Alas, Zeus still sits on his throne but only because those who worship refuse to let him leave. His thunderbolts now sputter like spent matchsticks, and our sorrow is greater because those worshippers claim the matchsticks are thunderbolts hurled by a remembered Zeus.
One story, Mr. Pale, kept me interested but only because it was nicely styled. The story itself is telegraphic and unoriginal (to me).

This is an odd collection of short stories. Some are amusing, entertaining, and even turn out to be a fable. Others finish short and abruptly, and you wonder where the rest of the story has gone. It’s fine to ponder on musings, but you do feel a bit robbed, and perhaps sometimes an exercise to hone the writer’s craft shouldn’t really be published. It’s the little things that inspire you to write a story, and sometimes the truth needs to be exaggerated to make it entertaining and grip the reader, but there are some questions that remain unsolved. Still, it just goes to show that Bradbury takes a dab at everything from affairs to childhood heroes and even a bit of sci-fi. Whatever he writes, he manages to build up a little bit of suspense in each scene, and encourages the reader to think about the people living around them.

I love Ray Bradbury, but this is not the best. In fact I found myself tuning in and out of this. I love the medium of short stories, I like getting the satisfaction of an ending without too much delay (another sign of my drastic lack of patience) but this was a bit meh. They had great titles like, "If MGM is killed, who gets the lion?" but it kind of failed to deliver. Especially the last story which was called "The Bird That Comes Out the Clock" which is an extolment to women to let their husbands play like children while they uncomplainingly cook, clean and care for them, lest the husbands abandon them in their middle-age, youthless and careworn. Which, I was going to excuse considering Bradbury started writing back when God was a boy, but this collection was published in 1997. So, a bit 'mm'.

I don't really feel like there was a lot about this book that jumped out at me. I saw a review that said that this book felt like a "b-sides" collection, and I have to say I agree. There were 2-3 stories that I enjoyed, but overall, it was just okay. I think I'm starting to see the point where the quality of his work starts declining, and I hate saying that about him because Bradbury is genuinely one of my favorite writers ever. The last few books I have read have been okay to decent, but not good or great.

In Driving Blind science fiction legend Ray Bradbury provides a series of short stories centered around the theme of those seeking to recapture or relive tender, if half-forgotten, memories and events from an earlier time. Trying … yet failing.

I can’t help but apply the same theme to my reading of Bradbury. As a student in junior high and high school I immersed myself in works by Bradbury like The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451 and The Illustrated Man. Books that evoked a spirit of discovery and wistfulness unlike any other that I had read. Today, I read the later works of Bradbury to try to recapture those feelings evoked by his earlier works in an earlier me. Trying … yet failing. I suspect both of us has changed.

Way back in 2013, Amazon put almost all of Bradbury's books on sale for the Kindle and, thinking I was a Bradbury fan, I snapped them all up. Considering how many anthologies Bradbury's put out over the decades, that's a LOT of books. I've been slowly working my way through the backlog over the last 5 years. This marks the end of the anthologies from that backlog.

Honestly, knowing that I'm all done is a huge relief.

When I first bought all of these anthologies, I WAS a Bradbury fan. I'd loved almost everything by him I'd read til that point. And starting out reading this backlog, I was still a fan.

However, the more of the backlog I read, the less I liked them. I think there's a couple of factors in this.

Bradbury does tend to be repetitive in his themes. But for the last handful of anthologies, I've been taking year-long breaks between his books to try to counteract that repetitiveness. Even this anthology, I spread out over the course of about two months so I wouldn't read more than a story or two a week. Unfortunately, that didn't help as much as I'd hoped.

But also, I really feel that these later anthologies of his genuinely aren't as good as the ones he published back in the '50s and '60s. Generally speaking, if a story sits around unpublished and uncollected for 5 decades, there's probably a reason an editor never bought it.

Some of these stories feel like Bradbury thought of something that irritated him, then rushed to his typewriter and pounded out a quick rant in story form, patted himself on the back for writing something every day, then filed it away in a drawer and forgot about it.

Unfortunately, I looked at all my reviews to see if I could find support for my "Later=worse" impression and noticed that I read his more famous anthologies first and worked my way through to the more obscure ones. But, since his famous ones were mostly written near the start of his career, and the obscurer ones towards the end, that means that I ended up reading them in something resembling chronological order. Therefore, my declining lack of interest in Bradbury could be due to either reason I've mentioned or a combination of both.


I've still got his three mystery novels left, which I'm not too enthusiastic about reading, to tell the truth. I'm highly tempted to just sample a couple of chapters and call it quits. Then, I've also got the massive "Best of" anthology, which I'm probably going to hang on to for several more years before even attempting to read it.

Един от най-добрите сборници с разкази на Рей Бредбъри според мен. Разказите са разнообразни, като в повечето от тях се преплитат романтични, фантастични, мистериозни нотки. Историите звучат и носталгично, но по един приятен, спокоен начин. Определено си заслужава да се прочете този сборник с разкази.

Have I ever mentioned that I love Ray Bradbury? In this collection, I loved that I didn't love every story! There were some that just fell flat for me, some that I disagreed with, and some that just didn't have "it." But isn't it amazing that no one always hits home runs??!! Don't get me wrong, even the stories I didn't particularly enjoy were still of good quality and writing; just didn't connect.

But the ones that did--and they were many--were amazing. Some familiar faces, places, and summer vibes. Some new and fresh. All of them dealt with Life--love (emerging, waning, breaking, straining), death (and new life that comes with death), pubs, men and women, doing what we want to do and don't because we feel the constraints of "ought to." He gets it.

I really enjoyed "Driving Blind"--clear, humorous, painful look at self-acceptance; "Fee, Fie, Foe, Fum"--dark comedy about distrust; "Grand Theft" and "I Wonder What's Become of Sally"--sweet "what if" romantic explorations; "The Mirror"--a rogue twin finding herself; "Mr. Pale"--death and space travel; and "That Bird That Comes Out of the Clock"--keeping marriage fun, or someone else will.

ncore du Bradbury ! j’avais trop envie de retrouver cette extase que j’avais ressenti à la lecture de ses nouvelles [du recueil : Le meilleur des mondes possibles], j’ai eu une petite larme de déception, me disant, merde j’ai commencé par le meilleur, et que plus jamais je ne pourrais retrouver ce que j’avais éprouvé lors de ma découverte de cet auteur. Alors, Train de nuit pour Babylone, est un recueil de nouvelles (18 ou 22 nouvelles je sais plus), très très courtes pour la plupart, même j’admire toujours autant Bradbury pour sa putain de créativité, a priori « inépuisable », mais aussi et surtout, cette capacité à vous entrainer là où il veut, néanmoins, je reproche à ces nouvelles, ce que je reproche généralement à ce genre littéraire, c’est qu’on reste sur sa faim. Je n’ai pas retrouvé ces fins surprenantes, grâce auxquelles, les nouvelles deviennent inoubliables, là en l’occurrence, j’en ai oublié la plupart, c’était une chouette lecture, quelques-unes m’ont énormément plu de par la psychologie qui en émane, c’était une bonne lecture mais loin de combler mes attentes.

It's Ray Bradbury, what's your question. If you haven't read The Martian Chronicles, your bucket list is incomplete.

Some of these short stories gave me pause and then caused deep thought. Enough said.

elibrary

It took me almost exactly a year to slog through this book, maybe I should’ve read more of his earlier works first. I’d say it wasn’t all bad, but 90% of it is garbage. At the end of your career, I guess it’s fair to just let all the sexism and weirdness ooze out because why not waste some trees instead of taking it to your grave. I’ll at least not read any more Bradbury for another 5 years, and if I do I’ll be cautious. Patting myself on the back for even finishing this one. Good luck soldiers.