cinderellainrubbershoes:

A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. And a strange collection of very curious photographs. It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience.

This is probably one of the best book trailers I’ve ever seen. It’s written and directed by Ransom Riggs himself.

UPDATE! Rumor has it that Tim Burton is in early talks of directing a movie adaptation of this book! :)

1. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
2. The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano
3. The Lover’s Dictionary by David Levithan
4. A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin
5. Paper Towns by John Green (technically a reread, but it’s more awesome the second time around)
6. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
7. The Girl Who Was on Fire: Your Favorite Authors on Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games Trilogy by Leah Wilson
8. Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher
9. Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist by David Levithan and Rachel Cohn
10. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
11. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Runners up!

   11.1 The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie            (review to follow! I just finished it)
   11.2 Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
   11.3 Blood Red Road by Moira Young

And there you have it! It’s been a good year for books, and I’m looking forward to meeting new book-friends and bookworm-friends in the future. :) Happy new year, everyone! DFTBA!

-Emma talking to a shot Millard so he won’t drift into unconsciousness.

Character of the Day: Olive from Ransom Riggs’ Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. Her ‘peculiarity’ is that she can levitate, although this power is beyond her control. Other kids in the home need to tie her with a rope to keep her from floating away. For the same reason, she always wears a pair of weighted shoes.

-Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (Ransom Riggs)

Review: Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children
Author: Ransom Riggs
Genre: Young Adult; Coming-of-Age, Fantasy
My Rating: ★★★★

_____

“The composition of the human species is infinitely more diverse than most humans suspect. The real taxonomy of Homo sapiens is a secret known only to a few, of whom you will now be one. At base, it is a simple dichotomy: there are coerlfolc the teeming mass of common people who make up humanity’s great bulk, and then there is the hidden branch—the crypto-sapiens, if you will—who are called syndrigast, or ‘peculiar spirit’…”

I have a strong hunch on what you’re thinking about right now, but no—it’s not X-Men: First Class’ Professor Charles Xavier blabbering about his thesis on mutant-kind. It’s a character in Ransom Riggs’ Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children speaking about, well, another “peculiar” race.

Basically the story is this: Jacob Portman has always been fascinated by his grandfather Abe’s stories. As a kid, he loved hearing them—tales about an enchanted home and kids with supernatural powers—backed by a stack of vintage photographs that the old man kept. But as he grows up, he dismisses them as bedtime fairytales and decides that the photographs are fake. When Abe dies in the hands of a creature strikingly similar to those that haunt Jacob’s dreams, the boy must embark on an adventure to clear the mist of mystery surrounding his grandfather’s last words, to shed light on Abe’s past…and perhaps, to pave the way for a new future for him, too.

Pre-reading, the whole package of this book just screams “horror” to me: on the cover you could see a grainy black and white snapshot of a girl with a tiara, and a little squint at her Mary Janes would reveal she was actually levitating. Below her was the creepy combo of the chalked and gravestone-type of the title. Most blurbs talk about a mysterious island and an old man’s riddle-like words before shifting off the mortal coil; the book trailer achieved its aim on sending chills down my spine. But when I finally sat with the book, I knew I’ve tagged it the wrong genre in my head. It has its share of spooky moments, of course, but the bigger chunk of it was more of an adventure story. Fantasy would be a misnomer too, but that’s the closest I could label it. Coming-of-age would actually do, too.

I loved Riggs’ prose. It was simple but has the prowess of a magical paintbrush, inflating a world populated with interesting characters and amazing mythology. I think Jacob was fleshed out in a good-portrait-of-an-alienated-teen kind of way, and Riggs made sure he didn’t leave out the hormones, the PSTD-ish stuff, and the innate smart aleck at the core of almost every adolescent nowadays. Topics executed wonderfully to fuel Jacob’s gradual growth as a protagonist were hard decision-making and identity-searching. The other characters were…well, peculiarly fascinating, though I guess they need more developing. I liked the ‘relationship issues’ in Jacob’s dysfunctional family, especially the tension-filled one between his grandfather and father. They added one dimension to Jacob’s fullness as a character, explaining a lot about his overall demeanor.

The collection of eerie black and white photographs interspersed with the book enhanced the narration, and it added to the enjoyment factor of reading it. I got a bit creeped out upon finding out at the end that the shots were authentic, and with the exception of a few that underwent minimal post-processing, all of them were unaltered.

If we were going to talk about originality, Miss Peregrine’s would not stand out. Theme-wise it has a good and familiar message: teens can confront monsters, whether they’re creatures lurking in the night or the ones gnawing at their hearts. Plot-wise, it was practically generic: there were a few twists and turns that I enjoyed, but at its core it was a regular bildungsroman with the “Chosen One” flavor. The young adult library was choked with that kind of formula ever since I began picking up a book in the genre. I think if it were not for the photographs, this book would perhaps not gather a lot of attention from the bookworms’ herd. Sans the awesome presentation, it would still be a decent read, but not as great as being juxtaposed with the photos.

Anyway, the combination of photos and narration was sterling, and that was enough to stop me from bellyaching some more. For a novel that was woven from a collection of snapshots from 10 different people, I think it was fascinatingly solid.

Halfway through the book I had decided that I would rate it based on what I would feel after I turned the last page, and guess what? I was actually mad.

It ended with a freaking cliffhanger.

Which meant there was going to be a sequel! My excitement at this epiphany was added to the ratio of my rating system for this book (60-40, based on photo-story). So all in all, I give this 3.9 stars. :p

A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. And a strange collection of very curious photographs. It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience.

This is probably one of the best book trailers I’ve ever seen. It’s written and directed by Ransom Riggs himself.

BOOK HAUL (September-October reads)
Currently Reading, To-Read, and To-Reread 

• A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. Status: Currently Reading. I’m only a couple of chapters in, and so far I’m liking it. It’s like a collection of interconnected short stories, mostly about an ex-punk rocker/ record executive and his kleptomaniac secretary. Music galore on every page! I’ve been meaning to read this ever since I got to Good Reads. This book won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. 
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Status: To-read. Set in futuristic America, this is a dystopian novel where the masses are hedonistic and critical thinking through reading is outlawed (thanks, Wiki). The title is said to refer to the temperature at which book paper combusts.
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon. Status: To-read. About an autistic fifteen-year-old and a murder mystery concerning his neighbor’s poodle. Everyone’s got a nerd boner for this. I got to find out why.
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. Status: To-read. First in the Swedish crime series called the “Millennium Trilogy,” this novel concerns the disappearance of Harriet Vanger, a scion of one of Sweden’s wealthiest families, and how her uncle continues to seek the truth. He hires a journalist to investigate, who in turn is helped by a tattooed punk prodigy. 
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. Status: To-reread. An epistolary coming-of-age novel centering on an introvert kid who calls himself Charlie. I’ve read this on e-book format last year, and I was more than happy to stumble upon a copy of it on Book Sale. This one reads like a direct descendant of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. I just felt like reading it again sans the terrible eye pain caused by the computer screen. :P
• The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. Status: To-read. A semi-autobiographical novel concerning a young, talented woman’s descent into mental illness while she is working as an intern for a magazine in 1950s New York City.
• Wide Awake by David Levithan. Status: To-read. Set in futuristic America where a gay Jewish president is elected. It’s about time I read something…political by Levithan! :P
• Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami. Status: To-read. It’s been a while since I last read something by this awesome author! Based on the reviews I’ve heard, it is apparent that Murakami’s three L’s are present in this novel—love, loss, loneliness. This time, though, it looks like there’s an additional L: lesbianism.
• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. Status: To-reread. What do you mean I just read this? Leave me alone, this is how I roll.
• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. Status: To-reread. It tells the story of unlikely friendship between two boys: Amir, son of a rich Afghan businessman, and Hassan, son of his father’s servant. More when I finally make a review for this! :P
• Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. Status: to-read. It’s about nine-year-old Oskar Schell and his search for the matching lock of the key that belongs to his father, who died in the World Trade Center in the morning of September 11. I wanted to read Foer’s Everything is Illuminated first, but I can’t find it. :( So yeah, this is going to be my first Foer read.
• Luna by Julie Anne Peters. Status: To-read; lent by my friend Venus. “Yeah, I loved her. I couldn’t help it. She was my brother.” About a transsexual boy named Liam, who changes his name to Luna when the sun sets.
• Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs. Status: To-read. “On an island off the coast of Wales, there was once a home for peculiar children, and one of the children who lived there was Jacob’s grandfather. He told Jacob stories about the children—the girl who could fly, the boy who had bees living inside him, the brother and sister who could lift boulders…” Honestly, it sounds like Professor Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters from X-Men. But I’m going to give this a try because The John Green recommended it. :)
• Delirium by Lauren Oliver. A dystopian young adult novel where love is considered a fatal disease (amor deliria nervosa). Don’t mind me, I just need something to fill my Hunger Games void. :P
• Hanging Out with the Dream King: Conversations with Neil Gaiman and his Collaborators. Status: To-read; again lent by my friend Venus. A collection of interviews with Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, Dave McKean, Tori Amos(!), Colleen Doran, and many more. A Gaiman fan must-have. :)
• Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor. Status: To-reread. Inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. The premise is that Carroll distorted the true events that happened in Wonderland, making its history nothing but a nonsensical book for kids. The real events are told in this book. (Not in the picture because my friend is currently reading it lol) 

Have any of you read some of my to-read books? What should I expect from them?

itsyoupeyton says:
Just to say that I’m in love with your blog :)

thank you very much! :D

writeyournameinblood says:
Dropping by your askbox again to say, you rock! From book reviews to artwork, you’re oh-so-full of awesome.

*flushes* …thank you, that’s so flattering.

skinnyassjeans asks:
Have you read “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children” ? If you have, what’s your opinion on it?

I JUST BOUGHT THAT BOOK!

The premise sounds awesome, and I heard John Green recommending it so I practically lunged at it when I saw it the last time I visited the bookstore. XP It’s the only copy there! Haha. I’m currently reading something else, though, but I’ll post a review for this when I finish it. :)