“The Silmarillon”  By: J.R.R Tolkien (133/365 pgs) 5/5

  “Miriam”  By: Truman Capote (10 pgs) (Short Story) 3/5

 

  “Dark Tales”  By: Shirley Jackson (208 pgs) 4/5

 “The Birds”  By: Daphne du Maurier (55 pgs) 4/5

 “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” By: Flannery O’Connor (11 pgs) 4/5

Total Pages: 489

Weekly Pages: 122

Daily Pages: 16

This has been an incredibly slow month for reading due to the One act festival and the fact that I have actually found a book that challenges me as a reader, something that has not happened in quite a while.

The first book this month is “The Silmalirion” By J.R.R Tolkien it is one of the most remarkable and challenging books I have read in a long while. I have often praised Tolkien for his incredible ability to create worlds and fill them with incredible and expansive lore. Well this book is pure lore. It tells the story of the creation of the world and the events that shaped middle earth into what it was in The Lord of The Rings trilogy.

The second would be ” Dark Tales” By Shirley Jackson, her grasp of Gothic literature and her ability to  make a twist ending when a reader doesn’t expect it.  My favourite story from that collection  would be the Possibility of Evil. The stories all follow a modern suburbia where a series of unfortunate events take place and in the end all the stories intertwine to make one big story. It feels incredibly satisfying to have everything tied up in a nice little bow at the end of the book.

Last but not least would be “The Birds”  By Daphne du Maurier, it is an interesting story of survival and family. It wasn’t my favourite short story however it hit all the points I enjoy and its cliffhanger ending and the way she portrays the other characters in the story ( besides nat the main character) to think that they are on top of the food chain and that they can just hunt the birds and get rid of the problem.

My goal for next month is to read more and hopefully to get my page count up to what it has been in the past.