Ray Bradbury

So last night I started to cross reference my short story collection. It's frustrating to me to wonder if I have a particular story and in which book it resides. Plus, the mad need to catalogue brought on by www.LibraryThing.com has fully bloomed and this seemed like exactly the next step I need to take. Yes, it is an affliction. A welcome affliction, but a disease all the same.

So, in my blur of cataloguing (using MS Excel, the same way I index my book journal) I decided to actually read a couple of short stories last night. I chose Ray Bradbury, remembering my first crush on him in the early 90s. At that time I couldn't get enough. As I tend to be a binge author reader, it isn't surprising. But sometimes I forget the first blush of attraction in the pursuit of new voices.

Last night renewed my love for his prose. His style is varied, but at once cohesive. I mean that in the sense that his sentence structure is fairly consistent, but his use of language for effect varies depending on the kind of tale he is telling.

My choices for last night were One Who Waits and The Utterly Perfect Murder. Neither story is long, but both pack a secret punch. The first is a tale of an entity on Mars who at first seems harmless and almost friendly in a yearning for companionship sort of way. Then we discover the real truth. Mars is an oft-returned to setting for Bradbury and he always makes it interesting. The second story is a tale of deferred revenge and how the well laid plans of mice and men can surely gang aft aglee.

Bradbury's use of language is extraordinary. He finds words that would seem to be inappropriate, but in context are perfect for description of an event or action or thing. He seems to know instinctively that we will understand exactly what he means. Even though I am reading his stories decades from the time he wrote them, it as if he is speaking directly to me.

My collection has 100 Bradbury stories in it and the prospect of working through them one by one fills me with delicious anticipation of time spent in a slightly cock-eyed world where rightness always prevails.