Plugging a LDR into GPIO pins of a Raspberry Pi
The best way to do this would be to use a transistor as a comparator to make the transition sharp.
Here is an example circuit:



It uses the LDR as the upper part of a voltage divider. When the LDR resistance drops the voltage at the transistor base rises and turns it on. The transistor can be any general purpose NPN.
We can calculate the resistor value based on whereabouts we want the turn on to happen.  

Let's say the LDR resistances goes from 200&Omega; (dark) to 10k&Omega; (dark). We want the transistor to turn on when the LDR is at 5k&Omega;. The supply (V+) is at 3.3V. 
A typical NPN transistor turns on at around 0.7V, so if we do:

5,000 * (0.7 / 3.3) = 1060&Omega; needed for the base resistor. We can pick a 1k&Omega; resistor since it's near enough. Adjust your values to suit your turn on point. 

Here is a simulation of the circuit:



The horizontal axis is the LDR resistance, and the blue line is the voltage at the Vout point (You connect this to the Rpi input pin - must be set to input. You can add a 1k&Omega; resistor between Vout and the Rpi pin to protect it in case of accidentally setting it to output)
We can see the transistor turns on at around 5k&Omega; as predicted (won't be exact as the transistor base-emitter voltage will vary with temperature, etc but near enough for your purposes)  

Note that the transistor output is low when it's light and high when it's dark, you can swap the LDR and resistor around and use 5,000 * (3.3 / 0.7) = 23.5k&Omega; for the resistor if you want it the other way round - this is actually a better configuration as it draws less current (due to higher resistances) so if that's important use this version.