A very, very short book that manages to sum up most of what the other thirty thousand books on writing actually say. It isn't so much that there is always more to say, as that there is always another way to say it. And while some people can hear it best told in New Age imagery, some people can hear it best peppered with earthy wisecracks, and some people are going to take it in best described as an allegory of Zen Buddism.

Personal bias now enters. Ray Bradbury was one of the greatest writers of his generation. Almost everyone I know, including people who "never read science fiction," has read Ray Bradbury. I have a poet friend who won't even talk about sf with me, but admires Bradbury's poetry.

I think this is why his insights are so valuable. And also why he manages to phrase them so simply.

Let's get one thing straight: Ray Bradbury is one of my favorite writers. His novel _Something Wicked This Way Comes_ is one of my personal favorites. I have read Bradbury stories aloud to live audiences, and performed a couple of them from memory as well.

But Bradbury is not much of a poet. On the spectrum from Eliot and Stevens down to McKuen, he comes much closer to the latter. Bradbury writes rich, poetic prose which works as such most of the time, but his poems are rarely more than mildly interesting or pretty thought-rambles.

So it is with "Dogs Think That Every Day Is Christmas," a Hallmark-card-ish tribute to our lively four-footed friends. The illustrations by Louise Reinoehl Max are nice enough, but hardly inspired.

What makes this inexpensive bauble collectible for Bradbury completists (which includes me -- I ordered one from Amazon, after all), or perhaps for people who are VERY sentimental about canines, is the introduction, which includes a story about a boyhood trauma relating to a dog, and the lifelong effects.

I'm glad to have a copy to add to my collection, but I doubt I'll ever open it again.

if you think that your dog is a real person then you will love the illustrations! Dogs have personalities and you will love these dogs. Both Ray Bradbury and Louise Max have captured the essence of dogs and their unique individual character!

A very good book, it was creative, and well written. Nice Job!

I get the impression that these are leftover storylines that Ray has never been able to transpose into full length novels.

While some of the storys are good, some may disappoint the new Bradbury fan.

While these stories are excellent, most don't fit neat pigeonholes within Bradbury's work. Only some are SF. I've discussed them not in order of appearance, but alphabetically.

"The April Witch" - Cecy is plain-faced, 17, and odd - in fact, a witch from a witch family. She can take possession of any creature, live through its experiences - but she wants romance. So lovely Ann Leary finds herself going to the dance with the boy she's not speaking to...(If you're interested in Cecy's family, try _The October Country_ and _From the Dust Returned_.)

"The Big Black and White Game" - Set in 1940s Wisconsin. Once a year, two pickup baseball teams face off on a long summer day, just before the Cakewalk Jamboree, and somehow the white team always wins. But this year...hmm. If this appeals to you, look for other Bradbury stories like "Way Up High in the Middle of the Air".

"Embroidery" - A nuclear test scheduled for five o'clock has the women sitting on a porch worrying over fancywork rather than supper. An interesting parallel is implied, as one woman, having made a mistake early on, rips out the design...

"En La Noche" - Mrs. Navarrez has been grieving at the top of her lungs for days over her husband's departure for the army. The other sleepless adults in the tenement are growing desperate. When Mr. Villanazul comes up with a suggestion, guess who gets to carry it out.

"The Flying Machine" - The emperor of China sees a great wonder in the dawn - a man has built a kite that lets him fly! But the inventor isn't the only far-sighted man in this tale.

"The Fog Horn" - The old lighthouse keeper has told his assistant of many strange things, seen out here on the edge of the sea, to prepare him for these autumn nights when the strangest thing of all appears. One of Bradbury's best.

"The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl" - Acton just killed Huxley with his bare hands in Huxley's own house. The background of the murder is provided as Acton retraces his actions, trying to remove all traces of his presence. But even obsessive people can't always get everything.

"The Garbage Collector" - He liked his job, until civil defense created procedures for atomic attack.

"The Golden Apples of the Sun" - The ship is heading for the sun, to scoop up some starfire and take it back to Earth. A man may be killed by frost if he fears fire too much...

"The Golden Kite, the Silver Wind" - The mandarin has brought his chief advisor - his daughter - a problem. Kwan-Si has built a wall shaped like a pig - which threatens the mandarin's city, built in the shape of an orange. Each town is built and rebuilt, choosing a shape in response to one another. The final solution is ingenious. If you like this, seek out Barry Hughart's _Bridge of Birds_; Number Ten Ox's native village once had a similar problem. :)

"The Great Fire" - Nobody could quench it, because it was inside cousin Marianne - she's staying until October, and going out on dates every night. Father says he'll have been in the cemetery for about 130 days then...

"The Great Wide World Over There" - Cora, who always wanted adventure, has spent her life in the valley, going to town only twice a year. Illiterate, she can't escape through books. But now her nephew's coming to visit.

"Hail and Fairwell" - Willie looks 12, but he's 43. This isn't a variation on "Jeffty Was Five"; his mind is normal. While he can get by, he can't settle anywhere for long...

"Invisible Boy" - Charlie's staying with Old Lady while his parents are away. But she likes having him around, and sets about using witchcraft to keep him.

"I See You Never" - Mr. Ramirez left Mexico City for San Diego a little over two years ago. He's built a life for himself - a good life, by his lights. His landlady even believes that a good workingman has a right to get drunk once a week if he likes. There's only one problem...

"The Meadow" - That's only what it used to be. Then the movie producer came along, and said, Let there be Paris! Let there be Constantinople! And lo, hundreds of cities came into being. On the outside, it's a movie set. To the night watchman, it knocks the 'real' world into a cocked hat.

"The Murderer" - He's being interviewed by a shrink: the victims are yakking machines: telephones and the like. This used to be SF...

"The Pedestrian" - A companion piece to _Fahrenheit 451_. The writer walks for pleasure every night, so the cops have picked him up as a suspicious character.

"Powerhouse" - The woman, riding with her husband through the desert to her dying mother, never needed religion. During a great storm, they take shelter at a powerhouse in the desert. Bradbury explores the nature of faith and being alone a little, here. A quiet story, but richly textured as most of his work is.

"A Sound of Thunder" - Time Safari, Inc. advertises that if you name the animal, they'll take you hunting. After all, what difference could it possibly make to history - whether a dinosaur died a natural death or from a bullet, a few million years ago?

"Sun and Shadow" - A fashion photographer, trying to use a picturesque cracked wall as a backdrop, encounters Ricardo Reyes, who objects to his neighbourhood's poverty being treated as a stage set. A gem.

"The Wilderness" - Leonora and Janice are facing their last night on Earth. Tomorrow they catch the rocket, to meet their menfolk on Mars.

This has got to be the wierdest book I have ever read in my entire life. It has the numbest little stories with utterly ridiculous themes that make no sense to me whatsoever. Never have I been so disapionted in a book that was recomended to me. I hated this, so called "novel." Ray Bradbury has definitly had a lot better books than this junk.

Too many books, so little time...I finally picked up this collection of Bradbury classics and loved nearly every story. These stories cover the gamut from time travel, to monsters, to the wonder of a child getting a new pair of sneakers for the summer. I found that many of the stories had children of child like themes. _The Sound of Summer Running_ definately hit home for me. _The Long Rain_ reminded me of H.P. Lovecraft's story about man being stranded on Venus. And _A Sound of Thunder_ is a classic story of the consequences of theoretical time travel...at the expense of a single butterfly. This is NOT a novel, it is a collection of short stories. Many of them fantastical...few based in science, since at the time little was known about Mars, or Venus, or space travel. Definately Golden Age sci-fi here.

I am quite baffled by the previous review of this book. Our reviewer from Maine insists that Mr. Bradbury has produced much better material than this "junk" and that this "novel" was a weird, disappointing read. R is For Rocket is an anthology, not a novel, and does not (nor is it intended to) provide any semblance of a sequential story line. Furthermore, R is For Rocket is largely a collection of previously released material, containing some of Bradbury's most popular and acclaimed works from earlier anthologies (such as The Golden Apples of the Sun), and includes such landmark works as "A Sound of Thunder", easily among Bradbury's Top 10 Short Fiction Works. Every story in this anthology is not a masterwork, but there are enough masterworks present to make up for the occasional misstep. Anyone who has ever had childhood fantasies of becoming an astronaut cannot help but be moved by the title story. And mainstream fiction stories like "The Sound of Summer Running" should tweak the heartstrings of anyone who has ever taken pleasure in being a child, even if one has never harbored a burning desire for space flight or distant worlds. Bradbury's timeless prose evokes nostalgia for a time that never was, a future that never occurred, but oh, it should have. Most of these stories have been rendered obsolete by technology, but the style and mythic quality present in them will ensure their continued presence long after many of Ray Bradbury's contemporaries are forgotten. Weird, perhaps. Junk, most definitely not. If flowery flights of fantasy and fond remembrances of childhood don't float your boat, then perhaps you should try Thomas Disch.

Let's get one thing straight: Ray Bradbury is one of myfavorite writers. His novel _Something Wicked This Way Comes_ is oneof my personal favorites. I have read Bradbury stories aloud to live audiences, and performed a couple of them from memory as well.

But Bradbury is not much of a poet. On the spectrum from Eliot and Stevens down to McKuen, he comes much closer to the latter. Bradbury writes rich, poetic prose which works as such most of the time, but his poems are rarely more than mildly interesting or pretty thought-rambles.

So it is with this little book, a companion to "Dogs Think That Every Day Is Christmas" -- both being Hallmark-card-ish tributes to their respective domestic quadrupeds. (Lest you think me a non-animal lover, I hasten to add that I live with a dog and two cats, myself.) The illustrations by Louise Reinoehl Max are nice enough, but hardly inspired.

This inexpensive bauble is suitable only for Bradbury completists (which includes me -- I ordered one from Amazon, after all), or perhaps for people who are VERY sentimental about felines. An introduction briefly describes some of the more than three dozen cats who have shared Bradbury's life.

I'm glad to have a copy of this book to fill out my collection, but I doubt I'll crack it open again.

It's a very cute book with good illustrations. A good gift for teen or adult cat lovers or for cat lovers to read to cat loving children. Generally not for Ray Bradbury fans as it is nothing like his other writing.

Not being a particular Bradbury fan, I wasn't sure about this book when someone gave it to me for--of all things--a baby gift! But we are a four-cat family, so we read it to our infant son, and, now that he's two and a half, it has become one of his very favorite books (honored alongside Green Eggs and Ham and My First Truck Board Book). It has introduced him to "adult" language ("big words") with beautiful rhythm as well as aesthetic illustrations in a context he knows well. And for Mom and Dad, it has well fulfilled the advice not to give your child a book you don't want to read a hundred and fifty thousand times. Recommended for children and adults of all ages!

From Harold Bloom's Modern Critical Views series, this book collects
critical essays discussing one of America's most unique storytellers,
sci-fi/fantasy writer Ray Bradbury. Although one applauds Bloom's acumen in
choosing Bradbury as a subject worthy of elucidation, the actual essays
selected are really rather disappointing. Perhaps the fault lies not with
the editor (whose bona fides are so widely recognized), but with a general
dearth of meritorious criticism regarding an author who works principally in
the literary ghetto that is known as 'genre' fiction. Most of the scholars
represented here have picked up some specific quality that seems noteworthy
in a few of his works, and have explicated this quality in some detail, but
none seem able to view the man's work as a whole, or evaluate its overall
import. Perhaps closest is William F. Touponce's cryptic essay "The
Existential Fabulous: A Reading of Ray Bradbury's 'The Golden Apples of the
Sun'", but his 'oneiric' approach is aimed at the serious scholar, not the
casual reader. More commonplace are Diskin's "Bradbury on Children", and
Hazel Pierce's "Ray Bradbury and the Gothic Tradition", with emphasis on the
horror genre, and the pieces by Wayne Johnson and Gary Wolfe, which focus
more on the famous sci-fi collection The Martian Chronicles. It is typical
of the narrow focus of this volume that only Kevin Hoskinson's fascinating
political study "Ray Bradbury's Cold War Novels" does more than mention the
master's finest novel, Fahrenheit 451. This reviewer would much rather have
seen some in-depth analysis of Bradbury's style (which is surely one of his
strong points), and more attention given to his many short stories, which
are certainly superior to most of his novels. Inquisitive readers who come
to this book wondering why this fine, but often overlooked writer is deemed
worthy of criticism at all will come away knowing little more than they came

in with.

My all time favorite book has been Martin Chronicles, so this is a very great surprise for me, to read several essays from different experts. And learn more about such classic.

And it doesn't end there, they analyze more of his stories. I don't know if Mr. Bradbury will agree on this book, but it did enlight me.

this book can be somewhat confusing. if you are new to the english language i would advise against reading this book

One of the worst horror anthologies I've read. Not only are there no worthwhile stories within, but there are more significantly BAD stories in this collection than in any other I've read. Avoid this book and strike a blow against mediocrity in horror fiction.

I really didnt care for this horror anthology. There were no stories that reached out and grabbed me by the back of the neck. Usually I read through these kind of anthologies in about a month or so but I've owned this book for a couple years and still havent managed to work my way through all the stories in it so maybe there are some gems hidden away somewhere?

The best stories in NIGHT SCREAMS are:

"Trolls" by Christopher Fahy

"Good Vibrations" by Richard Laymon

"The Wringer" by F. Paul Wilson

At least half of the stories are good.

Some other good stories:
The dripping by David Morrell
The Tulsa Experience by Lawrence Block
Small deaths by Charles de Lint
White lightning by Al Sarrantonio
Hitman by Rick Hautala
And eight rabid pigs by David Gerrold.
Corpse carnival by Ray Bradbury

I was a little disappointed by:
"A season of change" by Richard T. Chizmar
"Redemption" by Jack Ketchum
"Beasts in Buildings, Turning 'Round" by J.N. Williamson
"The book of blood" by Clive Barker

The only bad thing about Cliver Barker's story is that it is so short. It's too short to warrant having Barker's name on the cover.

Lawrence Block's story "The Tulsa Experience" starts out slow but the payoff is worth it.

F. Paul Wilson's story "The Wringer" features Repairman Jack.

The stories by Christopher Fahy and Richard Laymon are my favorites. Check out some of their novels too.
I suggest:
NIGHTFLYER and THE LYSSA SYNDROME by Christopher Fahy
AMONG THE MISSING by Richard Laymon