Beyond the Book: featuring Passenger by Alexandra Bracken


This bookish feature is an original by me! I had the epiphany for this the other day when I was writing out my 15 bookish confessions. (See #7) A lot of times I like to go "beyond the book" and do something that will connect me with the book and characters a little more. It will pop up on Mondays! Be on the look out for which books caught my eye and made me go beyond just reading it! 

Passenger (Passenger, #1)

"I want you to remember that it's our choices that matter in the end. Not wishes, not words, not promises."
Pg. 20

     NEVER have I done a Beyond the Book before I finished reading it.... But this one is SPECIAL. As soon as I opened the book it landed on the ending to a poem that I LOVE, Invictus by William Earnest Henley. When I saw it, I literally yelled "Oh my God!" because what'dya know..... I've had this for about five years now...


     If you can't tell, my tattoo says the last two lines of the poem! With this being a time-travel novel I can see how it could incorporate it, but I'm so excited to see the story unfold! Thank you Bracken for bringing my two favorite things (my books and my tattoos) together! I got this when I was in college and I wasn't doing too hot. I was supposed to graduate the semester before, but I had a lot going on with my health, my sister's health, and I lost my aunt at the time. It just felt like everything was going wrong and I was letting it spin out of control. I kept telling myself that everything happens based on the choices I make. So after months of choosing to mope,  I chose to feel better. I got my ish together, graduated, and got a job. My mom hated that I got this but it really helped me when I got it. She will be THRILLED to know I'm not the only one who knows this poem haha 

Here's the full poem:
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul. 

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