Bookish Thoughts

The Halloween Tree  was one of my favorite movies as a kid. The VHS tape was bright orange, and we rented it so often that my parents eventually bought it from the rental store. My mom probably picked it up because Leonard Nimoy is the main voice actor. And even though Ray Bradbury himself narrates it, it took me decades to realize that the movie was based on a book. The book follows a group of friends who get side-tracked from trick-or-treating when their friend falls ill. They end up chasing him through time, learning about the origins of Halloween as they hope to catch up with him and save his life. This book is definitely a product of it's time. They made some significant changes to the movie, which were all for the better. But it's still a fun romp through history, as the kids learn about this celebration of death which is really a celebration of life. A way to make our fears smaller so we can deal with them. The book was short enough that I might end up reading it a...

This was not my favorite work of Bradbury's. A lot of the stories in this collection fell flat or just missed their mark, and I was more eager for them to be over than I was to actually read them. I was most disappointed by "The Small Assassin". The idea of a newborn baby actively trying to kill it's parents has a lot of potential, but the execution wasn't quite there. I was on board for the mom being increasingly unnerved by her son and the dad not really taking it seriously. The beginning was nice and creepy. But a lot of the story also had me wondering if Bradbury ever had kids. Turns out he did, and the disconnect may have just been due to different times and cultures. I wanted to connect with this story, and it never quite happened. There were a couple of stories that I did enjoy, particularly the one about the man with wings who has given up flying until his kids turn him into a kite (in a cute way). He also makes an appearance in a different story, abou...

Dandelion Wine is a book steeped in nostalgia. On the surface it's about being twelve years old in the summer time. But it's also about remembering being twelve years old in the summer time. It's about growing up and growing old, remembering your past and letting it go. This book is more a series of connected short stories. They all take place in the same town, and they're all observed and commented on by Douglas and his brother, Tom. They're the main players in a few of the stories, but in others they're just on the fringes. As will happen in a short story collection, even an informal one like this, I liked some stories better than others. I really liked the commentary of the two boys as they struggled to make sense of an adult world. And I liked the overall feel of the book. Bradbury's language is very poetic, well-suited to describing childhood summers. There were some elements of science-fiction (a happiness machine) and magic (the cure for a feve...

I bought this book back in June, but I've been waiting until it was properly fall to read it. I was hoping for a good foggy, chilly day on which I could be spooked. The weather never cooperated with me, though. It mostly stayed warm and sunny. With my stack running low, I ended up settling for a dark and stormy night instead. In the end I suppose that's just as a good. The Illustrated Man  is a collection of short stories. Most of them are spooky and set in the future where space travel is possible and nearly common place. One or two fell a bit flat for me, but for the most part they were really good. I was even able to suspend my disbelief and accept that Venus is basically a jungle planet. Talk about an old theory. Most of the stories were a lot of fun, though. It was a great book to get me in the mood for Halloween.

I really like following up long epics with shorter books. And since I've been meaning to re-read Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 for several years now, it seemed like the perfect book to dive into after the Mistborn trilogy. It actually did end up being perfect, sine the Book People at the end reminded me more than a little of Sanderson's Keepers of Knowledge, and I love finding little literary connections like that. I first read Fahrenheit 451 in high school as part of our unit on dystopia (which also included 1984 and Brave New World ). I remembered the basic plot and themes, since you tend to when you've spent a long time with a single book, but a lot of the details had escaped me. There is one scene, though, that has stuck with me through the years. One that became so vivid in my mind, I'd nearly forgotten which book is came from. When Montag is on the run from the cops, he has to cross a wide street. This is at a time when the speed limit, even ...

After Ray Bradbury died earlier this year, there was an outpouring of tributes from a number of writers and artists. Reading all of it made me realize how much I'd missed out by not reading any of Bradbury's work over the years. Well, that isn't quite true. I read Farenheit 451 in high school, but I missed almost all of his other books. I decided it was time to fix that. I bought Something Wicked This Way Comes and was immediately met with another surprise. The receipt for the book listed recommendations for related books, among them The Halloween Tree . When I was little there was a movie called The Halloween Tree that was one of my favorites. My brother and I rented it from the video store over and over and finally just bought it. The tape was bright orange - fitting for the subject - and it was on constantly in our playroom during October. Imagine my surprise to find that Bradbury had penned one of my favorite stories (he even narrates the movie). All of t...