If you haven't read Philip Pulman's His Dark Materials, Book 1: The Golden Compass, you should. Once you've done that, then you can safely go see the movie - much like J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, there is little chance the movie will do real justice to the books in this series, although I do expect it to be a great show nonetheless.
For those who have read the book or saw the movie already, you can take a quiz at the official movie web site to have your dæmon determined. Then you can ask others to help refine it as, like a child's dæmon, it is flexible in form for a short period of time (12 days from creation).
My dæmon is named Sergius and his initial form is a Tiger. This represents someone who is modest, assertive, competitive, outgoing and sociable.
Said Ravenclaw, "We'll teach those whose intelligence is surest."
Ravenclaw students tend to be clever, witty, intelligent, and knowledgeable.
Notable residents include: Cho Chang (Ravenclaw seeker and and one time object of Harry's affections) Padma Patil (twin sister of Gryffindor Pavarti Patil) Luna Lovegood (daughter of The Quibbler magazine's editor) Filius Flitwick (head of Ravenclaw house, Charms instructor)
Take the most scientific Harry Potter Quiz ever created. Get Sorted Now!
This is a fun survey - it's based on psychological analysis and is quite well defined. Questions alternate randomly between positively worded and negataively worded, and several are similar but not quite the same. You get a compatibility score for each house out of 100 and are sorted into the house with the highest result.
My individual compatibility scores for each house:
Ravenclaw:.... 91
Hufflepuff:....... 84
Gryffindor:...... 79
Slytherin:........ 35
So, tell me... where DOES the sorting hat put you?
Something a little more refined than usual and (for those reading my professional blog) a bit off topic, a list of "life time reading recommendations" was shared by one of the women in a Book Club I'm in:
I'd include the list I received in email here, but I found the page it was copied off and the author has asked that it be linked to and not reposted on the web.
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Well, I think I'm a bit behind with that list, so I'd best be getting right on it don't you think? :P
Actually, as I started perusing the list in more depth I realized that, considering I wasn't actually trying or anything, I've actually made a pretty good inroad so far:
I thank heaven for my BA in Classical Studies--it single-handedly polished off all of the "Beginning" section
High school and college English Literature courses ran the gamut of Bunyan, Joyce, Orwell; cleared a good solid chunk of Chaucer and Shakespeare; and dabbled with Dante and all of these poets: Donne, Milton, Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Yeats, Eliot.
Robert Frost is my all time favourite poet and I've read all his poems at least once. One of my two all time favourite poems is The Road Not Taken, which I have been able to quote from memory since I was about 10. It's also a good summary of my general attitude in life. (For the record, my other "all time favourite" poem is The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes, who was contemporary with Yeats and doesn't rate a separate spot on Clifton's list, but could be included in Poets of the English Language)
Childhood reading ticks off Lewis Carol and Mark Twain
My husband took this awesome college course in "History of Speculative Fiction". I snagged each book after he was done, which captured Huxley's Brave New World, along with several other classics of the genre.
The book club I mentioned at the start of this post has also accounted for a few including Austen's Pride and Prejudice, (half of) Gabriel Carcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude (It didn't sit well with me and I just couldn't finish)
A "Negotiation Strategies" practice group I've attended a few times reviewed a few sections from Machiavelli's The Prince.
Finally, a result of a life time passion for literature and reading has also managed to put away:
More of Shakespeare than school can account for (though still not all of them)
Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights
Jane Austen's Emma
All of Edgar Allen Poe's stories (and poems)
Interestingly, although I have read some Dickens, none of the works listed are included: A Cricket on the Hearth, A Christmas Carol, and (some of) A Tale of Two Cities
A 4th edition of the reading list ("The new Lifetime Reading Plan") was released in 1997, which included quite a few more items, most notably a significant number of eastern classics and some key works by that most prolific of authors Anonymous. Of the additions to that list I've also read:
The Epic of Gilgamesh (English Lit)
Parts of Sun-tzu's The Art of War (through the "Negotiation Strategies" practice group)
Parts of the The Koran (just 'cause)
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (another just 'cause)
Parts of One Thousand and One Nights (ditto)
Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (ditto)
Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams (ditto)
I think I really will have to dig into some of the things on those lists I haven't read - especially the non-fiction works, which I'm not nearly as far along with as I am with the fiction works. Are you game?
ADDENDUM
There are very few "modern" works on these lists but the site that is linked to includes some among the Great Books Lists: Lists of Classics, Eastern and Western page. I haven't explored them in depth, but it got me thinking about what I'd add to a "Lifetime Reading Plan" of my own devising. The following immediately came to mind:
J. R. R. Tolkein, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God, Vols. 1-4
Arthur C. Clark, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Hammer of God
William Gibson, Neuromancer (Remembering Tomorrow)
James G. Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion
Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
Anne Frank, The Diary of Anne Frank
Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book, The Second Jungle Book, Puck of Pook's Hill
Hugh Lofting, (complete tales of) Doctor Doolittle
Richard Adams, Watership Down
L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables, A Tangled Web
So, how about you? What books would you add to a "Lifetime Reading Plan" of your own devising?
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