The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury

I decided to close the RIP II challenge with The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury after having it recommended to me by so many people. Like Debi, I can definitely see this one becoming a Halloween tradition. This is my third Bradbury for the RIP challenge and if there was more than just 6 hours left to the challenge I'd read more! There's a certain honesty to Bradbury's writing. The Halloween Tree exudes memories of Halloween as a child. I fell back into my childhood when reading this one and that chill in the air on Halloween night came alive. He did the same thing with Something Wicked This Way Comes. He truly has a gift for capturing the spirit of the fantastic.

The Halloween Tree is the tale of 9 boys and their adventure through the history of Halloween throughout the world. A group of friends gather on Halloween night, dressed in their costumes, to meet their friend Pipkin for trick-or-treating. Pipkin isn't looking right but sends his friends on their way and tells them to meet him at a house at the end of town...he'll be there soon dressed in his costume. They arrive at a house that's shroud in mystery and after knocking on the door things get strange. They discover a tree...a Halloween Tree that is lit up with hundreds of jackolanterns. A man rises from the leaves surrounding the tree...he's the owner of the house, named Mr. Moundshroud.

Pipkin finally comes running to catch up with his friends when he's swept up by a dark cloud and disappears. Mr. Moundshroud leads the remaining 8 friends on a chase through Halloween traditions celebrated the world over. There journey starts in Ancient Egypt where they witness the traditions associated with Osiris and continues all the way through Mexico's Day of the Dead. In between they visit the gargoyles of Notre Dame and the Druid god, Samhain to name a couple. They travel through all these places to find their friend, Pip, while learning about the traditions associated with their costumes along the way.

There's also a wonderful theme of friendship throughout this book and that's a theme that is seen in everything I've read of Bradbury's. He writes such heartwarming stories in the midst of such creepy stories. The ending to this book is quite endearing and well worth the read just for that.

A favorite line: "When you reach the stars, boy, yes, and live there forever, all the fears will go, and Death himself will die." I thought that was just beautiful. A bit morbid that it should be my favorite line, but the words are just perfect.

Last but not least, the cover of this book is fantastic! May be my favorite cover of the year. If you enbiggen (stole that word from bookfool ;) the picture, the skull is actually made up of the halloween tree and the 8 boys in the book in their costumes! Genius!

I also finished Wizards, which I'm not going to do a full review on because I'm lazy :p I wasn't overly impressed with it. I loved Neil Gaiman's story, The Witch's Headstone and Orson Scott Card's story, Stonefather, was amazing, but aside from that there were 2 or 3 others that I really enjoyed but nothing else really stood out. My problem with reading anthologies is that I'm thrown off by all of the different styles of writing. If I'm reading one author's anthology, that's fine because I can grow accustomed to their style. But with these anthologies, the style changes from story to story and I lose interest and the stories aren't long enough for me to really gain interest. Unless they're really good, which a few were. With Gaiman and Card, I was familiar with their styles, so those I enjoyed.

Anyway, The Halloween Tree...Read it!

You'd All Be So Proud...

I went to Barnes and Noble after work today with the intention of buying the new Orson Scott Card book that came out today, War of Gifts, and guess what...I bought it and it was the only book I bought! For those who have read my blog for awhile, you will know that it's a rare occasion that I walk out of a bookstore with only the book that I intended to leave with. It's usually at least a $50 bill. But today, it was only $10.14 with my member discount :)

Oh sure, there were plenty of distractions along the way. As soon as I walked in I was greeted by the beautiful new edition of War and Peace that Dark Orpheus made me aware of. So I drooled over that one for a little while and then put it back on the display slightly more damp than it was before. But I will be buying that one next year. I want to read some more Tolstoy and that edition is just to nice to pass up!

Then I pass the huge dark fantasy/horror display...now how I managed to get past this one without taking any home is beyond me...I just kept saying "no!" Of course now they have a bajillion copies of The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury now that I've gone and ordered it off of Amazon since I couldn't find it there the other night. So if it doesn't arrive from Amazon by tomorrow, I now know that I can go buy the $5.50 copy at B&N for my Halloween night reading pleasure.

So basically, I found a bunch of books that I'll be buying eventually anyway, but the important thing is that I didn't blow my whole paycheck today! Maybe the kid is finally learning how to control spending habits...er, yeah, that's it....

I was very happy to find War of Gifts though! I was preparing myself for disappointment. My poor favorite author never gets the attention he deserves on the day his books are released. So I went to the Sci-Fi section and sure enough there were none there...I kept looking and as I was about to give up I saw a huge pile of the books by the front door! I'm guessing this one actually got some promotion because it's an Ender story. It's a cool little book and I'm sure I'll read all of it's 126 pages tonight. It's what all of us Ender fans have been referring to as "Christmas in Battle School" for the last 2 or 3 years. And that's what it is. It's the story of Christmas (which is banned) during the events of Ender's Game.

In other news, I'm waiting to the very last minute to post my RIP wrap-up because I want to squeeze in The Halloween Tree tomorrow night. I'm also reading Rebecca right now, which is amazing, but I'm only about 200 pages in, so I doubt I'll finish that by tomorrow with the new Orson Scott Card and The Halloween Tree to read. So that one will count as a November read. But I have completed the RIP Challenge and have read 11 books so far. I have one more short story in the Wizards anthology which I'll probably read tonight which will bring me up to 12. That's all my book news for the day!

Alright, I'm Back

I'm ready to come back. The funeral was really nice today. It was so touching to see the amount of people who showed up and the whole ceremony was just a wonderful tribute to a wonderful man. I mentioned the other day that we shared a love of music, me and my uncle. He had one of the most eclectic tastes in music that I knew of and he passed that on to me. He would go from The Sex Pistols to Frank Sinatra and it was common knowledge that Frank Sinatra was his all time favorite singer. So at the end of his funeral as they were bringing the casket out of the chapel they played "My Way" through the speakers and it was just the perfect way to send him off. I'll miss you Uncle Rob.

In the meantime, I haven't gotten much reading done, but the couple of little short books that I've read I enjoyed. Very light reading here :p The first is the second Edgar and Ellen book by Charles Ogden called Tourist Trap and while not great literature by any means, it's a fun little book that was better than the first in the series and can be enjoyed by kids and adults alike. The second was Ray Bradbury's short story The Homecoming which is beautifully illustrated by Dave McKean. I highly recommend picking up a copy of this book if you come across it. I've really grown fond of Bradbury's writing this past year and of course McKean is one of my favorite artists if you can't tell by my header. The Homecoming is a perfect tale for Halloween about an ordinary boy in an anything but ordinary family who just wants to fit in during their Homecoming gathering on All Hallow's Eve.

I'm throwing in an unplanned book next because what the hell, it's time to spice things up! I have Alan Campbell's Scar Night sitting on my shelf and I keep eyeing it up. It wasn't originally on my RIP bonus list, but it's going to be now! I've ordered the prequel, Lye Street, that Subterranean Press is publishing in January 2008 so I'd like to read this one first anyway. Lye Street has a great Dave McKean cover which I can't wait to see in person.

So I'm glad to be back and I'll be making the blog rounds soon. Back to work tomorrow!

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!

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Fahrenheit 451 is such a classic, and sadly, I had never read it. Now that I have, I can see why it's a classic and can see why it will always remain one and remain relevant. This was a very powerful book. Picture a world engaged in war, a world full of censorship, a world where there is no speed limit, a world where people do not engage with each other, but rather engage with the walls. This is the world that Ray Bradbury has created in Fahrenheit 451.

451 is the number that the firemen wear on their uniforms. The jobs of the firemen are not to put out fires, but rather, start them. Books are banned in Bradbury's world. Books are seen as not real, silly, impersonal, influential, propaganda and will not be tolerated by the government. So it is that the job of the firemen is to burn every book in existence and to imprison the owner of the books. Quite a scary thing. One of the firemen, Montag (the central character) has kept some books of his own. Upon reading them, he finds that books should exist, and you can see the dilemma that this could cause. That's all I'll say so as not to ruin the story for those who have never read this.

This is also my first Bradbury work, and I'm very happy that I've finally discovered him. He is Orson Scott Card's favorite author, so I figured he had to be a pretty damn good writer...and he is! I look forward to reading more of his work. I have Something Wicked This Way Comes sitting on my shelf, so that'll be the next Bradbury. I also have a short story by the name of The Homecoming illustrated by Dave McKean.

This was book 3 for me in the Banned Books Challenge. It's very ironic that this book has been banned seeing as the book is about books being banned and censorship. My thoughts on why it may be banned is because of Montag's challenge of authority. This is shown as a good thing in this book and he is the hero, and it's generally not well taken in our society when one goes up against the government or any form of authority. I think it's ridiculous to ban this book though. This book speaks volumes about power in the wrong hands, ignorance, and many other themes that I could go on forever about. Bottom line is that this is a wonderful book and although it has been banned in some places, I'm glad to see that it is required reading in so many other places.

Other Reviews:

Melody

I May Be Broke, But I've Got Peter Beagle

Thanks to Carl, I had to go spend money on a book today :p. It's really not his fault though, it was my choosing. One of the books that I signed up for for the Once Upon A Time challenge was Peter Beagle's The Last Unicorn. Now, I have all the other books that I'm reading for the challenge sitting on my shelf, but I just had to have this one first even though I had only $18.99 in my checking account (it's called being a grad student). On the positive side of being a grad student, my stipend should be coming in in about 4 days, so I'll manage.

I tend to do this alot with books. I have probably about 50 books sitting on my to be read shelf, including the other 4 books I'm reading for the challenge, but I still manage to always "need to buy" another book. That's one thing I like about these challenges - I can commit to reading some of these that have been sitting on the shelf, lonely and abandoned for far too long. Unfortunately though, I don't own the rest of the books that I signed up for for the Banned Books Challenge, so I'll have to be buying those. It's worth it though.

So now I just need to finish Fahrenheit 451 tonight for the banned books challenge and then I can start The Last Unicorn. Can't wait!

Another great thing about these challenges is that I'm getting to meet all of these other great bloggers out there who have also signed up for the challenges. And with fantasy being my favorite genre, there are lots of new friends out there!

Web Wanderings and Fun Finds

Plenty of fun stuff on the web today. I'll go down the blog list. In this post, Neil Gaiman talks about an upcoming issue (April 2007) of Fantasy and Science Fiction that is somewhat of a tribute to Gene Wolfe. He wrote an article about Gene Wolfe as did two other authors and there is something (maybe a short story) called Memorare by Gene himself. In the same issue, Charles DeLint does book reviews. I used to subscribe to Fantasy and Science Fiction a couple of years ago and I'm not really sure why I didn't renew. I think I just may have to once again.

Next up is the second entry in Literacy Chic's Lenten Meals series. In this entry she gives a delicious recipe for Shrimp or Crawfish jambalaya. I know her from living here in New Orleans, so I can assure you that this is a great, authentic recipe. I highly recommend that you try this one out for a taste of real New Orleans cooking, and use Louisiana crawfish if you can find them (much better than Chinese crawfish. We had boiled crawfish for dinner tonight and they were deeeelicious.

Lisa Snellings-Clark writes about an interview she did for Fantasy Magazine which I'm looking forward to. She also talks about Poppet Planet and mentions that the gallery will be open again around St. Patrick's Day. Can't wait to see the poppets for that (assuming she makes them). Neil Gaiman has also changed the Magnificent Oracular Journal to hold a Lisa Snellings-Clark poppet.
In Carl's Friday Favorites, he introduces us to an artist by the name of Raymond Swanland. His images are breathtaking and he has the ability to capture so much life in his paintings. I especially like the second one down by the name of The Golden Hills of Westria. Great stuff!

Subterranean Press offers their edition of I Sing the Body Electric by Ray Bradbury which looks wonderful. But unfortunately at $150 for the cheaper version, I will not be buying this one. If you have the money, I'm sure it's worth it though. It's numbered and signed by Bradbury himself.

Finally (in web wanderings at least) in his latest Uncle Orson Reviews Everything column, Orson Scott Card reviews a new documentary called Done the Impossible: The Fans Tale Firefly and Serenity. It is a DVD that captures the huge underground fan base for Firefly, in my opinion, one of the best shows ever on tv that was unfortunately canceled after only 12 episodes to make way for reality shows. This DVD looks great and I can't wait to check it out.

Enter the fun finds. While not as numerous as the web wanderings, still great stuff.

I got in my car today and caught the tail end of an ad on XM Radio for some new show with Orson Scott Card! I knew there was a reason I loved XM so much, they love my favorite author! I'm not entirely sure what it is though, and their website and a Google search did nothing for me. Anyone know about this? What I do know is that he will apparently have a show on Sonic Theater, XM channel 163. I just discovered this channel today after hearing the ad. It's so great! It's like audio books 24/7 and every night they play sci-fi stuff. How cool. Alot of these are the great old time sci-fi radio shows. Can't wait to see what Orson Scott Card is doing with this channel.

Finally, I decided to make a stop by best buy tonight and picked up a couple of goodies. The first is the soundtrack for Children of Men, and what I've listened to so far is great and just as haunting as the movie. I've been wanting this since I saw the movie. The music was great. Glad I finally bought it. I also picked up The Prestige on DVD. I haven't seen this yet, but I'm sure I'll love it. First of all, it has something to do with magic. Anything related to fantasy in some way is ok by me. Second, the actors are great. Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Michael Caine, David Bowie, and the smoking hot and still talented Scarlett Johansen. Can't wait to see this. I'm sure my review will be posted later tonight.

Shtuff...

I received my books from Jason at Second Chance Book Adoption today and I must say, I was so very pleasantly surprised. Not only did I get 4 books in beautiful like new condition, but three of them were signed by the authors! Went back and looked at past books I bought from him and 2 of the Chuck Palahniuk books were signed as well. Today I got Someplace to be Flying, signed by Charles DeLint, Girl in Landscape, signed by Jonathan Lethem, and Lullaby signed by Chuck Palahniuk. Good deals.

Speaking of books, Neil Gaiman posted a couple of links to DreamHaven's bookstore website and I found so much cool stuff that I want to buy now! But we're moving in a couple of weeks, so I'll wait until the new address is being lived in. In their "New and Noteworthy" section, they have a story of Ray Bradbury's entitled The Homecoming that is fully illustrated in color by Dave McKean for $14.95, and Gene Wolfe and Lisa Snellings-Clarks Strange Birds for $10.00 (Save me a copy of these two ;) Strange Birds comes signed by Gene Wolfe and Lisa if you request a signed copy. The Sale section has some great deals too, one of which is Yoshitaka Amano's Hero Vol. 1, hardcover for $12.00. I hope these don't all sell out. Dream Haven was apparently broken into a couple of nights ago, and they really need the extra business. So support them!

Speaking of Lisa, I got the second part of my ebay order, another little red poppet, in the mail today. Goes well with my other one, yet unique in it's own way.