Right now Mr. Katie and I are listening have a little book club going on. Actually, it is more of a listening club. Right now we are listening to the audiobooks for the Philip Pullman series His Dark Materials. Ever since we saw the preview for the HBO series which will be coming in late 2019, we have been talking about how we want to the stories.
I actually listened to all three of the books in the series in 2007 and while I could remember much of what happened in the first book, I have almost no memory of what else happened after that.
We have both finished the first two books now and are beginning the third, The Amber Spyglass. It’s fun though because it gives us something else to talk about at night besides our kids, work, and the normal things we usually talk about. We can talk about the characters or the events in the book or the larger significance.
When Mr. Katie and I first started dating, I told him that I enjoyed this series and that I thought he might like them too. He said he might like them, but he thought that usually in regards to Young Adult fiction, he hesitated to read it because while it might have interesting ideas, he usually found that adult novels could do it better. So we will have to see. He seems to like them so far.
During this conversation early in our relationship, he told me that he took a class in college on science fiction and fantasy. He said fantasy books are a place where authors and readers can talk about big ideas like religion because the ideas are shrouded in the “make believe.” We have a lot to talk about with these books because there are a lot of religious elements in the story.
Another running joke that we have is that I told him that I don’t like science fiction and fantasy. I wrote it off as genre fiction. As he has pointed out throughout our relationship though, I love Margaret Atwood and most of her novels have some sort of science fiction/ fantasy element even though I deny it. I make sure to call it speculative fiction.
We have listened to bunches of things together and discussed them. Recently, this past spring we both listened to the podcast To Live and Die in LA separately and then we would come together to discuss it. That story is based on true fact thought so our discussions mostly were centered around did we believe this person or that person involved in the case.
So what started out as a way to prepare ourselves for a television show we both want to see has become something more. Perhaps when we are done with the trilogy we will listen to other books by Philip Pullman. I want to listen to The Book of Dust, another book series by Pullman that revolves around the characters for this series. Maybe we will listen to The Chronicles of Narnia so we can compare the series.
What are you reading or listening to right now?
I originally told Jonathan that I don’t like science fiction. Then, I realized that several of my favorite books are actually science fiction stories.
I am with you!