This book is almost like OG American Gods. Not really, but it does share the kind of mythopoeic qualities of gods and goddesses of other cultures wrapped a kind of metanarrative/ meta-worldview. This is a novel written for children, and I was curious about finding out when it was published (I was listening to the audiobook) and I waited until after I finished. It turns out it was published in 1972. I also wonder if maybe I read this when I was a kid, though I […]
What Happens When We Finally Colonize Mars
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury My rating: 4 of 5 stars “The Martian Chronicles” by Ray Bradbury was originally written as separate short stories. After being submitted to his publisher, the publisher told Bradbury to connect the short stories into a cohesive collection about the planet Mars and its subsequent colonization of the planet. Each year I teach “There Will Come Soft Rain” by Bradbury and until reading “The Martian Chronicles” I had no idea the two were related. Granted, the inclusion of “Soft […]
Damn, That Was Good
CBR 10 BINGO Square: Farenheit 451 (As recently as 2000-2009 it was in the top 100 of banned books, which is so ironic it could have replaced all the verses in Alanis Morisette’s hit.) Best for: Everyone. All of us should read it. In a nutshell: In the future, firemen don’t put out fires – they set them. Specifically, they set books on fire. Worth quoting: “You weren’t hurting anyone, you were hurting only things! And since things really couldn’t be hurt, sine things felt […]
“It Was A Pleasure To Burn” – Fahrenheit 451
The kid is in high school now, and although her getting older must mean that I, too, must be getting older (yikes!), there are a few perks. One of them is getting to watch her discover things, like some great books that I read when I was around her age. First up is Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, a dystopian masterpiece. The story of a society, perhaps our own, that has decided that the ideas included in books are dangerous, seems eerily prescient. The floor-to-ceiling view […]