What to Read When You Don’t Want Summer to End
A list of books that take place in the summer, remind us of summer, and/or just make for great beach reads.
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Posts Tagged: Ray Bradbury
HORN! Reviews: Fahrenheit 451
Here’s a vision of a nightmare Benthamist future where nothing is allowed to be slow or sad…
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Sound & Vision: Mark Alan Stamaty
Allyson McCabe talks with Mark Alan Stamaty, a Society of Illustrators four-time medalist, and the author-illustrator of ten books.
...moreFire, Magic, and Flash Fiction
At WhiskeyPaper, Linda Niehoff writes briefly and beautifully about fire and magic, hinting at post-apocalyptic worlds with lines like, “We’d spent long evenings sewing together old bedsheets and nightgowns, the last pillowcase.” “Elsewhere” brings to mind Ray Bradbury and autumn nights, and is best read in one sitting. It comes with a suggested song—Iron & […]
...moreA Future of Forbidden Books
At Electric Literature, Lydia Pine examines dystopian and sci-fi works of fiction that offer a glimpse of what bookshelves and libraries might look like in the future: In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and Ayn Rand’s Anthem, books-on-bookshelves is actually a forbidden scenario. Even in the campy sci-fi universe of Star Trek, the twenty-fourth century boasts digital books stored on tablets; […]
...moreA Bradbury Classic Turns Sixty
Sixty years ago, in 1955, Ray Bradbury published The October Country. The book has become a classic of American gothic horror, but it didn’t start out that way. Many of the stories were originally featured in Bradbury’s first-ever book, Dark Carnival, which had a very limited release and went out of print soon after. At […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Bud Smith
Novelist Bud Smith talks about his new book, F-250, working construction and metalworking, finding writing after his friend’s death, and crashing his car over and over again.
...more451 Sets of Bookends Made from Ray Bradbury’s Former Home
The bookends, which cost $88.50 per set, have already sold out (and the two sets that made their way to eBay as of this writing sold for $275 and $300). Architect Thom Mayne and his wife purchased the house and received a permit to tear it down early this year. Part of the proceeds from […]
...moreThis Week in Short Fiction
To help us cope with the passing of Leonard Nimoy, Melville House shared audio recordings of the baritone-voiced Vulcan reading excerpts from Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man. The find is definitely worth a listen, and in this newly revived age of plans for Mars missions, the excerpts of this creative duo […]
...moreThe Day Ray Bradbury’s House Died
Noel Anenberg reports about the destruction of Ray Bradbury’s California home for the Los Angeles Review of Books.
...moreSipping Dandelion Wine
Henry Stewart waxes nostalgic on Ray Bradbury for Electric Literature—he points at coming of age, the lessons we learn, and how the whole of life can be found in The Martian Chronicles.
...moreThe Melancholy of Age
For Electric Literature, Henry Stewart examines the coming of age stories of Ray Bradbury. In addition to comparing Bradbury’s “boy’s boys” to characters in works by Mark Twain and James Agee, Stewart draws parallels between Bradbury’s novels and the author’s biography. What he finds is that Bradbury’s characters’ fascination with “inevitable, inexorable death,” may be related to […]
...moreLA Star Map: Graveyard Edition
Readers who visit Paris or London in the hopes of paying their respects to departed authors can do so in one fell swoop, with graves concentrated in a single, central location; visitors to LA, however, will have to do some schlepping. The LA Times offers a handy guide to the graves of the rich and […]
...moreHis Great Wide World
Ray Bradbury would’ve turned ninety-four this weekend. Dan Piepenbring commemorates his influence at The Paris Review: “Do you know why teachers use me? Because I speak in tongues. I write metaphors. Every one of my stories is a metaphor you can remember. The great religions are all metaphor. We appreciate things like Daniel and the lion’s […]
...moreRay Bradbury’s Little Yellow Home
Ray Bradbury’s home is up for sale. You can peep the original ad here. His three-bedroom, 2500-square-foot house, built in 1937, is painted a cheery yellow. It has three bathrooms, hardwood floors, and sits on a generously sized 9,500-square-foot lot. It is loaded with original details, the sort that were part of the texture of […]
...moreRay Bradbury on love, life, and writing
The folks over at Brainpickings have unearthed a video from 1974 from a show called Day at Night where guest Ray Bradbury talked about writing, love, and life. “I use a library the same way I’ve been describing the creative process as a writer — I don’t go in with lists of things to read, […]
...more“Bradbury Was My Man”
Junot Díaz, author of the last book Jordan Alam loved, mourns Ray Bradbury, writing of how the “prescient lyrical writer with an abiding hatred for intolerance” inspired “many of our most famous dreamers” and gave Díaz his “first real taste of the power of fiction.” “I had never been moved like that by any piece […]
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Live Forever
In September of 1932, just hours after his uncle’s funeral, twelve-year-old Ray Bradbury was walking down the familiar streets of Waukegan, Illinois when he spotted a carnival tent on the shores of Lake Michigan. The night prior, young Bradbury had witnessed a spectacle inside, the amazing Mr. Electro confined to his chair, holding steady while […]
...moreRay Bradbury, 1920-2012
Ray Bradbury has passed away at 91. The New Yorker unlocked two Bradbury pieces, the 1947 short story “I See You Never,” and “Take Me Home,” an essay in the magazine’s current science fiction issue. This 2010 The Paris Review interview is worth a read: “I don’t believe in optimism. I believe in optimal behavior. […]
...moreBradbury’s Form Flexibility
There are two Ray Bradbury classics (Something Wicked Comes This Way and The Martian Chronicles) that have been recently adapted into graphic novels and Bradbury is down. The graphic novel illustrations lend themselves well to Bradbury’s prose, and he even went so far as to say that there, “is no difference between a novel and […]
...moreThe Mythologist Of Our Time
Ray Bradbury conjures up for me images of sun-drenched Nebraska meadows, autumn landscapes beset upon by Buick-sized ravens and dusty towns overrun by sinister carnivals. He reminds me of the childhood I never quite had except in my head. He’s the writer I remember enjoying the earliest and now he’s ninety-years old and still working. […]
...moreThe Rumpus Sunday Book Blog Roundup
Good morning, world. This week, the blogs are full of fun. Many of them had wondrous posts having to do with lovable, humorous, classic sci-fi authors like Vonnegut and Bradbury and Adams. It was a week made for me. Also, apologies in advance for the sparse posts today. School calls. The LA Times reconsiders Vonnegut, […]
...moreThe Sunday Book Blog Roundup
Greetings and salutations! I’m Michael Berger, today’s guest-editor. I’ve spent my last few days off sipping coffee and drifting through the labyrinth of book blogs. Which was terrific, because most of my work week was spent moving a bookstore. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the 25 year old San Francisco used bookstore Phoenix Books is not […]
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