One More for the Road: A New Story Collection

Rating:
Summary: Bradbury Keeps On Rolling
Review: This newest collection of short stories certainly shows that Ray Bradbury has lost none of his sharpness or his sense of humor. These short stories were fun to read and I couldn't put the book down once I started it. A must for Bradbury collectors and fans.

Rating:
Summary: Uneven and pathetic
Review: We all know Ray Bradbury. We all know he has written some of the best and most disquieting stories in the world, after WW2. But this volume of short stories is very uneven, at least. Some stories are quite interesting, but some other are the pathetic love letters of an old man, a very old man, to life, even and especially when he speaks of death. The point is that there is absolutely no commitment to any human values like freedom, happiness, creativity, except in one way, what he calls himself a very « selfish » way : his freedom soon to be questioned by death, his happiness that has to be satisfied by the world and other people, even dead writers, his creativity that he sums up to drowning in metaphors. But all that is vain and of no value for the reader. What proof does he have that the very young and talented author he met once would have been anything else but a derelict forty years later. And anyway why did he turned up a derelict forty years later ? Where is the cause, where is the explanation ? Nowhere in the story where Ray Bradbury just uses a time-machine to confront the derelict with what he was forty years before, as if the key to the future was in the hands of this young man, as if the only one responsible for his dereliction forty years later were him and him only. There is no compassion for anyone in this book. And the love scene between the two old people in one of the story is absurd, even if he may tell us it is his own experience. It is absurd because it is vain : at seventy one will never be seventeen again, not even in one's head, mind or soul. This is a caricature. These stories are maybe good for some men's magazine but I understand why they were sold for nearly nothing in London in october 2004. The English at least seem to know what is pathetic or even vain and absurd.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU


Rating:
Summary: i can't believe i bought this book
Review: What on earth was with the dialogue? No one speaks like that! The storylines were nothing more than tripe, and I regret the fifteen minutes I spent forcing myself to attempt reading this awful array of words written by this so claimed "fantastic" author.

My expectations of quality were misled by the backcover, and I regret purchasing the book. Never again shall I set sight on this man's awful writing. I would never recommend this book, the short stories, or the author, to anyone. What a waste of valuable reading time.