Sam Reviews "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children" by Ransom Riggs - January 2016

Sam's Notes Taken Along the Way

Prologue

"...like anything that changes you forever, split my life into halves: Before and After."  
--I always refer to my father's death as before or after "everything went crazy".

"I think they worried that my grand father would infect me with some incurable dreaminess from which I’d never recover—that these fantasies were somehow inoculating me against more practical ambitions—so one day my mother sat me down and explained that I couldn’t become an explorer because everything in the world had already been discovered. I’d been born in the wrong century, and I felt cheated."  
--I like the metaphor or being infected with dreaminess. But, also the idea that our generations and generations before are a bunch of copycats.  At the end of the day you will probably never read an original story, watch an original movie, hear an original song. It's all just adaptions of the same old, same old.

"We cling to our fairy tales until the price for believing them becomes too high..."
--When do you think you let got of fairy tales or started feeling guilty for being too dreamy or imaginative.  I think I was 9 or 10 when I started to feel bad about playing with Barbies, even though i still pretended to be a witch.  Then in middle school I definitely let go of all of the "childish" things.

"I felt ashamed for having been jealous of his life, considering the price he’d paid for it, and I tried to feel lucky for the safe and unextraordinary one that I had done nothing to deserve."

Chapter One

I always find it awkward when a relationship is so clearly "business only" - like when the narrator introduces Ricky as the guy who helps him not get beat up in return for the narrator tutoring him through English.  Also, the whole "He was, I suppose, my best friend, which is a less pathetic way of saying he was my only friend." - so awkward even though I know a few people like that.

I really love stories that have real moments along with the impossible.  Like the Jacob finds his grandfather slashed open and he thinks "Grandpas are supposed to die in bed, quietly, not like this".  That is a very realistic thought even though this is a categorized as a fantasy novel.

Chapter Two

What kinds of things do you guys consider garbage vs. treasure?  In this chapter the collections the narrator wants to keep are the water damaged National Geographics, the bowling shirts, the weapons in the cabinet, and the Big Band and Swing 78's.  I would probably have gotten rid of the damaged magazines and the shirts but the weapons and records, while worth money also have sentimental value and are therefore worth more than pawnshop shelves, in my opinion.

I really do love plays on words, so the "bird who smoked a pipe" being Miss Peregrine herself is just beautiful to me.  Also I love the circular logic that as a kid Jake wanted to be an explorer and now he and his dad are going of on an adventure to this strange island.

"I did love her, of course, but mostly just because loving your mom is mandatory, not because she was someone I think I’d like very much if I met her walking down the street. Which she wouldn’t be, anyway; walking is for poor people."

Chapter Three

I can't imagine how awkward it would be having to ask strangers to take me somewhere, not even tour guides, just random people in town.

The rap scene was painful, although I did appreciate the mention of Doctor Who, it was still painful.

Chapter Four

There story of the bunny costume Halloween seemed really forced, like it was only written to utilize the picture in the book, it was kind of a bummer.

When the narrator is talking about how he doesn't want to believe his grandfather was a bad person, it struck a cord with me.  When my dad died and I found out all the bad stuff he'd done in the past and everything, I was mad at first, but now I don't wanna remember him for that.  So even if the grandfather had been a lying, cheating, terrible father, the narrator wouldn't remember him that way anyway.  I think part of that is human nature, not just that you shouldn't talk ill of the dead, but how we all tend to idolize people once they're gone.

The story of the Old Man who died in the bog reminds me of this movie I watched with Jeff - Jughead - where they had to sacrifice people to this well.

Chapter Five

"Yeah, he was a psychobabble-spewing prick. But that didn’t make him wrong."

Chapter Six

“'He was lucky in a way. It wasn’t long and drawn-out. No months in a hospital hooked up to machines.' That was ridiculous, of course—his death had been needless, obscene—but I think it made us both feel a little better to say it."

Chapter Seven

Which would you prefer if you were living in a loop:  To remember each day and experience it differently each time, or to not remember and go through the same motions every day never realizing that time never passed?

At least Millard has the right idea, finding a project that will most likely keep you busy until the end of time, writing a record of how a day went down through the eyes of every single person (and animal) who experienced it.

I think I would have felt so bad for the kids stuck in 1940 that I would want to bring them as many books as I could stand to carry so they could at least experience something new.

Why would having to turn away from the mutilated sheep be seen as an admission of guilt?  And why would they lock criminals up in the museum?  Wouldn't they potentially do more harm there by breaking things or vandalizing out of spite?

Why didn't he just show his dad a picture of Emma to prove he had at least one friend on the other side of the island?  Then he would just have to avoid them ever meeting.

Chapter Eight

If Miss Peregrine was that concerned with the children not being tempted away from the loop then she really should have said something to Jacob before his 3rd visit there.

If items within the loop will age and die, or shrivel up and disintegrate, then what would happen to items from the current time going back into the loop?

Why does Miss Peregrine not die when she is outside of the loop?  Is she more magical or more peculiar than the children?

"So it’s not even a decision, really. You stay. It’s only later—years later—that you begin to wonder what might’ve happened if you hadn’t."  --  Isn't that true even in our world?  You don't choose to stay in Michigan where the winter isn't hardly worth the short summer you'll have, and most of the big cities are notoriously rotten.  But one day, before you realize it, you've built a life here and can't imagine leaving now.

Chapter Nine

Did the "seeing monsters no one else can see caused me to be seen by a psychiatrist for stress reaction" remind anyone else of Fallen?

Again, I felt the explanation for the pictures of Wights were forced, the Santa was creepy but the dentist was clearly altered and the "cowering girl" was clearly smirking, not scared.

Chapter Ten

What would happen if people tried to have families within the loop?  Would pregnancy just be impossible cuz time doesn't really pass so the baby couldn't grow?  Man, a life full of no-consequences sex haha

When they say that Jeffrey Dahmer is a wight that would imply that he was blind, but that isn't true so it puts a hole in the story.

Are wights shape shifters?  Or did the wight attacking the island just play on a boy's lack of attention to people like gardeners, bus driver's and etc,?

“A bigger reaction?” I said. “Last time you blew up half of Siberia!”
“If you must fail,” he said grandly, “fail spectacularly!”

Chapter Eleven

The "leapfrogging" concept seems insane, but a very clever way to keep the story going.