Green Shadows, White Whale

Rating:
Summary: Great prose.
Review: Green Shadows, White Whale is a tale about Ray Bradbury's travels in Ireland while helping John Huston write the screenplay for Moby Dick. The writing is absolutely wonderful. I have read many books in my life but I have rarely read one so beautifully written and well composed. There were paragraphs and passages that I read over two and three times simply because they were so tasty. The story is broken up into chapters which comprise little subplots of their own. This makes for easy reading because you can read a chapter or two at a time and still enjoy the entire book. Read this book.

Rating:
Summary: The best of both worlds, fact and fiction
Review: Ray Bradbury wrote the screenplay for John Huston's Moby Dick. It is a hysterical account of his exploits in Ireland where he wrote the piece. It is also a work of fiction because he combined some of his previous short story writings about Ireland into the book. Bradubury masterly weaves both fact and fiction into a enjoyable tour-de-force. If you are an avid Bradbury fan, you will remember some of his earlier work and recognize the stories. If not, then I envy you because you will not be able to distinguish fact from fiction. Bradbury does both a wonderfull job of catching Irelands essence and terrible poverty of which he covers lightly. He also hints at the terrible genious of John Huston without going into the gory details. This book is a very fast read and is wonderfull. It is certainly deserving of the national book award it recieved.

Rating:
Summary: Not the best Bradbury, but still worth while.
Review: This didn't grip the same way Fahrenheit 451 or The Martian Chronicles or Something Wicked This Way Comes did. There are many entertaining and quite often fun stories and of course it is beautifully written. Bradbury is one of the best prose stylists and short story writers in American Lit, after all. It's not one of his classics but it's worth a consideration.