I’m about half way through the books I had said I would read previously. It was really thanks to this amazing little used book store in Kutztown that I was able to buy many of these- I doubt if I would have bought them all a Barnes and noble- there are limits to my profligacy!
I started off with the Dark is rising Sequence by Susan Cooper. I actually read “The Dark is Rising” on Friday night (the 5th) at B&N. Then on Saturday morning I set off to Kutztown, down 222N. On the way I was distracted my an Amish shop selling pecan pies- it has been over 9 years since I had one, but still I remember the rich nutty taste. I had looked for it at Redner’s and at Tanner’s; for all that it was one of America’s Favourite Pies though, it was strangely elusive. But in the end, unexpectedly there it was, on the way to Kutztown.
Then there was a Flea Market. I don’t believe I’ve mentioned before my thrilling experiences a garage sales and Flea Markets. There was a garage sale that I went to many weeks ago when my mother was here. We got three comfortable solid wooden chars from there. The only problem was getting a pair of cushions for the large one which was an armchair, because we didn’t wasn’t to use someone else’s used cushions (for reasons I don’t want to go into detail here). Anyway, in the end the cushions were more expensive than all three chars put together. Still, I think of it as “A Good Deal”.
The first Flea Market I went to is about 2 hours from Reading, opposite an ashram. We’d gone to the Ashram actually, but ended up spending more time at the Flea Market, buying the most fascinating things. Cheap jewellery, old books, boxes a jewellery box like a small chest of drawers… The one on Kutztown road was much smaller though. And I got a rocking chair there – for $15!
Anyway –on to the bookstore – it’s this tiny cramped store, in the best tradition of second hand book stores. And I ended up buying about 10 books just because I could. You have to hunt though, among dusty shelves and in boxes and bins and squeeze through narrow spaces, and I felt like I never wanted to leave!
But I did in the end, loaded with last three from the Dark is Rising Sequence, “The Golden Compass” and “The Amber Spyglass” by Phillip Pullman, and sundry other novels.
The Dark is Rising can be read as just a kid’s story- the old-fashioned good vs. evil thing, except better written than most. I hadn’t realized that Over Sea, Under Stone was part of the series, now it’s the only one I haven’t read. You could be bothered by the almost inevitable feeling of the victory of the Light, like a Deux ex Machina, and the string of strange co-incidences that pave the path to victory, but the ending was just a little sad and very satisfactory. I do like the books though, the plot many not be great, but the characters are wonderfully fleshed out, and the whole story feels a little misty- blurred at the edges, softened, like you’re viewing it through not entirely transparent glass. It doesn’t moralize though, and doesn’t pretend to be anything but a story, doesn’t strive to be an epic (and isn’t one by any means). It’s short, even with all the books taken together, and rather sweet.
Phillip Pullman though- I had read only “The Amber Spyglass” before. It’s the last one in the trilogy, and I read the first two only now. I liked the Amber Spyglass for its story, but taken out of context, saw it only as a somewhat over complicated idea- too many characters, too many ideas, all coming together in one book.
Taken as a whole though, you really get the sense of beginning and end, of a coming together of many great purposes, small and large acts to the grand denouement.
I do hope they don’t make a mess of this series like they did with Susan Cooper’s when they make them into movies.
