Let’s do bizarre stories this
week, shall we? I’ve read a few of them
lately. Two that are very similar in
style are Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs (the
sequel is coming out in January!) and
Asylum by Madeleine Roux. Both are partially told in old photos that enhance
the eerieness. The ones in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children are
all real, collected by the author over several years. The story involves a mysterious children's home on an isolated island which provided shelter for, what young Jacob believes, refugees from Hilter's Germany in the 1940's including his grandfather Abe. When Abe dies, he leaves a strange letter and message for Jacob to find the bird behind the loop, and so begins Jacob's journey to discover the secrets behind the Home for Peculiar Children.
Some of the photographs in
Asylum were taken in old asylums from the 40’s and 50’s, but some are fake.
The plot of the story is clever, but not fully developed and not as well written as Riggs' book. Both stories resound in bizarreness, but by far the better told story is Miss
Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. Pick
up both books if only to flip through and look at the photographs.
The Loop by Shandy Lawson uses
the age old sci fi device of time, or temporal, loops in which a person relives
a period in his or her life over and over again, like in the movie Groundhog
Day. In this story there are 4 people
caught in this particular loop that always ends up with teenagers Ben and
Maggie being murdered. It’s a fast paced thriller, a fun and quick read as Ben
and Maggie begin to remember more and more of what’s going to happen. The
feeling of déjà vu is enhanced by certain writing devices which you will
recognize when you get to them.
William Shakespeare meets George
Lucas in William Shakespeare’s Star Wars: Verily, a New Hope. This one’s just a silly fun take on the Star
Wars empire told in the language of Shakespeare’s plays, complete with soliloquies.The story is pretty much identical to the original Star Wars film, with the
one exception that R2D2 is an intelligent, thinking droid. His language when
speaking to other characters remains beeps and bleeps, but in asides he reveals
himself to be a wise old philosopher, along the lines of Obi Wan Kenobi. The
couplets sometimes fall flat and don’t work, but all in all this is worth the
couple of hours spent reading and enjoying if you are at all a fan of either
Shakespeare or Star Wars. Very different!
