The October Country: Stories

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I had been writing about living. Now I wanted to live. Do things instead of tell about things. [...] We've lived every way there is to live, with our eyes and noses and mouths, with our ears and hands.

The Jar" - I like how the entire story revolves around the mysterious content of the jar, the twist at the end is cool. One thing I have to mention, because I've seen it in numerous Bradbury books now, is Bradbury excessively repeating himself! What...is..up...with...that? It's like he's trying to make everything sound like an echo, or pad his word totals so he can get his work to a publishable length. He often repeats entire sentences, not just individual words. Why didn't any of his editors mention it or remove these repetitions? It's really, really annoying...especially since he does it about a hundred times per book. Here are some examples: The Crowd" is another one of those unabashed classics - a simple idea marvelously realized. It's amazing how effective it is. I don't even know if there's much more to say - I love the idea that the people encompass all character types and are immortal. I also love that there's never a specific explanation or explication from "the Crowd", so while the ending confirms the narrator's theory, we only ever really have his suppositions to go on. I wish more modern horror writers wrote stories this sharp.

The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone: A most remarkable case of murder—the deceased was delighted . . .

A very funny story about a girl who refused to die and became an old women who will fight death with whatever she has! Ralph exhaled a deep breath. "Aimee, Aimee. Don’t you know you can’t help that guy? He’s bats. And this crazy thing of yours is like saying, Go ahead, be batty, I’ll help you, pal." En otros, un hombre compra en una feria una jarra que contiene una horrorosa criatura que de algún modo hechiza a cada uno que la ve. El cuento se llama precisamente "La jarra". So what about the 19 stories here, you ask? Well, like I said, there were ups and downs. My favourites were In 1999, The October Country was published by Avon Books, Inc. with a new cover illustration by Joseph Mugnaini, and a new introduction by Bradbury called "Homesteading the October Country".Married since 1947, Mr. Bradbury and his wife Maggie lived in Los Angeles with their numerous cats. Together, they raised four daughters and had eight grandchildren. Sadly, Maggie passed away in November of 2003.

Otro gran cuento del libro se llama "La guadaña", en el que un hombre y su familia arriban a una cabaña escapando del hambre. Allí encuentran que un viejo ha muerto y les ha cedido todas su posesiones y una portentosa guadaña con una inscripción que dice 'Quien me maneja, ¡Maneja el mundo!' Podrán darse cuenta hacia dónde se orienta la narración...Like any good writer, Bradbury draws from his own observations of life; and in his foreword he states that “The Next in Line” is a recollection of “my terror of being trapped in Mexico, in a corridor of mummies I hope never to see again” (p. xii). Presumably he was touring the Museo de las Momias de Guanajuato, as many have toured it before and since; yet only Bradbury gave it to the rest of the world, to readers who will never get any closer to Guanajuato than Gaithersburg, by immortalizing it in fiction. An author whose fanciful imagination, poetic prose, and mature understanding of human character have won him an international reputation."-- The New York Times A vampire flys through the night with cords full of his wife’s wet laundry to dry it. This should tell you all you need to know about this whimsical, fun little tale. The Wind" - a simple idea simply told, as long as it needs to be and no longer. I love how it locates the main narrative away from the important action, and then comments upon that very thing ("as we sit here, people are dying"), using the set-up for an effective punchline. Nice. The first story in the collection that is about the FAMILY. I loved reading about Cecy, a girl who spends her days in bed, but has great powers of mind. I enjoyed all the stories about the family, but it was only in the last one that I figured out who they really were.

I’m a Ray Bradbury fan and this is one of my favorite collections from him. This was first compiled in 1955 from previously released stories and a couple of these stories would be used again in his 2001 novel From the Dust Returned. Many of these have inspired other stories and episodes of the Twilight Zone and other shows. urn:lcp:octobercountryf50000rayb:lcpdf:80861130-e910-495a-85de-0b3371b4ea70 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier octobercountryf50000rayb Identifier-ark ark:/13960/s2j7pgp91z4 Invoice 1652 Metasource_catalog openlibrary Ocr tesseract 5.3.0-3-g9920 Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 0.9773 Ocr_module_version 0.0.21 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA-NS-0001602 Openlibrary_edition The theme of this collection, as the title suggests, is autumn. As Neil Gaiman once said, Bradbury is to experienced in October and after reading three of his books as well as this short story collection, I quite agree. He seems to have loved this time of year as much as I do, as is evidenced by this "introduction" to The October Country:Although i gave The October Country a 3.5, its actually one of the best short story collections i have ever read! Just like any short story collection, there were some stories that i loved and some i didnt care for as much. Although it was pretty balanced, there were more that i liked than i disliked in this collection. But that is ultimately what lead me to my decision not to give this book the full five stars. The October Country is a more refined work than its predecessor: the revised stories are stronger, more mature, and more taut, and the later collection contains a lean nineteen stories, cut down from the twenty-seven originally published in Dark Carnival. It opens with a description of Bradbury’s phantasmagoric milieu: Uncle Einar” and “Homecoming” are the two stories later used to put together From the Dust Returned, and describes an Addams Family like clan. She sat with him standing over her, his voice far away. Her eyes were half shut and her hands were in her lap, twitching. The Lake" is very touching. I have a reading of this by Bradbury himself and it really is an effective, emotional piece about lost childhood love and the uncaring blankness of death.