The act of true reading is in its very essence democratic. Consider the nature of what happens when we read a book - and I mean, of course, a work of literature, not an instruction manual or a textbook - in private, unsupervised, un-spied-on, alone. It isn't like a lecture: it's like a conversation. There's a back-and-forthness about it. The book proposes, the reader questions, the book responds, the reader considers. We bring our own preconceptions and expectations, our own intellectual qualities, and our limitations, too, our own previous experiences of reading, our own temperament, our own hopes and fears, our own personality to the encounter.

Pullman has narrated unabridged audiobooks of the three main novels in His Dark Materials. " Pullman chose some more obscure tales too. Literary critic Alan Jacobs (of Wheaton College) said that in His Dark Materials Pullman replaced the theist world-view of John Milton's Paradise Lost with a Rousseauist one.

title The Golden Compass. For the 70th anniversary of the Medal it was named one of the top ten winning works by a panel composing the ballot for a public election of the all-time favourite. He is the author of several best-selling books most notably the fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials and the fictionalised biography of Jesus The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ.