Only one more month 'til Christmas...

I love Thanksgiving. Seriously, it's probably one of my favorite holidays ever. How can you not love stuffing yourself silly not just once, but twice in one day?! You can't go wrong with pie. Nor with turkey sandwiches for the next week. Mmm, Thanksgiving. And it's all in the name of gratitude. What a wonderful attribute. I'm sure grateful for such a tasty holiday.

I also really like the break that it affords us poor college students. It was awesome to not have to go to class, even though I had to bust my butt working on papers that I had procrastinated. By the way, procrastination is bad. Just ask Elder Hallstrom.

I've been reading a lot lately. Just a month or so ago, Jess and I finished Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" series. A lot of hubbub has risen up lately because of the movie coming out soon, and the fact that Pullman is a self-declared atheist. The third book, The Amber Spyglass, contains one of the most controversial scenes where the two main characters kill the angel who is pretending to be God. A lot of people feel like "His Dark Materials" is Pullman's proselyting material--how he's peddling atheism. I personally thought the series was a lot of fun, and there were a lot of interesting ideas contained in it. I can see where the concern would come from, though, and so I've started looking into some of the books that people have written to analyze the series. I'll let you know what I find. One that I just picked up discusses how there is an inherent spirituality in the book even though religion is rejected. I'm only a couple of pages in, so I have a lot more to go before I understand exactly what they're talking about.

More recently I've read the "Wrinkle in Time" series by Madeline L'Engle, and I'm currently reading her book, Many Waters, which is a companion volume to the other three. I like how L'Engle is not afraid to reference God in a positive way in her books--they're definitely not religious books like C.S. Lewis's "Chronicles of Narnia," but they don't cast aspersions on religion or spirituality. It's just an accepted part of life for her characters.

I think it will be interesting to see what happens with the "His Dark Materials" series... I'm sure things will get even crazier than they did with Harry Potter.

Oh yeah, and the BYU - Utah game was amazing. Glad to have another year of bragging rights, and a year where I won't have to be hassled by the inlaws because of my affinity for the Y.