Posted by Sophie on 15:23:34 7/7/2001 from 195.92.168.169:
Good morrow fair people!

I can't believe I've only just come across this site - as a founder of the PP Yahoo club "Oxford", I'm supposed to be clued up on the whereabouts of such sites as these!

First, congrats to the creator - I love the site, and anything promoting PP is fantastic. Many 'members of the Church' (as I refer to them) have been using my good name to class PP's books as satanism, which I STRONGLY disagree with. Anyway, My name's Sophie, known as Soph, or Daja (in the Yahoo clubs), I'm 15, and live in this wonderful, rainy, tennis-mad country of England.

I first read Northern Lights 2 weeks after it came out, got Subtle Knife a week before it was due to be realeased (thanks to the nice lady at the bookshop), and spent $57 so I could get Amber Spyglass from the USA 3 weeks before it came out over here...

Anyway, needless to say, i am MAD on PP!

Mad to the extent that I appeared in the New York Times, Guardian, and other worldwide renowned newspapers, because I sent PP a pic of a squirrel saying basicly that if he didn't release AS soon, the squirrel gets it...

Unfortunately that letter was anonymous, so no one knew it was me =( But I've been tracking the squirrel ever since, and it's even appeared in a christian magazine complaining that PP is satain *chunter chunter*.

All was worthwhile though, when I met PP in a city near where I live called York, and presented him with a stuffed, plastic squirrel with a knife through it, which I am proud to say, now sits on his flower-decked PC (he sent me a pic of it!). Early this year, I went to the 'real' Oxford visiting relatives, and took pics of all the PP sites, as well as searching the botanic gardens for an hour for 'Lyra and Will's bench'.

See? i'm mad.

Anyway, that's a brief bio of me - I've read all of PP's books, with the exception of a VERY rare one called 'Galatea', published in the 70's, which I'm currently saving for...

Nice to be a part of this wonderous place,
Luv
Me.

Posted by Sophie on 19:28:41 7/23/2001 from 195.92.168.167:
Okay, WAY back in the grand ole August of 2000 (on the 11th, it'll have been a year), I was reading 'the green mile' by stephen king, and Stephen King had commented that someone had sent him a picture of a teddy-bear in chains with words cut out of newspapers saying 'Release the third book, or the bear dies!"

Now I found this rather amusing, and mentioned it in my PP fan club on Yahoo; and everyone came up with ideas for threats to send to PP...

Now I was rooting through my photo-albums, trying in vain to find a photo of my cat, which DIDN'T have my sister in, so I could send him it, and instead I found a photo of a squirrel we'd taken in York about 1992. So, i cut the squirrel out, and penned a letter, entirely in capitals (so PP could actually read it), which read:

Mr. Pullman
I enclose a picture of a very cute squirrel.
Please admire it.
Now that you have admired it, I want you to remember your book, which the world has spent eons waiting for.
Please admire the squirrel again.
Cute squirrel, isn't it?
Now, release your book or the squirrel dies.
Anon.
P.S. We are watching you. We know what you are doing. You may not be able to see us, but you know that we are out there. Fear us Mr. Pullman, and pity the poor squirrel.

So, I shoved it in an envelope, scribbled PP's home address on it, and it lay in my room for a few days, until we were moving house, and I had a stamp spare, and couldn't think what to do with it.

So, while walking the dog, I shoved it in a letter-box, and thought nothing of it.

Then, i visited my club about october time, and someone on the internet had found a thing where PP had visited Stockholm, and lo and behold, had read out my letter!

Then a few weeks later, a friend told me it had been in the New York Times, and then in the Guardian, and in various national newspapers all over the world!

Now, my club was extatic about this. And every time we saw it had been in a newspaper, we reorted it - any outsiders to the club must have thought we were quite mad.

And then it was in a christian newspaper, condemning PP as a satanist, and I wrote a VERY strongly-worded letter to them for daring to use my letter to condemn PP, but nothing came of that...

Then, PP started his world-tour, and a member of my club in california told him she knew me, and he choked on his beer (hehe...), and was VERY shocked. Then, my friend in Glasgow told him, and he was still shocked, and then when i saw him in York, I told him, and he shook my hand, and signed my books "To Sophie, Save the squirrel! Phiip Pullman" and "To Sophie. Squirrels Forever! Philip Pullman", which is why I value my books so much...

And then, I pulled out my carefully-prepared plastic squirrel with a knife through it, and told him he was "too late", and he laughed at that, and that squirrel now has pride of place on top of his flower-decked computer, to remind him to hurry up next time...

And that's my story =)
Unabridged, as you may have guessed...
Sophie.

Posted by Sophie on 14:25:24 9/11/2001 from 195.92.168.165:
I didn't cry the third time though (though I did the first and second), cos I reminded myself that they were going to be apart...
It still upsets me when I read the end of HDM, not just because of the sad ending (hardly at all because of that, because to me, the ending seems so 'right'), but because it is the end of HDM, and there will be no more stories about Lyra and Will; for 5 years I was waiting, every day thinking about AS, waiting in suspense, and now it's over, and it's not a dissapointment, but I wish it would continue forever...
Yes, you will be moved on a second-read, and on a third, and on a two-hundredth, because HDM has that quality that will never make you tire of it; it's a masterpiece, and deserves to be read time and time again.

Posted by Sophie on 13:39:14 10/11/2001 from 195.92.168.167:
I read NL or GC in a day - well, that is to say, I read 3 lines of it, gave it up for 3 weeks, then re-read it until 7am in the morning...
SK, I just sat on our sofa all day, didn't eat a thing, and just read...
And AS, I got 3 weeks early from the USA publishers (at great expense), and sat in bed with a teapot full of coffee (we didn't seem to possess a coffee-flask), and read well into the next morning...
Unfortunately, when I DID finish it, I was such a state of shock that I got out of bed (at 2pm), and stood on my glass teapot, which was now full of cold coffee, getting coffee all over AS...