Around the Year in 52 Books discussion

"Dandelion Wine is a 1957 semi-autobiographical novel by Ray Bradbury, taking place in the summer of 1928 in the fictional town of Green Town, Illinois — a pseudonym for Bradbury's childhood home of Waukegan, Illinois. The novel developed from the short story "Dandelion Wine" which appeared in the June 1953 issue of Gourmet magazine.

The title refers to a wine made with dandelion petals and other ingredients, commonly citrus fruit. In the story, dandelion wine, as made by the protagonist's grandfather, serves as a metaphor for packing all of the joys of summer into a single bottle.

The main character of the story is Douglas Spaulding, a 12-year-old boy loosely patterned after Bradbury. Most of the book is focused upon the routines of small-town America, and the simple joys of yesteryear."

I've been a big fan of Ray Bradbury for quite a while now, but this was a book that I DNFed in high school. I've been trying to go back and finish up any incomplete books of the past and thought I'd give this another shot.

I was surprised to see that I had made it quite far into this (over half way, from what I remembered). I can't say it improved with time. I might simply be too young to get nostalgic for life in the early 20th century.

One thing I just don't get (and find my adamantly opposed to) is Goodreads Published years for many of these older books. For whatever reason, and I assume it just comes down to whoever enters the book into the system, they have a lot of the years wrong. This book is a good example as the system says that it was 'First Published in 1946' and that year occurs on the Stats chart for Publication Years of Books Read, but the description correctly lists the published year as 1957.

In the case of Dandelion Wine, one of the short stories included in the volume was published in 1946 (which is where that year comes from) but some were not even written until the late 50's and first appeared in this book. I noticed a similar problem with books like The Hound of the Baskervilles which again lists the date as the year when the first part of it was published (1901) rather than the year when the whole thing was published (1902). This is a bigger problem for R. E. Howard books, as tend to be 2 decades or more off on the Year Published.

I never heard of this book before, but wanted to say that I am indeed familiar with abandoning certain books years ago. Not sure whether it had to do with my age or simply because the book isn't that good.

With regard to incorrect information, you can inform stuff you find in the librarians' group. I'm only starting so not too insightful yet, but in the group someone might take a look if you alert them to it.