Some Book Reviews

It's been awhile since I've done some book reviews so here is my take on what I've been reading right now.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children- Ransom Riggs

I found this at Rediscovered Books this weekend and read it in about four hours. The book is interspersed with this old, undoctored photographs of bizarre images maily of children in intresting costumes or doing peculiar things. This inspired the author to write a story about peculiar children and the result of this incredible book. It had a definite gothic twist and there were some parts that generally creeped me out a little bit. The protagonist, Jacob, is reeling from the death of his beloved grandfather and decides to investigate the places of his grandfather's past and find out of the stories his grandfather told were true. While on an isolated island in Wales, Jacob finds the house where his grandfather grew up after espcaing from the Nazis.. and a whole lot more. I dont' want to give too much away because there is so much integral to the story that can be spoiled but this book comes highly recommended. It was a slightly disappointing ending but the rest of it was great and the photographs are chilling and hard to look away from.

The Radley's by Matt Haig

I haven't finished this one yet but am enjoying it so far. It's in the Vampire genre, but not lame like Twilight. It follows the Radley family, a family of Vampires who have tried to assimilate into society which includes abstaining from blood. A pretty horiffic event causes them to rethink everything that they believe and how they act in their commnuity. I picked the book because at first I thought it might be about the Radleys in To Kill A Mockingbird and so was slightly surprised but not in a bad way. It's been an interesting read- although I must say that it reads more like a movie than it does a book. I'm looking forward to finishing it.

Isn't it sad that this is the most fun fiction reading I've done in the last month? Ugh, it's so sad. That's because my reading has been fascinating tomes like "A Global History of Modern Historiography" by Iggers and Wang, "The Decline and Fall of the Aristocracy" by David Cannadine, "Class and Culture" by Ross McKibbin, "The Age of Illusion" by Ronald Blythe, "The Historian's Craft" by Marc Bloch, among many, many others... Not that these aren't fun but they take way too much energy to read...