It’s a young adult fiction kind of weekend. 🙂
I started Gabrielle Zevin’s All These Things I’ve Done last night and couldn’t put it down!
Next up: Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, by Ransom Riggs (that name’s too good to be real!).
What I’m Reading, 10.09.11
I have Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children on my list at the library. Can’t wait to read it!
I’m starting it today. We’ll have to swap notes once you read it!
Karen, put Swamplandia! on your list.
Got it! 🙂
I had high expectations of Swamplandia! based on the buzz; I’m a lover of southern gothic and thought this would be right up my alley. It’s the story of the Bigtree family, a “tribe” who runs the alligator-wrestling park Swamplandia! in an island chain off of Florida. Having the island to themselves except for the tourists, the Bigtrees inhabit a very different sort of world; they have a museum filled with family artifacts, children who are homeschooled and rarely set foot on the “mainland,” and a mother who wrestles alligators. Things hum along nicely until their mother, Hilola Bigtree, succumbs to cancer, throwing the entire family into a tailspin.
The writing is very descriptive and quite lovely, but at times it almost feels like too much–or perhaps just feels misplaced, as sometimes it felt like you had to wade through a great deal of description to get to the plot. The switching of chapters between Ava and Kiwi’s perspective also felt a bit jarring at times; it felt you’d just gotten into one storyline when you were yanked back into another. The novel itself has a very original feel while also recalling some other great works of literature; Ava’s character is sometimes reminiscent of Scout from “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Unfortunately while there were moments I couldn’t put the book down, there were also moments I wanted to walk away from it forever, which made for a disjointed reading experience. Overall this scores major points for originality, but the originality is compromised by the uneven character and pace of the novel. It was worth the read, but didn’t quite live up to the hype for me.
I rarely read books nowadays…. mostly blogs! LOL!
I’m just finishing up a book and looking for some very scary novels. It’s October : )
Yes it is! Spooky! 🙂
Ooh I read Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children! It was very scary and spooky at the beginning but the rest of the book was intriguing and suspenseful. I highly recommend it! And the creepy/cool photos add a nice touch.
Hi Maggie,
I take it you’re a YA fiction fan. What other books in the genre have you read and liked?
Gurl, you need a kindle. hee hee
Will check these out! Your last recommendation (The Hunger Games) was amazing.
I know, I know. I read really fast, though, and am afraid that with a Kindle I’ll just fly through the books! I find the act of physically having to turn the page helps slow me down.
How was your trip to Cancun?
I loved Gabrielle Zevin’s books Elsewhere and Memoirs Of A Teenage Amnesiac, I haven’t picked this one up yet! I really recommend Laura Whitcomb’s A Certain Slant Of Light, definitely one that you can’t put down 🙂