Like most Bradbury collections I have read I found it to be mostly mediocre with a few real gems. The good stuff is good enough to make the collection worth reading. Bradbury's prose is so good that even the mediocrities are somewhat pleasant to read.

What really comes through on some of the best essays is Bradbury's enthusiastic love for literature and knowledge. I just feel good reading it and it gives me hope for mankind. It certainly added more books to my reading list.

Interesting.

The essays within this book sometimes repeat the same stories or anecdotes and I can see that this is either an unedited version of what would become Zen in the Art of Writing, or the extended version. Still, I love learning of the various things Bradbury was a part of and the places he left his mark in many different ways.

Parts of this book are entertaining, parts offer great life advice, and then some parts were so -so.

Not a great read. The chapters are short and if you only read them out of order, a chapter here or there, they may hold up under a reader's growing scrutiny. Unfortunately, the repetition is not a poetic repetition of Bradbury themes, it is verbatim repetition from essay to essay. It's ok that Bradbury had to work through the wonders of the world around him. It's not ok to throw his thoughts in a book with such disregard for how it would play out in a book like this. I really enjoyed "From the Dust Returned" because it was a recollection of related stories- but here the essays collide and jostle and just won't cooperate well together. On their own, sure, they make interesting, separate reads. As much as I love Bradbury, this one is not a good example of his books. It does get two stars because some of the essays stood so well on their own.