Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

Bookish Mardi: A Book Review of  Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

"When someone stops knocking, eventually you stop knocking." 
- Ransom Riggs

If you have been following my Bookish Mardi posts, in my last book review , I made mention of a friend who introduced Gayle Forman to me. It is also the same college friend who had introduced me to Mr. Ransom Riggs. It was her status "When someone won't let you in, eventually you stop knocking."  via FB that made me include the book in my RL (Reading List) and by fate's hand, I was able to own this series. So as not to bore you with my so many blah blah blah's, here goes another book meandering. ^_^

Book Review

To start with, the moment I had this series, I really thought it would be a kind of horror, WHICH I was a  bit excited to read  since it's the very first horror genre in my shelf. I noticed the book's grayish cover which heightened what I was thinking. PLUS, (well to be honest, because of too much excitement) I flipped the book to go over the photographs in it. 

It was just on the latter part that I found out it was never a horror story at all but a twist of X-Men kind of a story. It was precisely about supernatural powers. It was after reading the first pages when I realized that the girl on the cover page was actually levitating. Hence nothing made the cover creepy at all. Tsk3x! I was, to admit, quiet expecting to much about the book after reading its very first paragraph. However, as I made progress with the book, I was disappointed of not meeting my mind's expectation. 

Although the book had opened its door for me to another genre, I couldn't say I have loved the book and its story the way I used to be to my usual favorite.  In one way or another, it had been dragging me at some point. However, it's still worth reading. The author's idea of merging old and unusual photographs into the story played a very signigicant role, quirky enough, it made me want to  unravel more of the story.

This book also enabled me to revisit one of my childhood fantasies - having what they called "super powers". When I was a child, I always wanted to know how and what others were thinking from minute insects, trainable animals to the unfathomable humans. Though it is not much of great power, it always amused me and even until today to be able to read somebody's thinking and to be able to know somebody's way of thinking and what urged them to think such way. This thought never flew away when I was reading the book. It was such great idea for Mr. Riggs to made me relive my chilhood just by reading his masterpieces.

To tell you, would it be funny to admit I was also thinking of being one among Jacob's other world's friends IF I had been blessed with my ability to read mind??? It would surely be nice reading my own name in this book. HAHAHAHAH! Silly me. ^_^

Moreover, time travelling, being evident in the story, gave much impact of the book. Staying physically young despite of the characters' ages also carried a significant aspect of the story. These two are actually the things I found fascinating about the book. And to wrap it up, it's still worth reading! :))


Book Summary

Jacob Portman grew up listening to his grandfather's stories about his life at Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, and looking at photographs of children who were peculiar indeed. A levitating girl, an invisible boy . . . all found a safe haven in Miss Peregrine's watch from the terrible monsters who sought them.

But when Jacob gets older, he realizes that the story can't possibly be true, and all of those photographs must have been faked. Meanwhile his grandfather gets more paranoid every day that the monsters that the monsters will find him. 

When something terrible happens, Jacob journeys to the tiny island that was his grandfather's home to prove to himself once and for all that the stories aren't true. But the truth is far more peculiar that he ever imagined. 



Remarkable Lines from the Book

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children 

"Who seem to die live." - Ralph Waldo Emerson 

"I had just come to accept woule be ordinary when extraordinary things began  to happen." - Jacob Portman

". . . so one day my mother sat me down and explained that I couldn't become an explorer because everything in the world had alreadt been discovered." - Jacob

"I'd been born in the wrong century, and I felt cheated." - Jacob

Photo from Web

"We built pyramids of things that could be saved or salvaged and oyramid of things for the Dumpster." - Jacob

". . . it's easy to say you don't care about money when you have plenty of it." - Jacob

". . .walking is for poor people." - Jacob

"People get too old to care for a place, their family writes them off for one reason or another - it's sad, but it happens." - Jacob

". . . the easiest kind of lying is when you leave things out of a story rather than make them up." -  Jacob

"When someone wont let you in, eventually you stop knocking." - Worm/Dylan

"Sometimes you just need to go through a door." - Jacob

"Old people die." - Jacob

"I guess I don't believe things are ever that simple." - Franklin Portman

"Why would you diguise your identity in a letter?  Because you have something to hide. Because you are the other woman." - Jacob

"That house is such an emotionally loaded place for you, just being inside was enough to trigger a stress reaction." - Dr. Golan

"I undertstood only two things: that I was quite possibly in the midst of losing my mind, and that I needed to get away from people until I could figure out whether or not I actually was." - Jacob

"Polite persons do not eavesdrop on the conversation of others!" - Miss Peregrine

"The composition of the human species is infinitely more diverse than most human aspects." - Miss Peregrine

"The real taxonomy of Homo Sapiens is a secret known to only a few, of whom you will now be one." - Miss Peregrine

"Peculiar children are not always, or even usually, born to peculiar parents, and peculiar parents do not always, or even usually, bear peculiar children." - Miss Peregrine

"We peculiars are blessed with skills that common people lack, as infinite in combination and variety as others are in the pigmentation of their own skin or the appearance of their facial features." - Miss Peregrine

"Males lack seriousness of temperament required of persons withsuch responsibilities." - Miss Peregrine

"The future isn't so grand after all. Nothing wrong with the good old here and now!" - Miss Peregrine

"The changeover is ever so beautiful." - Claire

"You're right, Dad. Dr. Golan did help me. But that doesn't mean he has to control every aspect of my life." - Jacob

"I'm no expert on girls, but when one tries to pinch your nose four times, I'm pretty sure that's flirting." - Jacob

"When would sickness and death be overcome by science?" - Jacob

"See you tomorrow, future boy!" - Emma

"It may appear to you thwt we've found a way to cheat death, but it's an illusion." - Miss Peregrine

"I've live long enough to see some truly dreadful things." - Miss Peregrine

"Yes (loop) it was beautiful and life was good, but if every day were exactly alike and if the kids really couldn't leave, . . .then this place wasn't just heaven but a kind of prison, too." - Jacob

"It was just so hynotizingly pleasant that it might take a person years to notice, and by then it would be too late; leaving would be too dangerous." - Jacob

". . .if people here insisted on keeping things secret, well, I'd just have to find stuff out for myself." - Jacob

"Something I was beginning to discover about lying: The more I did it, the easier it got.' - Jacob

". . . we're never safe - none of us - not really."  - Emma

". . .which is why we call them hollowgast - because their hearts, their souls, are empty." -Miss Peregrine

"Will I ever be safe anywhere?" - Jacob

"Someone's got to be a hero." - Millard

". . .what an unchallenging life it would be if we always for things right on the first go." - Dr. Golan

"If you must fail, fail spectacularly!" - Dr. Golan

"Stars, too, were time travelers. How many of those ancient points of light were the last echoes of suns now dead? How many were born but their light not yet come this far? If all suns but ours collapsed tonight, how many lifetimes would it take us  to realize that we were alone? I had always known the sky was full of mysteries - but not until now had I realized how full of them the earth was." - Jacob

"Sometimes it's better not to look back." - Jacob

Photo from Web

Few of the Photographs from the Books 

Title Page 

Olive Abroholos Elephanta The Levitating Girl

A man with a mouth at the back of the head

Flexibility

The Reflection

Emma Bloom Fire Girl

. . .from Abe Portman

. . .from Emma Bloom

.Hollowgast

Wight

Keep updated for the quotes from the book's sequel. ^_^

- Cee Brensan 

Quotes from Where She Went by Gayle Forman

Bookish Mardi: Where She Went by Gayle Forman 

"Letting go. Everyone talks about it like it's the easiest thing."

- Gayle Forman 

Book Summary

It's been three years since the last devastating accident. . .

three years since Mia walked out of Adam's life forever.

Now living in opposite coasts, Mia is Julliard's rising star and Adam is LA tabloid fodder,  thanks to his new rock star status and celebrity girlfriend. When Adam gets stuck in New York himself, chance brings  couple together again, for one last night. As they explore the city that has become Mia's home, Adam and Mia revisit the past and open their hearts to the future - and each other. 

Told in Adam's point of view in the spare lyrical poetry that defined If I Stay, Where She Went explores the devastation of grief, the promise of new hope, and the flame of rekindled love. ( Source: Gayle Forman) 

Remarkable Lines from the Book 

"Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink." - Edna St. Vincent Millay

"It's just one day, one twenty-four-hour period to get yourself through." - Adam Wilde

"I got through yesterday, I'll get through today." - Adam Wilde

"These days, you've gotta milk a dollar out of every dime." -  Suits Label 

"People tend to freak out when something diverges from their expectations." Adam Wilde

"Rumors, even true ones, are like flames: Stifle the oxygen and they sputter and die." - Adam Wilde

"A day might just be twenty-four hours but sometimes, getting through just one seems as impossinle as scaling Everest." - Adam Wilde

"Pictures can be pretty deceptive." - Adam 

"Karma's not like a bank . Make a deposit, take a withdrawal." - Adam Wilde

"The brain is a fragil instrument and we may not know for a few week what specific regions have been affected, but young people are so very resilient." - Social Worker

"The brain can only handle so much, so it filters in a bit at a time, , digests slowly." - S.W

"The world might look different in a year or two." - Granny

...spare me this little segway , my birthdate , because I strongly believe  that seeing ur own special date in a novel you love  occurs so rarely ^_^

"Of all the gin joints in the world, she has to walk into mine. But then I have to remind myself that I walked into her gin joint." - Adam Wilde

"How is it possible that a boyfriend ceases to exist from one day to another." - Adam Wilde

"A man has his limits." - (random woman)

"You get used to a lot of thing." - Mia

"Sorry I forget sometimes that the entire world isn't up on the minutiae of classical music." - Mia

". . . some things you can't control, no matter how hard you try." - Adam 

"I should be happy. I should be grateful. But the problem is, I never can get away from feeling 

"This was just how adult relationships were, how love felt once you had a few battle scars." - Adam 

"In that incestuous way of fate, Mia's a part of our own history , and we're among the shards of her legacy." - Adam

"Ever hear the one about the dog that spent its entire life chasing cars and finally caught one - and had no idea what to do with it? I'm that dog.
Because here I am alone with Mia Hall, something I['ve fantasized about now for more than three years, and it's like, now what? - Adam

"Are we really talking about parking? When neither of us, as far as I can tell,  owns a car here." - Adam

"Old friend? Is  that a promotion? Or a demotion?"  - Adam

"Rock star. The words are so full of smoke and mirrors that it's impossible to find a real person behind them. But I am a rock star. But I fucking hate that term, and hearing Mia pin it on me ups the level of my loathing to a new stratosphere." - Adam

". . . you never really know how one person's absence will affect you more than another." - Adam 

"It's time for both of us to get back to our lives." - Mia

" . . . there's a wordls of difference between knowing something happened, even knowing why it happened, and believing it." - Adam 

"Everyone has hardship in their life. Everyone has pain." - Mia

"The music is the void. And you're the reason why."  - Adam

"We all go off a cliff sometimes." - Adam

"There are worse things to blow than your reputation, aren't they?" - Adam

". . .my gender was divvied into two neat piles - Men and Guys. Basically, all the saints of the world, Men. The jerks, the players, the wet T-shirt contest aficionados? They were the guys. Back then I was a Man." - Adam

"Do you honestly think that where you're buried has any bearing on where your spirit lives?" - Adam

"Maybe I am nuts and just don't think I am because crazy people never think they're crazy, right?" - Mia

". . .the world feels so big when you're out in the wide open. It's like you don't have a place in it when you don't have a home." -  Mia

"You're a total freak. But you're my freak." - Adam

"Fake it till you make it. - Adam

Adam: So let's hear another one of your rational fears.
Mia: I'm scared of losing you.

"I don't believe in coincidences anymore."  - Mia

". . .well you plus me, we're like MTV plus Lifetime." - Adam 

"Quitting's not hard. Deciding to quit is hard. Once you make that mental leap, the rest is easy." - Mia

"It was you plus me. It was us." - Mia

". . .people's good intentions can wind up putting us in boxes as confining as coffins." - Ernesto

"There's sowardly, Mia. And then there's cruel! Is that who you've become?" - Adam

"Letting go. Everyone talks about it like it's the easiest thing. Unfurl your fingers one by one until your hand is open."- Adam 

 "I blame her for all of this, for leaving, for ruining me. And maybe that was the seed of it, but from that one little seed grew this tumor of a flowering plant. And I'm  the one who nurtures it. I water it. I care for it. I nibble from its poison berries. I let it wrap around my neck, choking the air right out of me. I've done that. All by myself. All to myself." - Adam

"I've never screamed in my life, so loud  my breath is knocking down the streets of Manhattan. I'm sure of it. And as I battle with invisible waves and imaginary vortexes and demons that are  all too real and of my own making, I actually feel something in my chest open, a feeling so intense it's like my heart's about to burst." - Adam

"Fantastic drummers and singing guitar players don't grow on trees." - Adam

"They say everything happens for a reason, but I don't  know that I buy that. I don't know that I'll eer see a reason for what happened to Kat, Denny and Teddy that day." - Adam

"Closure. I loathe that word." - Adam

"There never would have been a Bryn if you hadn't decided you needed to hate me." - Adam

"I don't hate you. I don't think I ever really did. I was just anger. And once I faced it hean-on, once I understood it, it  dissipated." - Mia

"I had to watch you from this distance, watch you achieve your dreams, live what seemed like this perfect." - Mia

- Mia

"Concert doesn't mean standing up like a target in front of thousands of strangers. It means coming together. It means harmony." - Adam

"I can't lose you again. It will really kill me this time." - Adam

"Wherever you go, I'll go." - Adam 

"It's my turn to see you through." - Mia

"There's nothing to lose. Or maybe I've already lost it anf found it, and whatever else there migt be to lose, it's got nothing to do with what's on this stage."- Adam 

Excerpts of Adam's Songs

Stitch

Dust

Messy

Disconnect

Roulette

Bullet

Boo!

Bridge

Blue

Animate