First Quarter SSR
For the first quarter SSR, I read the horror fiction novel, The Shining by Stephen King. The book was about 447 pages long.  The story takes place in a hotel as one of the main characters, Jack Torrance accepts the job as a caretaker for the hotel during the winter. While being informed of the tragedies that had been occurred in the hotel, Jack still takes the job taking his wife and son with him for the winter. As the story goes on we learn about Jack's temperament and his alcoholism which he tries to control. Jack's temperament led him to lose his job as a teacher which was why he had to move and find a new job. Jack is a complicated character who desperately tries to hide away his demons. Jack's wife, Wendy is flat character, after the incident with Jack and her son, had been dwelling on the thought of divorce. Although, she had not talked about that much since Jack had finally stayed clean for quite some time and seemed like a changed man. Jack's son, Danny is a young boy who can see in the future. He's believed to have "the shining". Through "the shining", he befriends an imaginary boy named Tony and also begins to get seizures . He tries to keep quiet of all the visions he sees since he does not want his parents to worry.
The hotel is introduced to the Torrance's as not only as work but somewhat of a vacation, something that the married couple needed; however, as time goes on, as normal as they would have wanted things to be, things began to get real worse. Jack has grown mad and crazy as he tries to murder his wife and his son.
I would recommend this book to people that are into more dark, suspenseful type of stories. The Shining is a classic, as it gives more in depth characters like Jack Torrance who hurt his son when he was a little kid. You get a anxious and sick feeling about him. However as the story progresses you start to realize he won't change, and that Wendy and Danny are in grave danger. This gives us two protagonists that we want to see make it out alive. The plot of the story is very dark as it stems from violence and abuse from Jack Torrance who is on a manhunt for his own family. The story was intriguing throughout the book. We got to learn about Wendy's fear of becoming her mother in the beginning and Danny's fear of going to the hotel. All around, Stephen King's The Shining was a great book to read.