The Golden Compass

I've had The Golden Compass on my To Be Read list for a while now. I wasn't planning to watch the movie first but I stumbled into it on HBO in the hotel this past week. I had heard a lot of mixed reviews of both, but I enjoyed this one. The cast line up was pretty awesome (I'm only listing the people I already knew): Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Ian McKellen, and Christopher Lee. While it took me a while to get into the movie because I didn't really know what was going on, I did come to really appreciate the characters. I absolutely adored the armored bear Iorek too. I did get blind-sided by the end. They obviously aren't finished with the story and I knew it was a trilogy, but I was not expecting it to end where it did. Overall, it was enjoyable, but if I had a do-over, I'd read the book first.