Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

Local Bookstore

So I've been going through a reading slump, and this book was the root of it. I've been meaning to read it ever since it came out, but it wasn't until my friend Christine begged me to read it that I finally eventually did. I know, I know, a movie is in the works and all that. I knew I'd get around to it, but there's so many other books I wanted to read and... sigh, okay. My heart wasn't in it. But why? This seems like everything I could possibly want in a book! Creepy Victorian children? Check. Weird vintage photography? Check. (I have a folder dedicated to them on my desk top, and a Pinterest board too) So why was I resistant?
Okay, I loved the idea for this - a guy has a collection of weird old pictures so he makes up stories about them? That's pretty cool. But the story... Well, let's start the review.
I'm a completionist. I have the rest of the series sitting on my bookshelf right now, so I have to finish the whole thing. Even if... I wasn't particularly feeling it. I thought the book moved far too slowly for my taste, but luckily there are two books I haven't read. This, too me, feels like a set-up. A trap. Even worse because this book ends with a cliff-hanger. Can I even tell you want this was even about? It took incredibly long for us to learn that it might be best if I don't. Screw it. So this kid from Florida, Jacob, watches helplessly as a monster kills his beloved grandfather. But no one believes him because he is a dirt-bag teen and teens suck obviously monsters aren't real and it was probably wolves or something. But Jacob is adamant and he's sent to a therapist who convinces him to research some of the stories his grandfather told him growing up, you know, to prove to himself that he hadn't seen an actual monster kill his grandfather.
Jacob's research sends him to a tiny fishing island off the coast of Wales. After a lot of bullshit (no one likes this American Dirt-Bag Teen in Wales. No One.) Jacob finds the actual children his grandfather grew up with before WWII - the Peculiar children who have unique abilities.
Jacob is alright, but Emma, the girl who once loved his grandfather and now is falling for him, a bit of a fire brand (literally), irritates me to no end. She's some embodiment of a male fantasy that in real life no man could deal with for very long.
In the end that may be the thing that urks me most about this book - the subtle pretentiousness of a hip, edgy male author and his Gary-Sue hero.

Book Lottery

Here's a quickie blog post - one long, bored afternoon I decided to write out on tiny slips of paper the title of every book that I own and haven't read yet, folded them up into minuscule squares, and filled up a small jar with it. This way, whenever I'm completely stumped and don't know what to read next, all I have to do is give the jar a good shake and pick a slip of paper with a book title on it. I'll have no choice but to read it! (That's the agreement I have with myself.)

here it is! My Owl Jar on my bookshelf.

I was worried when I started this project that it would have interesting and mixed results. For instance, what if I picked a book within a series? I solved that issue by only putting the most recently unread title into the jar. When that one is finished, I'll put in the next unread title in the series into the jar until I eventually get to it. Of course, I won't put in titles that I've already read, and will throw out the slips of paper out once they're done.
But there's another problem that I was worried about. So, I'm nearly done with a bunch of library books and other titles I borrowed from friends, and I decided it was finally time to work out my system.
I took down the owl jar, gave it a shake, and pulled out my next book.

I bought this book on a bargain bin - it was on sale because the spin is
printed upside own from the rest of the book ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The title I ended up pulling was a huge biography on Catherine the Great - obviously left unread because it's, well, sort of intimidating. It isn't that I'm uninterested in Catherine the Great. I'm totally game! Otherwise I wouldn't own it at all, right? It's just not exactly light, beach reading. I knew, of course, that this would be an experimental arrangement. I didn't expect to get something so dense right out of the gate. All of my history books are for research-y things. Needless to say, I'm intimidated!

574 pages in this book ⊙﹏⊙ ulp!

April Photo Challenge

I got a signal boost on Tumblr about a daily photo challenge on Books & Cupcakes for the month of April. I decided to play along with my Instagram account & Crappy phone camera. Check them out under the cut!