There are a lot of middle grade and YA books that I missed out on when I was younger out of a combination of factors: my precocious reading level and curiosity about forbidden things leading me to eschew age-appropriate material and check out adult books as soon as possible, and a lack of reliable guidance (or the motivation to seek out such guidance) regarding which books in various series came first. So His Dark Materials has languished for years on my mental TBR, waiting for a combination of interest and good cold weather to push me into starting.

This Christmas I got both, with record low temperatures and a suggestion from my partner that it might be a good time to give Philip Pullman a try.

I suspect that The Golden Compass is the sort of book to grow richer with rereadings, ideally first consumed in childhood and revisited much later. While I didn't have that experience, I still greatly enjoyed the one I did. Pullman writes with a bracing respect for young readers, refusing to patronize them or shield them from the sinister implications of the story they're reading, and giving them a rough-edged and compelling heroine to piece things together alongside. There is much in the way of adventure, fascinating societies, and talking bears to engage the wonderment of readers of all ages.

It was interesting to read this for the first time in the context of 2022, when conservatives are engaged in "groomer" discourse that reveals their own deep-seated obsession with children's sexuality. I would say that perhaps they would benefit from reading a book that seems to have much to say about people such as themselves, but I suspect that they would misconstrue it.