WhatWe'reReading

Opal and I did end up reading Any Which Wall (she looked at the back of the paperback first, and was quite taken with it. The cover just really doesn't work for her). We're still in the middle of an Oz book (a Ruth Plumly Thomson), and we're partway through Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat. We have run out of James Herriot to listen to, and now are listening to Gerald Durrell's Three Singles to Adventure and Phillip Pullman's The Golden Compass. Opal adores the Gerald Durrell, although for some reason she dislikes the story about the noisemaking capybara (I don't know why; she doesn't mind the cannibalistic possums, and finds most of the stories of animal-induced mayhem hysterical. Merely mentioning electric eels and canoes will send her into gales of helpless laughter, repeating "And then… the bottom fell out of the basket!")

I have read The Golden Compass and one of its sequels; you can tell that I wasn't that fond of it by the fact that I never made it to book 3. I am liking it even less at the slower, more reflective speed of an audio book. The world doesn't hold together well, it randomly descends into telling instead of showing, the plot hinges on some remarkable coincidences, and to top it off, the audio book has some truly bizarre accents. Also, I don't actually like any of the characters. There are some great descriptions and some fascinating plot points, but as a whole, it leaves me cold. Opal claims she isn't sure she likes it, but I can't tell whether she says so out of solidarity, or because she finds it fascinating but scary.