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It is with great delight that we announce that bridgetothestars.net is under new management, along with a new team of dedicated staff.
In future, we want to reach out to not only more fans of His Dark Materials, but also those of Philip Pullman, and those with an interest in some of the themes, concepts and philosophies touched upon in the trilogy. In the days/weeks/months to come, we aim to bring more activity to the site, with more visitors, and more discussion – and we hope that those of you who are reading this will continue to be part of our community.
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Philip Pullman’s January 20 speech defending public libraries against government cuts (first reported on BridgetotheStars here has met with a rousing reception online. An article published in The Guardian today notes that an online version of the speech has been read 20,000 times in the past two days.
News was spread mainly via Twitter and other social media, with comments on The Guardian‘s article and the posted speech being mainly supportive and positive.
A French translation of the speech can be found here at Città gazze.
All three installments of His Dark Materials have been featured in Nielsen Bookscan’s top selling books list, which covers 90% of all retail book purchases within the United Kingdom. From 1998 to 2010, Northern Lights is ranked 42nd, the Subtle Knife 66th and the Amber Spyglass 96th. Since 1998, 2392767 copies have been sold, earning £13.7 million.
Other books featured in this list include: the entire Harry Potter series, autobiographies by Paul O’Grady and Barack Obama, cookbooks by Delia Smith and Jamie Oliver and classics like To Kill A Mockingbird and The Catcher in the Rye.
The list can be found in its entirety on the Guardian’s website.
Blogger Book Maven reports that Philip Pullman was amongst several speakers at a meeting of the Oxfordshire Anti-Cuts Alliance (OACA) last week specifically about libraries and the threat they are under. A number of libraries in Oxfordshire are to have funding withdrawn but the public are to be offered the chance to run them as volunteers; in effect they are earmarked for closure. Pullman apparently gave a corker of a speech, dealing well with a heckler and pointing out that it is the council’s duty to fight against cuts and preserve library services. He went on to say that his interest in libraries was simply through love.
Philip Pullman will be reading at a read-in at Oxford Central Library on February 5th at 12 noon. Read all about last week’s meeting here.
Article on this matter found in the Cherwell.
