What 📔book are you reading right now?

[Ent]

I would start with a collection of his short stories that would (indeed must) include The Martian Chronicles .

OK sir Deimos, it's all your fault. 😁 After scanning around a bit I've laid in one collection of 100 shorts and The Martian Chronicles. (There seems to be another collection of 100 shorts as well, that I may not be able to resist... but we'll wait until I read a few. Being digital, they're not going anywhere.)

We'll see if Bradbury joins my (select) list of read and re-read worthies.
thanks again for your input.

 

[Deimos]

OK sir Deimos, it's all your fault. 😁 After scanning around a bit I've laid in one collection of 100 shorts and The Martian Chronicles. (There seems to be another collection of 100 shorts as well, that I may not be able to resist... but we'll wait until I read a few. Being digital, they're not going anywhere.)

We'll see if Bradbury joins my (select) list of read and re-read worthies.
thanks again for your input.

There was a large hardbound volume published, I don't know when, of a 100 of short stories and his novellas (2?) and maybe it included F451.
I found an extremely worn/beatup copy at a book fair years and years ago.

IIRC it may have had a few of his Martian Stories in it but not the entire Martian Chronicles.
But it was 50cents so I bought it.
Maybe that is the same volume (or similar) that you found digitally.
In any case, you now have A LOT of Bradbury at your fingertips.

Mine finally fell apart entirely, but I have at least a dozen volumes (regular size) of his short stories along with F451 and SWTWC and The Halloween Tree.
HT is the only Bradbury I have in paperback.

I have one collection that is titled The October Country. Pretty sure at least some of the stories in it will also be in your 100 story collection.
It is hardbound, stirred, not shaken stitched, not glued, was published in 1970 and has a frontispiece of a print by .....(wait for it)... Goya.
Is that not extremely cool?

Apropos of the approach of Hallowe'en...if your Collection contains "The Exiles" and also "Usher II" read them (in that order).
"The Scythe" is another very good one for the season, and "The Skeleton" and maybe also The Dragon (which is more straight fantasy).

 

[Squint-eyed Southerner]

He also had a TV series in the 80s, where he adapted his stories:

All 65 episodes are on YouTube.

 

[Deimos]

Pax S-eS , but imho Bradbury does not translate well to either stage or screen.
His gift is not just in storytelling but in written storytelling; his descriptive phrasing is part of the story.
Move the story out of the written world and you lose the "Bradbury-ness" of it.
Oh, what is left might be an engaging story, but "it ain't Bradbury."

An attempt was made to dramatize The Illustrated Man , with Rod Steiger in the title role. It flopped, majorly so.
His long short story (or novella) The Playground was dramatized with William Shatner as the Father. I watched it on youtube. it was OK.
Fahrenheit 451 was made into a movie, directed by Francois Truffaut, no less.
Osker Werner was Montag and Cyril Cusack as the Fire Chief. I thought both actors captured the roles pretty well, as Bradbury wrote them, Cyril Cusack especially.
But overall the movie simply didn't deliver the gut wrenching punch as the written story.
I read somewhere that RB was none too happy with the movie.
I think that for someone familiar with RB, watching his stories on stage or screen is like hearing Mozart played on a kazoo; you recognize the melody, you know it's Mozart, bit it's a rather thin presentation of his work, lacking just about everything that makes Mozart worth listening to.

 

[Ent]

Well, I've read both Intros to the collection "The Stories of Ray Bradbury" and found them interesting and informative. Especially RB's "Drunk, and in Charge of a Bicycle" introduction.
Then I read the first short. "The Night".
Impressive.
The story setting itself is, in some ways, mundane - ordinary - yet the presentation of the author's real intent with the work is exceptional.

If the rest of his work is done similarly to this one, with regard to the discussions above - 'translating to stage and screen' - I certainly doubt it could be done meaningfully. This short, even as a scene within a larger setting, could simply not be 'acted out' or 'demonstrated' visually for an audience given all that's internally happening within the character - all the realities opening out to a young mind experiencing, realizing, and growing from the circumstances.

And this short covers just a very few hours of time.

One must wonder if a 'physical picture/environment' such as stage/screen presents even with a young voice narrating the internal workings of the kid's mind by reading directly from RBs text in the background, could ever generate the effect the writing intends to and more than adequately delivers.

I'll be looking for 'translatability to other mediums' as I continue to read now. Glad the above was mentioned..!

 

[Deimos]

Well, I've read both Intros to the collection "The Stories of Ray Bradbury" and found them interesting and informative. Especially RB's "Drunk, and in Charge of a Bicycle" introduction.
Then I read the first short. "The Night".
Impressive.
The story setting itself is, in some ways, mundane - ordinary - yet the presentation of the author's real intent with the work is exceptional.

If the rest of his work is done similarly to this one, with regard to the discussions above - 'translating to stage and screen' - I certainly doubt it could be done meaningfully. This short, even as a scene within a larger setting, could simply not be 'acted out' or 'demonstrated' visually for an audience given all that's internally happening within the character - all the realities opening out to a young mind experiencing, realizing, and growing from the circumstances.

And this short covers just a very few hours of time.

One must wonder if a 'physical picture/environment' such as stage/screen presents could ever capture, even with a young voice narrating the internal workings of the kid's mind by reading directly from RBs text, could ever generate the effect the writing intends to and more than adequately delilvers.

I'll be looking for 'translatability to other mediums' as I continue to read now. Glad the above was mentioned..!

The Night was rewritten later to be included in Dandelion Wine. Names were changed; Skipper becomes Douglas.
RB's middle name was Douglas, and that is the name of the elder brother (RB) in Dandelion Wine.
So, I can see right away that you 'get' RB. 😁
Read a handful of the short stories in that ginormous collection you have, move onto the Martian Chronicles, and you'll be thoroughly hooked.
Welcome aboard. 🙂

 

[Deimos]

Well, I've read both Intros to the collection "The Stories of Ray Bradbury" and found them interesting and informative. Especially RB's "Drunk, and in Charge of a Bicycle" introduction.
Then I read the first short. "The Night".
Impressive.
The story setting itself is, in some ways, mundane - ordinary - yet the presentation of the author's real intent with the work is exceptional.

If the rest of his work is done similarly to this one, with regard to the discussions above - 'translating to stage and screen' - I certainly doubt it could be done meaningfully. This short, even as a scene within a larger setting, could simply not be 'acted out' or 'demonstrated' visually for an audience given all that's internally happening within the character - all the realities opening out to a young mind experiencing, realizing, and growing from the circumstances.

And this short covers just a very few hours of time.

One must wonder if a 'physical picture/environment' such as stage/screen presents even with a young voice narrating the internal workings of the kid's mind by reading directly from RBs text in the background, could ever generate the effect the writing intends to and more than adequately delivers.

I'll be looking for 'translatability to other mediums' as I continue to read now. Glad the above was mentioned..!

The only medium I can see his works being compatible with is the spoken word, as in "Books on Tape" or whatever they are called now.
Someone reads you the story. And I would hope it hasn't been "edited for brevity", which would no doubt mean that a lot of the descriptive passages will have been excised.

Such potential editing reminds me of a story I read (possibly apocryphal) about The Sound of Music movie when it was first shown in theatres in the mid 60s.
If you recall it was longer than the average movie was back then... something like 145 minutes with an added intermission of 20 minutes.
In Japan theaters didn't want to run a movie that was longer than 2 hours (get 'em in, get 'em out 😄) but they wanted to show SoM because of the critical acclaim it was receiving, so to bring the time down to less than 120 minutes they edited it....by cutting out all the singing.

Don't know if it's true but it makes for a funny story.😁

 

[Ent]

ginormous collection

I had to increase the collection of course... got the other "100 stories" book as well. None of them seem to duplicate.
I do note that in the first 100, the first Introduction says things like "such and such story and the 5 that follow were collected in his "blah" series" and such..
So it'll be interesting to go from the shorts to the 'collections' where all the related ones are gathered, look for the changes, etc. when the time comes.

With those two and the Martian Chronicles I've probably got enough reading for a couple weeks or so... 😁

 

[Deimos]

I had to increase the collection of course... got the other "100 stories" book as well. None of them seem to duplicate.
I do note that in the first 100, the first Introduction says things like "such and such story and the 5 that follow were collected in his "blah" series" and such..
So it'll be interesting to go from the shorts to the 'collections' where all the related ones are gathered, look for the changes, etc. when the time comes.

With those two and the Martian Chronicles I've probably got enough reading for a couple weeks or so... 😁

Reading RB for two weeks.... you'll be more than ready for his novels.
For "the season" read (in addition to the specific short stories I mentioned above) The Halloween Tree and Something Wicked This Way Comes.**
Depending on how many of the short stories you will have read by then, you may notice in both of those novels a chapter or three was lifted to be a stand-alone short story in one of the collections. I know the short story The Dwarf was lifted from SWTWC.

**FYI in case you didn't recognize it...

By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
Macbeth Act IV, Scene 1 (spoken by one of the three witches)
----
Forgot to mention...If those two books contain a total of 200 short stories with no duplications, then you probably have every short story RB ever wrote.
After not too long you will be able to tell his early works from his later ones without even looking at publication dates.
As you know nothing is static; a writer either gets better or worse.
RB's style, tho' it is unusual, yet it improves; it loses the "smell of the lamp", little tho' that was present even in his early works.

 

[Elbereth Vala Varda]

Still on the Silmarillion... Hence next comes: The Children of Hurin.

 

[Ent]

Flowers for Algernon

It's been many years since I pondered Flowers for Algernon. Maybe it's time to pick it up again... both the early short, and the book he expanded it into several years later. thanks for the reminder.

 

[Olorgando]

Have just started reading "The Great Tales Never End - Essays in memory of Christopher Tolkien", edited by Richard Ovenden & Catherine McIlwaine.

There's a thread about it on TTF here:

https://thetolkien.forum/threads/yet-another-new-book.30381/

 

[Ent]

started reading "The Great Tales Never End

Terrific. Maybe you can do a good, thorough book review on it for us when done. I've been wanting to get to it, but have to keep it to the side for a little while yet in favor of other more immediately applicable reads.

 

[Olorgando]

Well, I've finished chapter 7 of 11. But as the essays range widely, I'll need at least a second reading to be able to do anything close to a "thorough book review".

For a starter, your short review in the thread I mentioned above is quite useful:

https://thetolkien.forum/threads/yet-another-new-book.30381/post-563530

 

[Ent]

your short review in the thread I mentioned above is quite useful:

geez.. don't tell anybody. ruin my image..!!

"short" is truly the key there...just a basic intro to contents. I THINK somewhere a regular place for real, more in depth 'book reviews' has been set up... but I can't recall ATM. I know it was discussed...

anyway, glad you're working through it.

 

[Ealdwyn]

I'm halfway through the Quincunx by Charles Pallister. It's a mystery in the style of Dickens and a monster of a book at 1,000 pages, but a real page turner.

 

[Ugluk]

Lunar science: a post Apollo view by my old colleague Prof. Ross Taylor and Black Summer - stories of the 2019-2020 bushfires in Australia (which I was a 1st hand witness of and participant in).

 

[Erestor Arcamen]

Currently reading The Castle of Ontranto by Horace Walpole. For as old as it is, I like it

 

[Squint-eyed Southerner]

Keep your eyes on the skies. 😳

 

[Erestor Arcamen]

Keep your eyes on the skies. 😳

Why?