Wednesday, November 08, 2006

One More for the Road

One More for the Road is a short story collection by Ray Bradbury. It consists of 24 unrelated stories, 17 of which had never been published before. Bradbury is a master of the genre, and this book contains some really nice stories. It also contained some that fell very flat. A few of the stories grabbed my, and several others were very interesting in concept, but just weren't my style. Unfortunately a lot of the stories didn't meet either of those criteria for me.

The Nineteenth was my favorite. It was a moving story of a man mysteriously encountering he deceased father on a golf course looking for lost balls.

The Dragon Danced at Midnight was a furiously paced story of the rise of a filmmaker via the lucky accident of a drunken projectionist showing the reels of his film out of order.

Autumn Afternoon was a sad tale, of an old woman and her young niece. The niece saves calendar pages as remembrances. When cleaning out her attic the lady finds a stack of her own calendar pages from her youth, but she can't recall why she saved them.

For the rest the tales were mostly forgettable. Not bad really, just not remarkable. If you are a fan of Bradbury, feel free to give this a shot. You may like it more than I did. If you are new to the man, I'd stick with Fahrenheit 451 or the Martian Chronicles.

5 out of 10

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