You'll love this one...!! A book club & more discussion

Oh, bummer, Mary. I'm sorry.

Mary wrote: "I am so upset because I was really getting into this and loved it so much. I was listening to the audio on YouTube and yesterday they took off the audiobook on YouTube, it is no longer there. I did..."

That is a real bummer. Hate it when that happens. Hope it becomes available SOON.

Lynda wrote: "So I'm finally delving into this story, and am loving it; I have so many thoughts and highlights, I wish I'd been able to participate in the discussion at the beginning.
The part of Waukegan - I ..."

Well done, Lynda. Really enjoyed your post. If I recall correctly, you have a connection to this town from your childhood?

I loved this book - despite some flaws.

Thank you, Tejas Janet, and yes, I went to college in this town.

Finished the book and was swept away by the powerful themes and beautiful prose. I love the way Charles Halloway and Will teach Jim that the true magic of life happens in daily, ordinary life. Jim finally embraces the beauty of the everyday instead of looking for meaning in grand adventures.

Bradbury seems to make a special effort to display his characters' strengths and weaknesses in order to demonstrate that no one is all good nor all bad.
(view spoiler)[An especially humorous example is the scene when the Dust Witch approaches the grate where the boys are hiding, and Charles Halloway blows cigar smoke in her face to compromise her ability to detect the boys' hiding place. Although she was dangerously powerful, Charles zeroed in on her weakness. (hide spoiler)]

Joan, I agree that Anna's post of the backwards Funeral March is super creepy! Thanks for the heads up!

Lynda wrote: "So I'm finally delving into this story, and am loving it; I have so many thoughts and highlights, I wish I'd been able to participate in the discussion at the beginning.

The part of Waukegan - I ..."

Lynda that is a (view spoiler)[ a good point about Will's Dad already knowing since he seems so sad... (hide spoiler)]

I enjoyed reading your post Lynda. It must be truly magical reading a book set in the exact town you grew up. I guess it would give you that deeper connection with the characters, and in this case, also the author. I've read that Bradbury includes some biographical details in his stories and not just the town so perhaps you're right in spotting who Bradbury is in this tale. Or perhaps Bradbury is many of the characters at different times in his life.

I finished it. It is my first book by Bradbury. Though the prose was beautiful, I felt it was a little too lyrical for my reading. I had to read many parts slowly(sometimes twice) to move forward.
The story was good and my understanding is that it is important to accept our ability and not think about our physical age.
There were some creepy scenes but nothing much scarry in it.

I am so glad we selected this book for our group read this month! Excellent choice! ❤️❤️❤️

TJ et all,
I came back to the thread to report on the book of short stories. I finished it last night. I must have been tired and and a little hung over with Ray Bradbury when I started. I put the book on my desk and picked it up to reread the first few stories after reading something else. I had a much more favorable experience. Why they picked the first story to lead off the volume, I will never know. There were a couple I didn't like, as in all of the books of short stories I have ever read, but over all, I really, really liked most of them.

After reading all of the Green Town books now, I am not sure at all, why they include Something Wicked in the set of four. The first, third and fourth books were definitely about the same characters and town and have a completely different feel in the reading (still the Bradbury sense of strangeness and slightly unknown). Something Wicked is more a nightmare to the other more kindly looks back to an older time. Maybe it was meant simply as a complete contrast to Dandelion Wine. There was also a fifty year gap between when he wrote Dandelion Wine and Farewell Summer.

Something Wicked is the second book in the Green Town series, right? I wonder if after writing it, he didn't just have a desire to revisit the amber-colored nostalgia that permeates Dandelion Wine? I thought there were only three books in the series, and I thought there were only the two books until just a month ago. LOL. It keeps growing!

I loved that moment with Will and his father on his window sill. In that moment of bonding, there was no young vs old or past vs present. There's just the now, and in that now there was no tension. Just a father and son giggling in companionship over something fun/silly.

(view spoiler)[So my theory, right now, is that Mr. Dark uses his carnival's ability to age/youthen (not a word) people as a way to consume their energy for some reason? These people are changed and become the Carneys, except for maybe the Witch, who seems to infuse lifeless beings with the semblance of life. (hide spoiler)]

Lynda wrote: "Something Wicked is the second book in the Green Town series, right? I wonder if after writing it, he didn't just have a desire to revisit the amber-colored nostalgia that permeates Dandelion Wine?..."

I think you are correct with your spoiler, Lynda.

Yes, Something Wicked is book #2 in the Green Town series. Farewell Summer is #3. There is a lot of the young vs old in that story. The book of short stories is considered #4. There is one story in it called The Circus. It is quite short and is about boy named Tom (Douglas Spaulding's younger brother from Dandelion Wine). It is about him visiting the site where the circus had been after it had left. Tom had been sick and could not go, but when he visited the site, he could still smell the locations where animals and things had been and after leaving, he could still imagine the things that had been, and keep them fresh in his mind until the next year, when the circus came back again.

I think I'll finish the Green Town series, and maybe even re-read Dandelion Wine. It was one of the first audio books I'd ever listened to, and didn't like the narrator, which meant I'd fade in and out of paying attention. I feel I only ever got half of the story.

On a dark and stormy Halloween night, suckled by the warmth of hearth and home, I finished Something Wicked This Way Comes and I'm a better person for it.

I always though that the success of the Harry Potter series wasn't because JK Rowling created such a great protagonist, surrounded by great friends, who fought a wonderfully motivated villain, in a charmingly fantasized world that could scare the *bleep* out of you, rounded out with scary and quirky supporting characters, and mentored by the sagest sage. (Of course she did accomplish all of this). It was successful because Rowling developed an all encompassing theme, which stayed true through-out the books, crystallizing in the final showdown between Harry and Voldemort.

So many books fail on this front. Sure there are many great protagonists, and many great series. Some full of adventure, with pacing that just never stops. However, few books really reach beyond that to become something more, and I feel that in Wicked, Bradbury achieved this level of storytelling.

He's always been one of my favorite authors, his writing never fails to be imaginative, and I'm a sucker for that classic sci-fi world of Mars-obsession, and tech-oblivion. Yet, I'll be honest, there is a dated-ness to works such as Farenheit 451, and The Illustrated Man. However, this handicap isn't present in Wicked. This is a book that, I feel, could have been written at anytime. The universal themes of nostalgia, childhood, growing-up, and growing old are something that is part and parcel of the human condition.

"The carnival is like people, only more so."

(view spoiler)[How much do we love Will's Dad when he simply tells the boys that he believes them. This simple acceptance fills him with purpose, possibly for the first time in his life, chasing away his melancholy and listless, 3am, library-rambling existence. While I was wrong in thinking he'd been aware of the carnival prior to it's appearance, he was waiting for it, without realizing it, his entire fifty-two years. This is what the memo-pad he carried with him was for. Like Jim, he's ripe for adventure, but unlike Jim, he's been locked in fear.

And of course, fear, desperation, disappointment...the souls who reek of this despair, that is what the carnival needs. This is what evil needs to thrive, yet, in the end, it's not Mr. Dark, who drives the carnival, but the carnival itself which creates the man. Exerting it's pressure on human-nature, which is never satisfied to be content with what it has.

The idea that serenity exists in the now is what produces our victories. Someone once told me, there is no past and there is no future, that is just fiction. The only thing that exists is right now, so enjoy it, and don't squander it on something that doesn't exit. (Mr. Dark is as "serene as death", and death doesn't concern itself with the past or the future, it just is). If we don't give the carnival our regrets, disappointments, fears, lost-youth, and doubts, then we give it nothing. How can you fight nothing?

The best thing you can do when battling evil is to look up, to see it for what it is, give it your contempt, and laugh at it's absurdity! I just love that message! (hide spoiler)]

This has been another great monthly read with everyone, thank you so much for sharing this book with me.