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we saw a scary book at the dollar store today
we saw a scary book at the dollar store today
Originally uploaded by kostia.
category: shopping
His Dark Materials
Several times over the last few years, I’ve read and listened to three books by Philip Pullman: The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass, collectively called the His Dark Materials trilogy.
These are wonderful, wonderful books, with a unique and seductive ethos and a deep, real, and fully imagined world. They are a feat, an accomplishment, a masterpiece, and I love them.
I learned recently that a movie is being made of them, or at least of the first volume, The Golden Compass. At first I was a little nervous about this, especially since the audiobooks were so beautifully realized (a problem I also have with the Hitchhikers’ movie). But Philip Pullman is not only alive and well but thoroughly involved with the shepherding of his work. For some reason I feel like he protects it. He narrated the audiobooks. I expect he’d write, or at least co-write, the screenplays. And Harry Potter opened a lot of doors. So I’m okay with the movie idea.
His Dark Materials, by the way, is both better-written and more serious than Harry Potter. Lyra is a far more complex character (partially because she and Pantalaimon are two characters in one). In many ways, these books are better than Harry Potter. Better than Harry Potter.
That all said, and the promise of the movie lurking at the back of my brain, I was intrigued and delighted to learn that His Dark Materials was a stage play, already come and gone, at the National Theatre in London.
This page is one of many on the Stagework website featuring clips of scenes from the play. That link is the scene right before Lyra leaves Jordan College with Mrs. Coulter, where the Master gives her the alethiometer.
My point, and I do have one, is that this movie cannot now come soon enough. You’ve seen the merchandise you can buy from Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings. You’ve seen the beautiful solid wood wands, the wool scarves, the solid gold One Ring, Arwen’s Evenstar pendant, the swords, the dolls—the beautiful, beautiful things. These things really exist.
Say it with me. Alethiometer.
There’s a closeup in the clip on the site. For me, this goes beyond Harry’s wand, beyond lightsabers, beyond the One Ring. This is the ultimate prop. Heavy, brass and glass, with innumerable moving parts and dozens of tiny, beautiful paintings.
They’ll make them. They’ll sell them. I’m speechless with anticipation.
Eventually they’ll make the knife, too.
Scents and sensibilities
Cleolinda wrote the other day about Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, which sells essential oil scents. 85% perfume oils, whereas your typical cologne is like 5%.
She was so enthusiastic about it, and the site is so cool, that I cannot resist and just ordered six little sample vials.
The site looks like a Karen Elizabeth Gordon book. Wonderful Gothic horror clipart, spare typesetting, words chosen for aesthetics rather than specific meaning. It’s really enjoyable.
The scents are described pretty much by their ingredients, but another LJ user named dark_geisha has done dozens of reviews of the scents. This was hugely helpful. One scent called “Sea of Glass” sounded perfect until she told me it had a strong lemon note in it. I do not like lemon as a scent, but I want clean, like linen and gardenia. Floral but not too floral, aquatic but not salty.
Can you tell I’ve tried ordering perfume online before? Reflect.com does it, through what I still think is a really wonderful interface (currently down as they “revise” it). You pick colors and images, and they translate that into scent. I got three perfume samples from them years ago, and I hated one of them. One I liked, but I spilled it the second time I opened the little vial. One I liked a little less, but the caps on the vials weren’t tight, and it evaporated. I do love Reflect.com, though. They sold me a lot of stuff back in the day. The best of it was a clay face mask that makes me very, very happy.
Black Phoenix’s stuff comes in cobalt blue glass vials. They had me at hello.
I ordered Desdemona, Goneril, and Queen Gertrude from the Illyria (Shakespeare) collection. I ordered Dirty and Magdalene from the Sin and Salvation section. And I ordered Dragon’s Tears based on dark_geisha’s glowing review.
With names like these, I greatly fear that I will smell like some sort of fallen woman. On the very surface of it, Desdemona may have cheated on her husband. Goneril disowned her father. Gertrude married her brother-in-law. And then you have Mary Magdalene.
Role models.