This challenge is again hosted by Cathy @ 746 Books – thank you Cathy.  The idea is to read, 10, 15 or 20 books between Thursday 1st June and Friday 1st September and post the appropriate reviews.

I’m slightly cheating because this list contains three re-reads.  But it’s Tolkein so that’s allowed, right?!

Here we go:

‘Three Rings for the Elven Kings under the sky’

The Fellowship of the Ring,  Part 1 of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, J.R.R. Tolkein

The Two Towers, Part 2 ditto

The Return of the King, Part 3 ditto

These are the novels which kicked off an entire fantasy genre and I still love them as much as ever.

Two from my Classics Club List

The Silmarillion,  yep its Tolkein again

This book is the story of events which happened before those narrated in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, of the three jewels called Silmarils created by Elves.

My Name is Asher Lev, Chaim Potok

A book about the conflict between art, family and religion.  Wiki says:  Asher Lev is a boy with a prodigious artistic ability born into a Hasidic Jewish family. During his childhood in the 1950s, in the time of Joseph Stalin and the persecution of Jews and religious people in the Soviet Union, Asher’s artistic inclination brings him into conflict with the members of his Jewish community, which values things primarily as they relate to faith and considers art unrelated to religious expression to be at best a waste of time and possibly a sacrilege.

I don’t have a copy of this yet so need to find myself one.

Drive your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Olga Tokarczuk

 I’m excited to read this one by Nobel prize winner Tokarczuk.  The title comes from a quote of William Blake.

It is described in the blurb as “this existential thriller by the Nobel Prize in Literature laureate (which) offers thought provoking ideas on our perceptions of madness, injustice…and hypocrisy…”

Non-Fiction

 Wanderlust, Rebecca Solnit

Meditations on the art of walking from one of our great feminist writers.

Planetary Citizenship, Hazel Henderson and Daisaku Ikeda

A Dialogue between two renowned global activists on the need for individual responsibility and action to build a more peaceful, harmonious and sustainable future.

And  finally, two books

from my Kindle

The Unseen, Roy Jacobsen

Shortlisted for the Man Booker in 2017 and recommended by my friend S.  Set in the Swedish archipelago,  Looking only at the first page or two this book puts me in mind of Ice by Ulla-Lena Lundberg – this latter set in Finland in the 1940s.  But we shall see.

A Reading Diary: A Year of Favourite Books, Alberto Manguel

I have already read and reviewed Manguel’s The Library at Night.  This is an earlier work but I’m very much looking forward to it.  Manguel’s TBR lists are eye-wateringly intellectual.