Skin and Other Stories (Summer Reading)

Skin and Other Stories, by Roald Dahl, is the first book I read for the 7th grade summer assignment. It’s a group of short stories and some novelas. When reading it, I liked how every story was completely different. It felt like this book was just Roald Dahl showing off about how many points of views he can write from. I actually did not like the story Skin, and was surprised that he put that on the title. After asking my mom, I found out that it was used in other movies and was recreated in many other horror stories. This was frankly my first short story collection, and I loved it so much. One of the reasons I am able to sit down and get something done is I compartmentalize. When I read a book, I set a schedule for each day; and then when I am reading throughout the day, I read 3o pages in the morning, 5 pages in midday, and 15 pages in bed. Also, when I am trying to get through ten pages, I have a method of thinking about the ten pages in smaller amounts to process it. The reason I think I now love short story collections is that it literally does the compartmentalizing for you, and every story is almost all action, and the plots get right down to it and fast. Also it was always interesting to get to the last paragraph of the story and still have no idea what the ending would be. I don’t know If this was specific to Roald Dahl’s writing, but if it is for all short stories, I will have to start binge reading. I think that maybe it is an exception for this book to not talk about the plot, considering there are about 15, and they are all funny and strange. I will talk about one of my favorite stories – mostly because of the comedic aspect. It was called Galloping Foxley. It was about this man who lives a very repetitive life. Every day he goes to work on the same train, at the same time, and then walks the same way, running into the same people. One day, there is a strange man waiting at his train station. He is basically the antithesis of the main character, and he seems to be jealous of him. The main character thinks he recognizes the man, and realizes he was his elementary school bully, Foxley. For about 15 pages, he explains how was mercilessly beaten by Foxley, and how awful his childhood was because of him. He then builds up the courage to introduce himself and give him a piece of his mind. He first says, “Well hello, my name is “William Perkins- and I was at Repton in 1907 “. Then the man introduces himself and says, “Mine’s Fortescue, Eton 1916.” The story then ends. I loved this ending, because throughout the whole story, you just hate this bully and you feel so bad for this man. Then you realize the man that you hated had done nothing. I just thought that the whole story was Genius.