Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

I love the feeling of picking up a book, getting lost in its pages, and actually being transported into it's world; smelling it's smells, feeling the weather, seeing the sights, feeling the goosebumps. I felt like a child again when I was reading Something Wicked This Way Comes. Remember the creepiness of October as a child? Can you recall the strange attraction to a house of mirrors? There aren't many freak shows around these days, but as a child the unknown and the bizarre was always a little scary because it was new...We still weren't convinced that monsters didn't exist. And while we grow out of that as we grow older, we remember those feelings which allows for the pleasure of October and allows for a little bit of fear to become fun as an adult. Something Wicked This Way Comes was fun!

This is Ray Bradbury's telling of the tale of two young boys who are the best of friends, Jim and Will. Jim and Will have always done everything together and have shared a wonderful friendship. They are next door neighbors and are known to sneak out together to go on adventures. Will's father is another character that we get to know throughout the book. Will's father is a janitor at the local library and fathered Will at an older age and is bothered by that now that he is an older parent.

One night in October, Jim, Will, and Will's father hear carnival music playing. Carnivals usually come in the summer and it's odd that one should be coming now. But there are pieces of paper that are found that advertise that a carnival is in fact arriving. Jim and Will sneak out to investigate and discover one of the oddest and creepiest carnivals they have seen and it's proprietor is a man called Mr. Dark aka The Illustrated Man, who is covered in tattoos. Jim and Will first witness something strange in the carnival when one of their teachers goes through a bizarre hall of mirrors and comes out of it in a different state. Things really take a turn for the worst when they witness the calliope in the center of the carnival...the source of the strange music that beckoned them to the carnival. What they witness is a horrific scene that catapults them into a game of cat and mouse against the sinister Mr. Dark and his band of carnival freaks.

This was a perfect October read, perfect for the RIP challenge, and my first read for the Seconds Challenge! My first Bradbury was Fahrenheit 451, which I loved, but this one was so much better! There will definitely be a third Bradbury reading for me...thinking about Dandelion Wine as I've heard great things about that one. Bradbury's writing was just beautiful in this book. I thought to myself, you could just turn to any page in this book and find a perfect passage, so I did just that...flipped to a random page and found the first sentence. Here it is: "The night was sweet with the dust of autumn leaves that smelled as if the fine sands of ancient Egypt were drifting to dunes beyond the town." Now come on...how many books can you open to a random page and find a quote like that!