Snap click scuttle beetle walk talk adjecfest

10% good and insightful, 50% adjectives, 60% alliteration, 90% beaten to death metaphor, 1000% too much.

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A wonder version of a Ray Bradbury classsic.

I very much enjoyed listening to this Ray Bradbury classic and recommend it to other listeners.

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Great story… not great narration

Entertaining horror-ish story from the 1960s… narration is clear but… way too “dramatic “… the voices of the main character, Will, is super annoying… if you can ignore that, the story is good .

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Narrator is annoying

The narrator is annoying af. So dramatic for nothing and every word starts loud and ends quiet so you can’t understand anything.

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Proper literature

This is proper literature, not the dumbed down prose which now dominates best-seller bookshelves. The beautiful writing stimulates the imagination.

Special mention to the narrator - fantastic job.

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Couldn't stop listening

I'm a movie person so when I found the theatre version of novel lacking in the horror dept I wasn't interested in the book. However after listening to a recent podcast on the novel, I had to revisit. I loved it. I was immediately drawn to the beautiful yet haunting writing of Ray Bradbury. Highly recommended.

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A new Favorite

perfect for a young reader with high vocabulary. the narration was fantastic also the story.

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Great take on a classic

Really enjoyed listening to this. Seen the movie many times but it was great to get a theatrical performance of the whole story.

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Great writing, simple characters

The big hang-up for me here are the characters. They're pretty simple. Jim and Will sometimes act like boys, and sometimes as more mature, depending on what the plot needs. They don't any intrinsic motivations, only reacting to the carnival, and the characters don't really interact in interesting ways. Some characters just disappear entirely and are never heard of again, like Miss Foley. I do have to admit, though, they did contribute greatly to creating the atmosphere of a small 1950s town.
Aside for some vague nods to the idea that boys want to be older then they are and of adults wishing they were younger, the story never seems to comment on its themes beyond saying that's a bad thing to want. The story will also take its deviations from that discussion, but I will say it is quite suspenseful and stays in the present moment.
Most of my appreciation for this book comes from the technical elements. Bradbury writes in a very clear, direct, and fantastical way. It's about 60/40 chance that the complex sentences hit or not, for me. What really amazes me is how Bradbury uses creative metaphors, similes, adjectives, and adverbs to create the magical, creepy, and poetic tone of the novel. I know his sort of language doesn't work for everyone, but for me it kept the story clear and wonderful. There is a lot of expository dialogue, though. Mr. Halloway's multiple-chapters' long philosophical rant in the library nearly made me put the book down for good.

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Simile city

This is a classic story, a story to end all stories, a story that runs on like an endless train of freight cars filled with flowery and sweet fruit, on the precipice of ripeness, tipping, hanging at the nadir of its parabolic arc over whose precipice it transubstantiates into decay, into that first inkling that perhaps that eight peach shnapps wasnt quite as wonderful as you thought it would be; the type of story leaves you rewinding again and again because you lose track of whose shoulder this non action is not taking place over, a story whose fanciful prose, which slingshots you into half a dozen orbits before the tendrils of gravity reasserts itself on the sentence, leaving you falling helpless earthward as you silently beg the author stop dragging this sentence on and to let something Actually Happen Already! It improves its pace and comprehensibility substantially in the second half. Listen to the first half at a higher speed or under some kind of intoxicant. The first half is the gaudy lovechild of Louise XIV / Rococo as synesthesiatic ear candy and you wont miss much plot.

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3 people found this helpful