Richard Feynman, genius aside, had a relentless curiosity, impulse toward adventure, and natural humor that made him as good a role model for how to l...moreRichard Feynman, genius aside, had a relentless curiosity, impulse toward adventure, and natural humor that made him as good a role model for how to live as anyone you'll find. And just look at the cover. I would be perfectly content to be as cool as that guy.(less)
I gave up on this one real quick. I don't know what it is with me and Thomas Pynchon. I find his writing -- his dump truck full of words, smugness, an...moreI gave up on this one real quick. I don't know what it is with me and Thomas Pynchon. I find his writing -- his dump truck full of words, smugness, and dippy, smart-ass names -- needlessly obfuscating and more irritating than any other novelist's. I realize this is my problem, not his, but that doesn't mean I need to spend 750 pages of my free time trying to fix it.(less)
I have a penchant for period books about conspiracy theories and esoterica, and I picked up this one for $3 in a used bookstore in Wrightwood, CA. Non...moreI have a penchant for period books about conspiracy theories and esoterica, and I picked up this one for $3 in a used bookstore in Wrightwood, CA. None of it is interesting enough to be enjoyed by anyone either sincerely or ironically, with the exception of two parts:
1) An anecdote about a New Jersey man who was shanghaied by aliens for a trip to the moon and came home with a "lunar potato."
2) This passage: "[The UFO had] a symbol on the side. The symbol consisted of a horizontal bar. Directly over the bar was an arrow. Covering both the bar and arrow was a single curved line, very reminiscent of the plastic dome used to cover donuts in restaurants."(less)
Nothing else reminds me so much of the good ol' late '90s McSweeney's, when it was new and entirely fresh and no one ever thought it would become argu...moreNothing else reminds me so much of the good ol' late '90s McSweeney's, when it was new and entirely fresh and no one ever thought it would become arguably the most influential literary force for a generation of writers in all media, than Diana Fischer's list of six "Good Names for Hamsters," which has stuck in my brain since then and I'm illegally reprinting here:
Mrs. Leonard Pannaggio Hammy Chief Mario Drew Bledsoe Toes
The rest of this book you'll enjoy or not based primarily on how much you paid for it.(less)
Ian Fleming showed his authorial skills when he chose You Only Live Twice over his original title, What I Learned On My Trip to Japan. Easily the firs...moreIan Fleming showed his authorial skills when he chose You Only Live Twice over his original title, What I Learned On My Trip to Japan. Easily the first two-thirds of this novel consists of James Bond being schooled (almost literally) in the unique details of Japanese culture. That was all probably quite interesting 50 years ago when the average reader of popular British spy thrillers was unfamiliar with ninja, Kobe beef, fugu, and all the other Nipponese oddities that have now become pop culture staples. In 2013, it just makes you wish 007 would hurry up and chop somebody in the throat. Fleming's plot and characters are little more than elbow macaroni hot-glued to his social studies project, and even the most forgiving teacher would've told him to take a Sharpie to fill in the flimsy lines of the Bond-out-for-vengeance theme. Right near the very end, though, Fleming hands us one of his distinctive bits of ghoulish weirdness: a secret garden of suicide, haunted at night by the shadowy dishonored, looking to secretly off themselves by one of hundreds of means laid out for them. The deaths, playing out with a quiet kabuki pantomime, give this novel its only hint of life.(less)
Michael Patrick Hearn opens his edition by saying that he'll follow the rule of note annotating anything that doesn't need to be annotated, but appare...moreMichael Patrick Hearn opens his edition by saying that he'll follow the rule of note annotating anything that doesn't need to be annotated, but apparently he's never met a sentence that doesn't need to be annotated. A third of the way into the book the word count of his notes already outnumber the word count of the original text by an order of magnitude. Everything Hearn has to say is scholarly, but most of it isn't interesting. He pretty much speculates on Baum's motives and tries to cover his mistakes while explaining The Wonderful Wizard of Oz's canonical relationships to dozens of books that Baum hadn't written yet. That said, this volume exactly reprints the first edition of Baum's classic, including really lovely pressings of W.W. Denslow's illustrations, so in some ways it's the ideal way to read tWWoO for the first time, which is exactly what I was doing.
There's very little new or informed that I can say about the 113 year old story itself, but I'll point out that it's the perfect book to read for someone who wants to understand the right way to adapt fiction into film. Victor Fleming et al. took a well imagined fairy tale, deftly reworked its plot to add the conflict and villain that a children's movie needed without losing any of the book's key elements and themes. They identified the cinematic components they needed to add to maintain Baum's tone (namely Technicolor, groundbreaking visuals, and music). They even strengthened the characters in the process. It didn't hurt that the filmmakers managed to execute everything perfectly. It's a worthy artistic endeavor to read Baum's book then watch the movie, because then at your next dinner party you can sip your water and say, "I was reading a review on Goodreads.com which suggested..." and then hold court, and you'll never have to worry about being invited back.(less)
I spent large chunks of My Life as a Fake not entirely understanding what was happening but needing to find out what happens next. I didn't enjoy read...moreI spent large chunks of My Life as a Fake not entirely understanding what was happening but needing to find out what happens next. I didn't enjoy reading it, but it's the first novel in months that I wanted to be reading when I wasn't reading it. I wish I understood what those things say about this book, but not enough to figure it out.(less)
Ray Bradbury's somewhat famous "A Sound of Thunder" is the first legitimately disturbing piece of fiction I've read for quite a while, and in the nine...moreRay Bradbury's somewhat famous "A Sound of Thunder" is the first legitimately disturbing piece of fiction I've read for quite a while, and in the nine-page span of 1953's "The Murderer" not only does he manage to predict cell phones, social networking in general and Twitter in particular, but also he extrapolates them into smartphone addiction. (He also imagines the Roomba, but not the cat riding it.) My 60-year-old paperback copy fell apart in my hands as I read it, which would feel like a tragedy if I could remember any more than those two stories.(less)
If you think you'd be interested in a collection of actual letters sent to Sherlock Holmes, then you certainly won't regret the hour or two it takes t...moreIf you think you'd be interested in a collection of actual letters sent to Sherlock Holmes, then you certainly won't regret the hour or two it takes to read this one. After all it contains the only known letter to a fictional character requesting his help acquiring an autograph from the lead singer of Soft Cell. If you're unsure if you'd be interested in a collection of actual letters sent to Sherlock Holmes, your time would be better spent resetting your Internet passwords or relearning the quadratic formula.(less)
I'm not entirely sure what this book's about. The Supreme Court, sure, that's on the cover. But is it a record of the decades-long conservative moveme...moreI'm not entirely sure what this book's about. The Supreme Court, sure, that's on the cover. But is it a record of the decades-long conservative movement to take over the Court? Sort of. But then why does it document the 11-year period when the Court changed the least? Is it a treatise on how individual justices determine the direction of the Court? Yes, but that's like arguing that individual players change the direction of a baseball team: they do. Is it just a chronicle of the ins and outs of a somewhat arbitrary period in the Court's history? That too, but it's one that chronicle relies on privileged reports of the Court's work and the justices' thought processes, mostly from interviews with anonymous sources, which Toobin retells as narrative without quotes or citation. So it's never clear which parts of the "inside look" are fact and which are just Toobin's interpretation or even imagination. Whatever it is, The Nine is super readable. Plus I have to credit Toobin for making a relentless progressive like me find Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia likable and even sympathetic. And so as payback for that, I'm ending this review by pettily pointing out that he doesn't know the difference between "further" and "farther."(less)
I'd been looking forward to getting to On Her Majesty's Secret Service ever since I started working my way through the 007 books, because a classics p...moreI'd been looking forward to getting to On Her Majesty's Secret Service ever since I started working my way through the 007 books, because a classics professor and closet Bondophile once told me it's his favorite of Ian Fleming's novels. So it surprised me that, 11 paperbacks into the series, this is the first that I closed with nothing to say about it. Neither great nor terrible, OHMSS stands out only because Fleming, like in The Spy Who Loved Me, tries to shake up his formula to keep himself interested (admirable, because his audience certainly would've stayed interested regardless). It's no spoiler that this is the story in which James Bond meets a woman and gets married. He leaves out the customary second step of falling in love; 007 takes the plunge mostly because he's playing the odds that he's unlikely to find a better woman than La Comtesse Teresa di Vicenzo. Good enough, I guess, but beyond that, what is there? A dippy revenge plan by Blofeld involving a gaggle of bimbos eating soup atop a Swiss mountain; an exciting ski chase confounded by "Sprung-Christinas" and "right-hand Christies" and other jargon that I didn't want to have to know; a handsy Corsican gangster. I'm already struggling to figure out how I'll wrap up this paragraph. It's not that there's nothing to say about the novel -- it's that there's nothing I want to say. Sadly, On Her Majesty's Secret Service isn't Fleming's first forgettable book as much as it's the first one I don't care if I remember.(less)
I admire Bill Bryson as a writer. Few authors could make sense of even one of the complex concepts he chases after in A Short History of Nearly Everyt...moreI admire Bill Bryson as a writer. Few authors could make sense of even one of the complex concepts he chases after in A Short History of Nearly Everything, let alone clearly and concisely explain 500 pages worth of them, and even fewer could make it all seem so effortless. Which makes it really unfair that Bryson also gets to be so funny, hiding his wit in corduroy affability so that the jokes sneak up and gut punch you. He has a similar knack for disguising difficult topics in just the right wacky anecdote or character sketch to make you not realize that you're learning about paleomagnetism or the ekpyrotic process until its too late. When he runs out of that material that the book verges toward dullness, but since that's mostly in the chapters about the laugh-an-epoch fields of taxonomy and cellular composition, I'll let him off with a warning. He's still written one of the most enjoyable general science books you'll find.(less)
This exceptionally disturbing book has some beautiful writing, but its slow pace and intentional lack of narrative left me plodding through it. But I'...moreThis exceptionally disturbing book has some beautiful writing, but its slow pace and intentional lack of narrative left me plodding through it. But I'll always remember the title Handmaid's description of the act of sex, which is so unlike any I've ever read and I imagine is as alien to all men as it was to me:
...the stub of himself, his extra, sensitive thumb, his tentacle, his delicate, stalked slug's eye, which extrudes, expands, winces, and shrivels back into himself when touched wrongly, grows big again, bulging a little at the tip, traveling forward as if along a leaf, into them, avid for vision. To achieve vision in this way, this journey into a darkness that is composed of women, a woman, who can see in the darkness while he himself strains blindly forward.
It's unfortunate that the most interesting thing about The Spy Who Loved Me is that Ian Fleming wrote it at all. Told from the point of view of a woma...moreIt's unfortunate that the most interesting thing about The Spy Who Loved Me is that Ian Fleming wrote it at all. Told from the point of view of a woman who crosses path with James Bond, who doesn't appear until the last third of the book, it's really a romance novel, in the Harlequin sense. The narrator Viv recounts her failed affairs with men she loved but who only used her for her body, explicitly for a 007 book. Then it's on to the standard slight setup of the lady getting into trouble with bad guys and a hero coming to her rescue, differentiated only by the fact that the bad guys are named Horror and Sluggsy. Fleming tells the story well and shows that he had more than one voice in him. I got the sense that he was straining for something more complex than he achieved, maybe in an attempt to pay back several novels worth of Bond's misogyny. He made a brave choice by varying so much from his formula, but that's the only memorable part of this forgettable book.(less)
Peter Biskind brings nothing to this sloppy oral history of the revolution that took place in Hollywood in the 1970s. He's a blowhard who uses his ost...morePeter Biskind brings nothing to this sloppy oral history of the revolution that took place in Hollywood in the 1970s. He's a blowhard who uses his ostensible theme -- how the same people who transformed the nature of movies and the movie business eventually destroyed both -- as a convenient cover for dishing the filthiest kind of gossip. He shows no respect for his subjects and so startlingly poor regard for women you'd think the book was written by one of the '70s misogynist that star in it. Nonetheless, Biskind's lead characters are the filmmakers whose work changed my life by inspiring me to go to film school 20+ years ago, so for a while I couldn't help but love every page. Eventually though, Biskind's mud and smut buries all lingering enthusiasm. By the time he fiendishly and pointlessly itemizes the grisly specifics of model Dorothy Stratten's murder scene, there's nothing left to love and little worth tolerating. Easy Riders, Raging Bulls is the perfect book to read when you're ready to start hating movies again.(less)
Was Graham Greene ever capable of writing a bad book? Or for that matter a bad sentence?
There's not a lot of point in my reviewing Brighton Rock -- i...moreWas Graham Greene ever capable of writing a bad book? Or for that matter a bad sentence?
There's not a lot of point in my reviewing Brighton Rock -- it's a masterful thriller that, like most of Greene's work, is actually a meditation on damnation -- so instead I'll mention how it consistently and unexpectedly reminded me of a Cormac McCarthy novel. Brighton Rock uses a McCarthyesque theme, following a boy who ages into violence before adulthood (who like in The Road, is often just called "the Boy"), but surprisingly I first noticed the similarities in style. Reset this page 26 paragraph from the Brighton beachfront to west Texas, and 'Mac himself could've tapped it out:
"The Boy paid his threepence and went through the turnstile. He moved rigidly past the rows of deck chairs four deep where people were waiting for the orchestra to play. From behind he looked younger than he was, in his dark thin ready-made suit a little too big at the hips; but when you met him face to face he looked older; the slaty eyes were touched with the annihilating eternity from which he had come and to which he went. The orchestra began to play: he felt the movement as a music in his belly: the violins wailed in his guts. He looked neither right nor left but went on."
Yeah, so I can think of no legitimate reason not to read this book.(less)
This is a great book if you're interested in the socio-political climate of the late Sixties through the viewpoint of an intelligent, critical thinkin...moreThis is a great book if you're interested in the socio-political climate of the late Sixties through the viewpoint of an intelligent, critical thinking progressive. Thing is I read it because I'm interested in television, and a minority of these collected columns from the Los Angeles Free Press look at TV without 44-year-old activist glasses. (Though history repeats, and I was struck how some of Ellison's smartest, angriest rants--with just a few proper nouns substituted--could've been peeled straight off of my favorite smart, angry blog, Kara Vallow's Teen Sleuth.)
But the few essays that gave me what I was seeking are excellent. It's rare and wonderful to find a writer of that era analyzing popular TV shrewdly and fairly and claiming it to be "as worthwhile an art-form as ballet, the opera, books, movies and painting." Ellison more often than not rips into television creators for dishing out gruel, but he without shame praises what he likes. Ellison doesn't like Mannix and Bonanza, but does like Adam-12 and Mission: Impossible. He hates Blondie and The Debbie Reynolds Show, but thinks Barbara Eden's comedic talents save I Dream of Jeannie. And he'll take George of the Jungle over any of the above. (I should note that I'm of the age that when I was a kid most of the shows Ellison writes about aired in daytime reruns, and I hated them all. I watched the first 30 seconds of Petticoat Junction and Ironside more times than I could count -- the amount of time it took me to get up and change the channel. Though for whatever reason I did like Jeannie and Bewitched.)
That all makes The Glass Teat a fantastic primary-source document of couch-potatoing in 1969. It shines when Ellison reels at the first reports of the My Lai massacre, feels underwhelmed by the moon landing, and most of all when he attends the pilot taping of a sitcom so new and challenging that he feels obligated to write a column daring ABC to put it on the air. The network chickened out, and Norman Lear's Those Were the Days starring Carroll O'Connor needed two more years and a name change before it would get its time slot and make history.(less)
Thunderball is an important novel to 007 nerds for a bunch of reasons: it's the first story (arguably) in which James Bond is sent to save the world f...moreThunderball is an important novel to 007 nerds for a bunch of reasons: it's the first story (arguably) in which James Bond is sent to save the world from villainy; it debuts said villain: Bond's arch rival SPECTRE and its leader Blofeld; it's based on a treatment for what was intended to be the first 007 movie, that Ian Fleming cowrote with Kevin McClory and Jack Whittingham and which led to a legal battle that affected the franchise for 40 years; and, it turns out, Thunderball is better than any of the Bond books that came before it.
It'd be dismaying that the 007 series highpoint comes from a story that isn't wholly Fleming's, if it weren't for the fact that what makes Thunderball great is the one thing specifically left out of a movie treatment: detail. From outlining the precise mathematics of how a hotel bar stiffs its customers by dunking oversized olives in its martinis, to using the way a bratty cabdriver combs his duck-tail as a metaphor for the decline of the British social fabric, Fleming fills the novel with such obsessive detail that he seems to be compensating for not having written the plot himself.
But that's fine. It's not a particularly fascinating plot (bad guys steal some nukes and threaten to use them if they don't get paid), so it's Fleming's triviality that bring the book to life, especially when its twisted through his weird fetishes. He debuts SPECTRE via an exacting board meeting that paints the group not as a paragon of supervillainy but as more of a sociopathic actuarial firm. He devotes a chapter to the inner monologue of the treacherous pilot Giuseppi Petatcchi as he steals an atomic bomber and murders its crew. He gives Domino Vitali (one of his few female leads to rise above ornamentation) a life fantasy imagined from the picture of a sailor printed on her Players cigarettes pack, and has her tell it to Bond as he casually fantasizes about raping her.
Yes, 007's still a scumbag at heart here, but a manageable one, because Thunderball puts him into a world so rich that he becomes the booze spiking a punch that's delicious enough on its own.(less)
I missed Knightfall the first time around, because the series began right after I left for college and temporarily gave up my comics habit that was bo...moreI missed Knightfall the first time around, because the series began right after I left for college and temporarily gave up my comics habit that was born from and raised on Batman. Nowadays a craving for superhero books boils up in me about twice a year, and the last one hit its peak just as I rewatched The Dark Knight Rises, giving me the irresistible urge to examine its primary source material. Turns out it's the first comic collection in years that made me embarrassed to be reading it. The light of even Nolan's worst Batman movie exposes everything awful about this series, which breaks out every superhero comic cliche. Knightfall'soverwrought dialogue and unrelenting dourness camouflage an almost total lack of imagination and a villain that would seem thinly drawn even facing off against Flash Gordon. But it was nice to see Norm Breyfogle's proudly goofy artwork again, and the final panel of Bane breaking Batman's back (<--spoiler) has become iconic, so I guess that's something.(less)
This is one of the least appealing books I've read in a long time. Garry Marshall seems like a genuinely good person, and there's no denying his succe...moreThis is one of the least appealing books I've read in a long time. Garry Marshall seems like a genuinely good person, and there's no denying his success. But I can't figure out what he intended Wake Me When It's Funny to be. It's not quite a memoir, though there's a constant stream of bar-mitzvah-grade anecdotes. It's not quite a guidebook to getting into show business, despite a bunch of strange advice. Marshall seems to assume the reader has no knowledge of the TV or film industry, but he gives tips on things like working out a smart product placement deal and keeping George C. Scott from getting grumpy. The only reason I slapped a second star onto the rating is that I like his emphasis on maintaining a work/life balance and his interpretation of the myth of Sisyphus: "When the guy is walking down the hill to get the boulder again ... he can say, 'Here's a nice break. I can walk down the hill, whistling and pushing nothing.'"(less)
007 fans who whined about James Bond's brooding introspection in Skyfall might be surprised to find Goldfinger opening with...moreWarning - Here be spoilers.
007 fans who whined about James Bond's brooding introspection in Skyfall might be surprised to find Goldfinger opening with Bond stewing over killing for a living and wondering if it's finally hollowed him out to the point that he should be finished with it. I guess he decides not, since 170 pages later he's beating somebody to death with his forehead. In between Ian Fleming gives us 007 at his most detestable.
Bond play-acts as a brutal cynic to get close to evil tycoon Auric Goldfinger, but the irony is his character is no worse than himself. He fantasizes about stabbing Goldfinger in the neck from behind, long after it would do any good, just from hate and rage at being bested. This seventh book in the series is the one in which hate becomes an integral part of Bond. He confirms not just his misogyny but also his homophobia -- a bizarre homophobia grown out of that misogyny; he sees an epidemic of "pansies" (a term he applies to both men and women, including Pussy Galore whose lesbianism, only hinted at in the movie adaptation, in the novel is the feared leader of a lesbian gang, the Cement Mixers) brought about by the screwing up of gender roles that "were a direct consequence of giving votes to women."
I'd like to think that Ian Fleming recognized that irony and also understood how unlikable he was making his hero -- that he was a skilled writer he exploring whether his audience could handle the idea of their country being protected by a man no better than the villains he's protecting it from. But since Fleming lazily opens Goldfinger with a rehashing of the same plot point he used to kick off Moonraker -- James Bond being asked to catch a tycoon cheating at cards -- I have my doubts.(less)
Carl Sagan was one of the greatest advocates for science, for progressivism, and for how science inevitably leads to progressivism. Those subjects are...moreCarl Sagan was one of the greatest advocates for science, for progressivism, and for how science inevitably leads to progressivism. Those subjects are the heart of The Demon-Haunted World, his argument for the necessity of science, and especially the scientific method, in modern culture. I passionately agree with almost every word of the book, and parts of it are brilliant (his passionate case for skepticism, his "baloney detection kit" guide to critical thinking). But Sagan too often dips into grumpy didacticism (his grousing about the quality of TV) or focuses on issues that now seem trivial (the alien-abduction fad that was booming as he wrote). Over the 12 nights it took me to read The Demon-Haunted World, I found myself often choosing just to go to sleep rather than pick it up. Even the most important arguments are pointless if you don't want to pay attention to them.
If you're new to the idea of dedicated skepticism or curious as to whether science really does stand up against "common sense" or "the unexplainable," The Demon-Haunted World is a great place to start. If you already know that you're going to agree with everything Carl Sagan has to say, you'll only need this book if you're looking for reassurance that you're on the right track.(less)
Alexandra Fuller's story behind her memoir is fascinating in its nature but never picks up momentum in its telling. A white British child, Fuller grew...moreAlexandra Fuller's story behind her memoir is fascinating in its nature but never picks up momentum in its telling. A white British child, Fuller grew up poor in Africa, following her family from dirt farm to dirt farm in in Zimbabwe, Malawi, and Zambia -- some of the continent's most troubled countries. She draws a striking, if sad, portrait of her parents. Her father comes off as hateful and foolish (or at least foolhardy), her mom drunk and angry, but it's never quite clear what Fuller feels about them or her childhood. She relates her world in vignettes and, with some exception, seems distant and closed off to it. In the end what's most remarkable is that, despite Fuller's description of Africa as endless squalor, danger, and despair, she maintains a fondness and longing for it her entire life. No matter how terrible, home is home.(less)
With Doctor No, Ian Fleming continued his perfect sine wave pattern of a good book followed by a lousy book. Many people consider this, the sixth in t...moreWith Doctor No, Ian Fleming continued his perfect sine wave pattern of a good book followed by a lousy book. Many people consider this, the sixth in the Bond series, to be the best, but hell if I can figure out why. What little plot the novel has is dull: 007 heads to Jamaica to investigate the death of a colleague, then discovers that a bad guy might be up to no good on a nearby island built of bird shit. Said bad guy, Doctor No, is a dud, little more than a sadist with hooks for hands. Honeychile Rider, Fleming's ladybait no. 6, is a perplexing jungle girl with no reason for being other than to give Bond someone to care for and want to lay. Fleming seems to try to lift her above DiD status by making her smart and self-reliant and completely not in need of rescuing, but he stomps her back down by having 007 constantly patronize her like a bachelor uncle saddled with his preschool niece for the weekend.
There are a few bright spots: MI6's armorer's lengthy lecture on the merits of the new Walther PPK over Bond's preferred Beretta; 007's internal struggle as he endures Doctor No's weirdo death tube; and a brief examination of M's cold and pragmatic attitude toward his agents, which seems to have directly influenced the new Bond film Skyfalll. But combine those with all of the above, way more than the RDA of Fleming's racial stereotyping (I did not need to learn the word "chigroe.") and a shortage of the "incredible suspense" and "unexpected thrills" promised on the back cover of my old Signet paperback edition, and you're better off skipping this one and instead spending a pleasant two hours and 20 minutes with Daniel Craig and Javier Bardem's bleached eyebrows.(less)
I've read seven of Cormac McCarthy's novels. No working writer crafts better sentences than he does, though often his books on the whole don't equal t...moreI've read seven of Cormac McCarthy's novels. No working writer crafts better sentences than he does, though often his books on the whole don't equal their brilliant parts. The Road, without question, does.
This story about the closing days of the world is, as expected, filled with death, despair, and horror. But those evils are just a mask disguising a tale of good. The Road follows a boy who, never having known civilization, strains to do good in a time when "good" no longer has a definition. As if driven by something born into his DNA, he mourns a rightness beyond even what he was taught by his father, the only person he's ever known. McCarthy uses humanity's downfall at its own hands to show that, even when hope has finally and fully disappeared, goodness can live on.
It's a bit of pure beauty in a book that feels like a privilege to read.(less)
I picked this up yet again because I wanted something autumnal and Halloween-ish, not to mention something to cleanse my palate after the supremely ir...moreI picked this up yet again because I wanted something autumnal and Halloween-ish, not to mention something to cleanse my palate after the supremely irritating Radio On. It's been many years since I last read it, and as a teenager I considered it one of my favorites for reasons that I can't quite figure out now -- possibly a fondness for Jack Clayton's movie adaptation, which scarred a generation. It's much more lyrical than I remember, almost to a fault. It's still a definitive fall book, but it could do with having some of its prettiness cut with some more straightforward scariness.
(Just after I typed that last sentence I went over to IMDB and saw that Bradbury wrote the screenplay for the movie version. This is interesting because his screenplay fixes many of the problems in his book. He streamlines the characters, refines the relationships, and more deeply explores the evil carnival to find some terror. That Ray, he knew what he was doing.)(less)
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