Strange and different books!

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!