quote:

I always felt sorry for Dostoevsky, because on the spine of the book it usually says "Dostoevsky The Idiot".

A well-known joke

I have just started reading the authorized biography of Arthur C. Clarke with an introduction by, non other, than our Ray Bradbury.

Honestly I have to admit that my kids got me hooked on the Harry Potter swing. I like the stories but I also like the interest my kids have taken to reading since they got interrested. I love hearing how they like the details in the books more than the chopped up versions they put in the movies. I explain to them so they can understand why they have to choose certain elements to cut to make a viable motion picture.

I finished Jimmy Buffet's "A Salty Piece of Land" recently and before that I re-read Martian Chronicles. Right now I'm looking at my new copy of Vonnegut's Timequake I got from a library sale.

My kids are a little young for Ray's stuff. But my 11 yo watched a couple episodes of my new Ray Bradbury Theater with me and she was interrested. She liked the Screaming Woman. We'll see.

CageHooper,
F.Y.I, I believe there's some discussion of the Harry Potter craze in the archives of this site, if you're interested...

Well, I'm keeping just one book ahead of each Harry Potter movie and since "Goblet of Fire" posters are showing up I'd better get at it!

Right now I'm reading "Of Time and the River" by Thomas Wolfe, a book which drew fire at the time it was published in 1935 for being anti-Semitic, and small wonder -- it makes "Oliver Twist" look mild by comparison! I am finding it tough going but intend to read it all, as except for racial, ethnic, religious, and class prejudice, it is actually a very good book.

I sympathize with the opinion that there is anti-Semitism in “Oliver Twist” for there surely is but I would like to argue that it goes beyond that. Dickens manipulates what he sees as the social perceptions of his readers in various ways. The public is unaware of the intensity of the child labor problem so he shows how the law and social attitudes have allowed it. He uses anti-Semitism to his advantage with the stereotypical Fagin, and will touch on another sensitive group, short people, with Quilp in “The Old Curiosity Shop” and Miss Mowcher in “David Copperfield”. I would have preferred that he had gone in another direction but this is not the venue for that argument. He uses Fagin in much the same way as Alfred Hitchcock used Cary Grant in “North By Northwest”. Grant was someone we already new, felt empathy for and needed little introduction. The stereotype of Fagin, although unfair, was already known by the public of that time and Dickens went about changing that perception, ever so slightly, by presenting Fagin as a sympathetic character. He hated the death penalty but puts Fagin, someone you’ve learned to feel pity for, in the death cell at the end.

Just finished “Pollyanna” (what a great read), and getting ready to start Stephen King’s new hardboiled crime novel.

I am almost finished reading Something Wicked This Way Comes. My copy is about to fall apart. It is a paperback with a cover price of 95 cents and a Bantam Pathfinder edition date of 1972. I was 15 then. I haven't read it in a number of years and was surprised to find that it is so different than I remembered. Perhaps I have seen the movie too many times since. I always thought of it as Will Halloway's story but it is actually the story of Charles Halloway's redemption.

Also, not to get off topic, but I recently saw the DVD of Jet Li's UNLEASHED and it reminded me quite a bit of Oliver Twist with Bob Hoskins in the Fagin role.

I didn't realize Oliver Twist was anti-Semitic since I never thought of Fagin as being a Semite. Shows what I know. Sometimes life is simpler when you are naive. (Evian spelled backwards.)

I'm rambling I better close.

Wow, from Pollyanna to Stephen King! Quite a transition!

Despite any flaws, "Oliver Twist" has remained popular. It's just been filmed for about the dozenth time.

Can you help us out, blackdog, by telling if this quote https://raybradburyboard.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/3791083901/m/8171051361 is from SW or at least eliminating that as a possibility?

It's about 98% to Ray's credit that I'm reading Thomas Wolfe at all. Has anyone else read him?

quote:

Originally posted by blackdog:
...I always thought of it as Will Halloway's story but it is actually the story of Charles Halloway's redemption...

blackdog,

funnily enough, Bradbury himself went through a similar change of perception some time after he wrote the book. He realised one day (so he claims) that Charles Halloway was his own father, and the realisation brought him to tears. (But, of course, Ray cries reading the phone book.) What is interesting is that we each see a story differently according to our own accumulated life expriences at the time we read it.

I'm enjoying these posts.
I dearly love Mr. Dickens' works.
Re-read David Copperfield recently.
I just re-read "Quicker Than The Eye" and "Driving Blind" and it was as if I'd never read some of the stories.
Also been reading Stephanie Barron's Jane Austen Mysteries.
And the Bible.
And The Arabian Nights.
And lots of sheet music! Getting ready for the big Christmas Concert, don't you know...

For my middle school book club, I just finished "Summer of the Monkeys" (simple, fun, cute), and now for my adult book club I am rereading, after many years, "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn." It is an amazing book. There is something very Bradburyesque about it, but I haven't quite figured out what it is yet. I have about 300 pages to go, so I will have plenty of time to ponder this question. In the meantime, I am loving every single word.

Yes. “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” is one of the most beautiful books ever written.

I've not read "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn", I just remember a scene in an old Warner Bros cartoon where a crowd of dogs forms around the window of a bookshop which has lots of copies on display!

Phil, Exactly the image that came to mind for me!
I have seen the movie version of the book years ago, though, and it's very sad as I recall.

Imskipper,

I have never read "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" and will definitely read it now.

Also, I thought many of you would like to weigh in on Time Magazine's new Top 100 Novels. I agree with some of the choices but feel that many great novels have been overlooked. There is one egregious omission...Ray Bradbury.

http://www.time.com/time/2005/100books/the_complete_list.html