Another reread that contains some of Bradbury's best short fiction. My three favorites are FROST AND FIRE, A SOUND OF THUNDER and THE SOUND OF SUMMER RUNNING. ( )

Contains:
R is for rocket --
End of the beginning --
Fog horn --
Rocket --
Rocket man --
Golden apples of the sun --
Sound of thunder --
Long rain --
Exiles --
Here there be Tygers --
Strawberry window --
Dragon --
Gift --
Frost and fire --
Uncle Einar --
Time machine --
Sound of summer running.

Just reading the story titles - drawn as they almost all are from different previously published works of varying quality (from 'good' to 'masterpiece for all time') - sends shivers of delight down my spine. This may well be because it was one of my first discoveries - for and by myself - of a favourite author who has remained so, even though I now baulk at some of his writing's typical characteristics (whimsy, romanticisation, a tendency to rococco indulgence at times - perhaps an intimation of American Gothic?).

My discovery of 'R is for Rocket' and (to me at the time) the less pleasing 'S is for Space' occurred when browsing the entire contents, book by book, of the innovative children's library section of the town library - my shelter and refuge after school from the age of eleven (the ideal age to start sipping Bradbury's Dandelion Wine and ordering from mysterious catalogues that only existed for me in RB's writing, or visiting travelling circuses that were entirely 'verboten' in my juvenile life...) That library must have had between 1,000 and perhaps twice or even three times as many books, but I'd soon scanned (at least), speed read, or borrowed every single volume suitabke for my own actual age and beyond (entire series of Biggles, Bunter, Famous Five Go..., Secret Seven, Hardy Boys, Swallows and Amazons, Just William.. [still a favourite] and a single book that changed my life, Gwyn Jones' translation / adaptation from the mediaeval Welsh of 'Tales of the Mabinogion', because it inspired me to surmount great difficulties and become a fluent Welsh speaker and the stories themselves provided me with perpetual inspiration.

But as my own (tested) reading age at ten years old was already 18+, I was soon into browsing the adult and reference libraries - for everything Bradbury, then Asimov, then Clarke, then PK Dick, then JG Ballard, then... I was away... into History, Astronomy, Physics, Egyptology, Arthurology, pre-history and ethnology, dictionaries, encyclopedias, until there was less and less time for fiction... for a while at least, until I discovered poetry and politics! I certainly didn't understand or properly appreciate most of what I read at the time but Bradbury had given me ever expanding (universal!) horizons.

Bradbury remains an author who I think deserves abiding respect, not just for thinking of young adults as he wrote and published, but for all his other forays into writing (plays, essays, radio lectures..) and his under-appreciated foresight into the damaging impact of American culture on others (and he appreciated and loved the finest nuances of cultures he visited, like a wise and amused uncle - Mexico and Ireland in particular).
'Uncle' Ray, you gave this lonely kid a good reading start in life - the very best in fact. ( )

Uneven. When it's great, its Bradbury's best. When it's not, it reads like "rockets, rockets, rockets, childhood wonder" and never breaks the pattern. Spotty great rather than sustainably good. ( )

Farewell summer, Ray Bradbury. Got the news just as I finished reading this book. ( )