The blog post I'm most proud of:

This is a dark twisted book written at a lower level, which isn't necessarily a bad thing except for the fact the book seemed to be made for a younger person along with the fact that the cover just screams "Hey little child, I hope you didn't enjoy sleeping, because I'm about to bring you nightmares for the next few weeks." Granted the book itself isn't that scary or creepy, but the pictures are. Namely on the cover of the book, and on the back. Jesus, when I bought the book for my writing class I thought for sure amazon sent me the wrong book and I was gonna get a free kindle or something since they messed up my shipping.

Things this book taught me:

1) Not all people have Dementia: why prejudice sucks and can make you money.
But sadly no free kindle, only a book that makes one question the inherent beliefs of prejudice and view points even in ones own family. While yes, many people's grandparents tell creepy stories about how little gas was and how much better life was back then, just imagine the world without the simple luxury of air conditioning and that in itself is its own nightmare. Jacob's grandpa's stories are real, but no one wants to listen to him because you could listen to a 2 year old try to talk to you and it would make more of a believable plot about his back story. Which only leads to something that should be postulated, that everyone over the age of 80 and under the age of 10 have nothing important to say ever. Just think about it, you could go an entire conversation without listening to them and still seem like the nicest person. Just agreeing with some person that falls into those parameters is enough for them to love you. "Why yes [grandpa/child], dogs do grow a lot of hair sometimes," and bam! you are immediately the bee's knees to this person. However this book breaks that mentality because low and behold that the psychotic old man is actually telling the truth. Talk about a plot twist no one has ever seen before, M. Night Shamalan should be taking notes.
So now our hero Jacob needs to go and find out the truth about his grandpa because apparently no one ever got to know the guy when he was alive. What a lack of bonding this man had with his son or better remembered as the main character's skeptical neanderthal of a father who doesn't care about his son's mental health. His son wants to go to an island so he can make peace with his grandfather's death and he's all like, "nah bro, that's stupid" (not an actual quote). But the minute they talk about birds, he's all aboard. We get it you're a writer who cares about work over his family, now we can check that cliche off in a teens dark drama book.

Bottom line is, people today are prejudice in a time where everything is instant. While this is a trait not exclusive to this time period (remember the whole 1970's where prejudice was really really bad?), it has amplified with the lack of patience in meeting people. Inside the book they do actually make every good contention that just because you have beliefs and no facts about a person doesn't give you the right to judge them. This whole book would have been 50 pages long, tops, if they had just gotten to know their grandpa. But that doesn't make money, however it does provide an excellent story about a boy who goes to an orphanage to find out about his family. Kind of like if Will Smith's mom sent him to live with the Adamms Family instead of with Carlton and his family and more death of relatives. But I digress, this book does make a fantastic point that skepticism and prejudice should be managed wisely as to not cloud your view of the world as it is.

2) Sociocultural differences in Horror stories:
Different sets of stories have different audiences they affect. Every culture has different views on what is scary. For example, as Americans we find the woods scary because ever since Plymouth and the colonies we never knew for sure what was in the woods. However, British people are afraid of the city around the mass urbanization and industrialization that came around during the past few centuries. It's a new frontier and one that most people weren't accustomed to. Fears and stories, such as jack the ripper, were big to them. Every culture has its own set of bugaboos when it comes to horror stories that they just love to pull at to make you nearly or completely pee your pants from horror. If you sat down at a United Nations campfire and told a story as an American, it would be scary (hopefully) but won't ever reach its full potential as if you were just telling Americans.
This is why one of the key factors here is setting. The fact this book takes place on an island that's really hard to get to immediately puts up a flag. If it doesn't then its because you don't understand the gravity of the situation. If you're totally cool with it, try locking yourself in a building with a serial killer and boarding up the doors. But you need to put on the facade you are cool right? And everyone knows that safety and escape routes are uncool, so you might as well take your chances with a murderer. However back to the setting talk. The next big setting is within the already sketchy island that no one seems to ever visit, possibly because there's a grand total of about 50 people all through out the town, and only about 5 of them talk (not actual numbers). This immediately brings the idea of ghost town to my mind, but if you watch any horror movie where they break down and go to a town for a night, usually if there is a very small population then its about to go down. Cross-apply that to this book. The next thing that comes up is an orphanage/home for peculiar children. Nothing good ever comes from either of those things, ever. They just put a darker tone to the book, but then again it could be an insane asylum or deserted carnival. The next thing to make me say "If this was me, I would have been off the island hours ago," was the fact that there were woods. Maybe if my culture was different and I was raised somewhere else this would've been a breeze, but not my apprehensive American mind is telling me that no where on this island is safe.

3) Fosters home for Imaginary Friend and Tim Burton had a collective think tank and this was their brain child: Hero's Journey.
For those of you who have no idea what Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends is, you probably had a bad childhood. If you're over the age of 30, I can understand a little, but a real hidden gem coming from an 18 year old who still watches cartoons occasionally. Let the judgement rain down upon me.
For the "too long, don't read version," this is it: A kid becomes "too grown up for imaginary friends," which is completely stupid (once again, coming from the 18 year old cartoon viewer.), so he has to take his friend to a house where they just hang out and friends get adopted. It's basically an orphanage for weird things, such as the orphans in our book. Now take the innocent kids show, and apply a Tim Burton filter on literally everything possible. However, as hard as I looked I could not find Johnny Depp so I was assured Tim Burton didn't lay a hand on the book. "Nah dude, having it in a city is too easy. A bog is way more dramatic and creepy," I presume the author thought. Granted this book has every element needed to be creepy, but is never really creepy.
 However everyone can say that about everything. You ever have that friend that pulls out the similarities between the dumbest things? Like a friend who goes, "Halo 3 is just the Bible set in the future!" Your first instinct is to say calm the junk down fan boy, because I'm pretty sure Jesus didn't own a paintball mask and an assault rifle, as much as some people wanted him to. It does raise a great point though, because both are basic archetypes of the hero's journey. All great stories follow this mold, such as Star Wars or the Odyssey. So why break the mold right? It's worked great, and I can't think of as many great stories that try to be all cool and hipster and try to break this mold than stories that do use this mold. Jacob is obviously the hero in the book, the mentor is his grandpa, the obvious travel to exotic (for the lack of a better adjective) places, the growth of his personality and self image from a giant wuss to a somewhat smaller wuss, and finally him helping out everyone in the home move to a new loop. This book fits the mold, its as if the author had a dual monitor set up with the hero's journey set up on one and Microsoft word on the other.

The recurring theme of birds and why it bothered me, until now.
When I picked up the book I had no idea that's how you spelled peregrine, like the peregrine falcon. I was pronouncing it wrong for about half the book. However I did notice a huge theme about birds, because it wasn't like the author was cramming it down your throat or anything.
Upon finish however, and after finding out the correct pronunciation of peregrine all the wheels clicked, and I was genuinely intrigued by the fact that there's a lot about birds in this book. The first thing that intrigued me was time travel. As it turns out, it wasn't all BS. A recent study found that birds can mentally count and predict the patterns of ants. Needless to say I found a new love for birds that day. It also reminded me of Chronos, or father time, for he is depicted as having wings sometimes so its fairly simple to draw the line between the two. There is also a tale of a Welsh monk who gets caught in the song of birds, and upon returning to the monastery he realizes that time has gone forward by a lot.
So I kept digging and digging through the vastness of the Internet for new and cool bird allusions, and I eventually found that most cultures have a story relating to birds and/or time travel. I found out a time traveling bird apparently prolonged the amount of time it took to find that devious Higgs-Boson particle we were looking for since 1964.
Bottom line is that birds have been linked to time travel, so even if you didn't like the book or my blog post, at least you learned something cool.


Very nice book, with a darker feel. I enjoyed it. Could have ended better then them just rowing off. But I digress.