World Book Night: The First Batch

I’ve read through the first five of my thirty-three unread World Book Night titles. It’s an exciting year so far and I can’t wait to move further down the list. I haven’t read anything Earth shattering yet but there are some solid books to look forward to.

Ransom Riggs’ Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is exactly my kind of scary (as in not scary at all but with a high creep factor). Using a series of very strange and very cool vintage photographs Riggs tells the story of Jacob’s discovery of Miss Peregrine’s orphanage. Jacob’s great grandparents died in Poland as the Third Reich entered Eastern Europe, but before that happened they sent their son (Jacob’s grandfather) to a special home on an island off the coast of Wales. There Miss Peregrine took care of children orphaned by the war and hunted by monsters. As Jacob looks deeper into his grandfather’s past he discovers that Miss Peregrine’s was not a home for ordinary orphans and the monsters his grandfather fought were more than just Nazis. It all gets a little overthetop, but it is a lot of fun. Riggs built the novel around actual found photographs; this creates a few narrative difficulties, but makes for a unique reading experience.

 

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford is more sentimental than my usual fare, but I so enjoyed this novel. I got caught up in everything that I wanted for the characters and it was often difficult to stop reading. Ford stays away from soapboxing and moralizing in this tale of love in the time of Japanese internment and tells a somewhat deceptively simple story of first loves, family obligations, betrayal, and loyalty. A really enjoyable read and the book I will be handing out on April 23^rd!

I am a long time fan of A Prairie Home Companion. I was so excited to read Pontoon because while I love Garrison Keillor’s radio show I had never read any of his Lake Wobegone novels. This book just didn’t do anything for me. I would venture to say it is the weirdest book I have ever read. A lot of descriptions of weird sex, sad people, and outlandish events. Sure some of it is funny but most of it is just absurd.

Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow is probably the book on the list that I will like the least, but I have gotten used to the one dark mystery novel on the list each year. I chose to do this one in audiobook and that was definitely one of my better decisions. It is narrated by Edward Herrman who is quite possibly one of the best audiobook narrators ever (Richard Gilmore forever!). So, Presumed Innocent is a piney romance novel with a murder at its core. I have dubbed it a Sex-Mystery; is this a genre? Interesting fact: conversations with other readers have shown me that this novel is the 1987 version of Gone Girl – a megabestselling dark mystery with an explosive twist. Everyone read it and everyone talked about it. Not for me but good going WBN book pickers; I think this one will be popular on the 23^rd.

It feels strange to say but I had no real emotional response to Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, and I typically like this type of memoir for all the feels it provides. I enjoyed reading about her progress, following her as she hiked the Pacific Crest Trail in order to kick heroin and become the person she needed to be. I admired her strength as a person and talents as a writer, but on the whole Wild did not move me. I’m going to chalk that up to too much hype and expectation. I will definitely be reading more of Strayed’s work though.

My Recomendations for Suzy

Last week I posted a short film by Wes Anderson on Facebook; the short accompanies his new film, Moonrise Kingdom. It's a series of animated scenes from the six fictitious books that Suzy Bishop reads from and lugs around in a suitcase throughout the film. Suzy and I just happen to have similar reading tastes (we both like adventure stories featuring mostly female heroes), so after I bemoaned the fact that The Francine Odysseys does not exist I started thinking about what books I would recommend to Suzy if she came to my store.

Tony DiTerlizzi's The Search for WondLa is the story of Eva Nine's search for other humans like herself. The story begins as she is forced out of the subterranean home where she has spent the first twelve years of her life. Eva has never been above ground and never been contacted by any other humans, but she holds a small picture of a woman, a child, and a robot with the word "WondLa" printed across it as proof that they do exist and she is not alone.


My love for Catherynne Valente's The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making knows no bounds. The title alone is one of my favorite things (the sequel: The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There is due out this fall!). Fairyland tells the story of September, a bored girl from Omaha, who absconds to Fairyland on the back of a Green Wind. Once in Fairyland she is made to do the bidding of a wicked Marquess but along the way September meets the most wonderful characters who help her restore Fairyland to its former greatness.


The scariest book on my list must be Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs. This is the story of an abandoned children's home that was once filled with dangerous children. Sixteen-year-old Jacob finds Miss Peregrine's after it has been quarantined and abandoned, but the Peculiar Children may still be alive. The novel is told between text and very creepy photographs; it is a reading experience that is perfectly peculiar.


Slightly less creepy, but with plenty of spook is Kathleen O'dell's The Aviary. Clara Dooley lives in the town's haunted mansion along with the much feared widow Glendoveer, but she does not see what the other kids find so scary. Her mother, who was hired to take care of the house and grounds, does not let Clara hear the stories about the house or the mystery that surrounds it, but one day a caged mynah speaks to her and the mystery begins to unravel.




For a step away from fantasy (but not too far), I would recommend When You Reach Me, Rebecca Stead's Newberry award winning novel  about a young girl receiving notes from the future - notes that tell her she must act to save her friend's life. This is one of the best middle grade mysteries I have ever read!

Darwen Arkwright moves from England to Atlanta, Georgia and his entire life is thrown into tumult in Darwen Arkwright and the Peregrine Pact by A.J. Hartley. Not only does he have to contend with all of the troubles involved with moving to a new school in a new town in a new country but there's also the truth about his parents that he has difficulty admitting to himself. Oh, and Darwen has recently discovered that he can walk through mirrors into another world! He begins to escape so frequently into this other world that our world becomes threatened and Darwen and his new friends must figure out how to put things back to right again.



Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass and the other books in the His Dark Materials trilogy are not yet 20 years old, yet they have already achieved classic status. Commonly referred to as the anti-Narnia, Pullman's books about Lyra Belacqua's adventures are a standard in children's fantasy. Lyra's story begins in The Golden Compass when she spies on her uncle explaining the celestial phenomenon known as Dust to a group of scholars in the college where she has grown up. Lyra is then thrust into a story of witches, seafaring clans of gypsies, armored bears and much, much more.


In case you missed it: