I was so busy rushing headlong into the future, loving libraries and books and authors with all my heart and soul. was so consumed with becoming myself that I simply didn't notice that I was short, homely, and untalented ...writes Ray Bradbury in the forward to Bradbury Stories: 100 of his Most Celebrated Tales.
I bought the book last night in Kinokunia, hungry to reread the stories that gave me so much pleasure when I was 15 or so, and which weened me off pulp sci-fi comics (the sort of stuff you guys would now call graphic fiction) and probably gave me more reading pleasure than anything else I picked up at that age.
I found them quite by accident : I lived in a small village in the very centre of England, with just one general store with one rotating stand of books for sale, most of which were lurid romances or thrillers.
I was drawn to Bradbury's books by the cover art (and try as I might I can't find pictures of those covers online now). What a happy coincidence it is when the right book and right reader collide!
Almost four decades later (!) I can still remember many of these tales, first encountered in The Illustrated Man and The Golden Apples of the Sun, and despite a jaded palate for reading at the moment (or maybe it's just time to write more?) am so looking forward to re-encountering them and discovering new ones that I didn't find the first time round.
Bradbury is still writing at 90 and recently launched a new collection of stories We'll Always Have Paris. Rob Woodard on The Guardian blog describes Bradbury's latest as being :
... as inventive and life-affirming as ever ...Now Bradbury, his passion for books burning as strongly as ever, has joined the battle to keep libraries open across the US because :
Libraries raised me ... I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don’t have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.
Here's Ray Bradbury live at The Beverly Hills Library, with other readers presenting extracts from We'll Always Have Paris :
8 comments:
I guess you would like Edgar Rice Burroughs as well?
why?? haven't read any edgar rice burroughs ... think i should??
Never knew he was still alive! On an unrelated front: So is Jane Russell, who turned 88 a few days ago.
totally unrelated :-P
Always loved those Ray Bradbury books. I had my period of Sci Fi books too, from the age of 11, when a new English teacher, who obviously enjoyed Sci Fi, read to us and opened up a whole new world, until sometime in my thirties when I weaned off.
But Bradbury,Asimov,Heinlein, Arthur C Clarke, Jose Farmer etc etc will always remain dear to my heart.
Try his Tarzan or Mars Princess books. Adventure fantasy. Light reading. Think you can read them online.
Yes here: http://burroughs.thefreelibrary.com/Princess-of-Mars
Richard - the Tarzan books i'd heard of but not the Mars Princess. so that's the Bradbury connection!
Yusuf - i had a religious education teacher just like that. we were of course supposed to be studying the bible, but instead he used to read to us from his favourite sci-fi books and draw moral lessons from them! the best kind of teacher, subversive and inspired
Ray Bradbury isn't a lot like ERB. You might as well say he's like H G Wells. Bradbury's tales have a lot more depth to them. The Tarzan books you can read online -- they're fairly uninsipired.
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