This 30-day challenge runs from 3/2 – 3/31. My goal for this 30-day challenge is to read one short story every day, many of them will be Ray Bradbury stories.
I searched my bookshelves for short story books and found several:
- Ray Bradbury’s The Golden Apples of the Sun
- Ray Bradbury’s The Machineries of Joy
- Sweet Romance: An Anthology
- Ray Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains”
- Ray Bradbury’s “The Veldt”
- Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”
Can you guess that I’m a HUGE admirer of Ray Bradbury? I met him once (around 1995, I think). I went to a writer’s conference in Palm Springs, CA and he was there. He gave a keynote address.
I have several college literature anthologies as well but don’t plan to drag them out for this challenge.
On this blog post, I’m going to list out each short story I read and a couple of notes about what I found interesting – either about the story; the writing; or the mechanics of the short story itself. I would like to try writing a few short stories this year so reading a bunch will help!
Short Stories I read:
3/1/23 – Today I read “The Fog Horn” by Ray Bradbury (in the book TGAOTS). This was a wonderful example of ‘setting as character’. I thought one of the themes was the insignificance of man. I found this story to be haunting. In a few places, it reminded me of my character Anna Lee. I am even considering adding a quote from this story to the novella I’m writing about Anna Lee (Wildflowers for Anna Lee). There are two lines in particular that remind me of Anna Lee and her story – “I saw it all, I knew it all–the million years of waiting alone, for someone to come back who never came back” and “‘Someone always waiting for someone who never comes home.'”
Another interesting line that I noted was, “…there, far out at first, was a ripple, followed by a wave, a rising, a bubble, a fit of froth”. What a beautiful line! I can’t think of the writing device that this is called, but it builds anticipation so wonderfully.
3/2/23 – Today I read “The Pedestrian” by Ray Bradbury (in the book TGAOTS). This story says so much in just a few pages! Bradbury was such a MASTER storyteller. This story is set in the year 2053 and it paints a very bleak future. The story’s protagonist is a WRITER (of course!) who spends hours every evening walking the streets. He notes that there are never any other people about – feels a little post-apocalyptic at first. But he says they are inside watching their TVs (ugh!). A couple of favorite lines – “Magazines and books didn’t sell any more.” (Waahhh- this is me weeping!) and “The tombs, ill-lit by television light, where the people sat like the dead, the gray or multi-colored lights touching their faces, but never really touching them.”
3/4/23 – Friday was my anniversary and I missed reading a short story. On Saturday, I read “The April Witch” by Ray Bradbury (again in TGAOTS). This one had an interesting, magical premise about a witch, Cecy, that could “pop in” and live vicariously in any host body – a drop of water, a cricket, a person. She appreciates this magical ability but she longs to fall in love and be in love. She moves into a young woman’s (Ann) body and forces her to go to a dance with Tom. Cecy falls in love with Tom and leaves Ann very confused about her “possessed” actions. Interesting premise.
3/5/23 – Today I read “The Golden Kite, The Silver Wind” by Ray Bradbury (same book). Written in 1953. This was about Chinese (I assumed) two towns competing over the symbols they use for their towns. It becomes a back-and-forth competition and while competing the two towns are falling to ruin – they focus all their energies on “one-up-man-ship” and don’t take care of themselves and their harvest. When both towns are almost in disrepair, a young woman suggests complementary symbols – the kite and the wind and things finally work out. It reminded me of our current political state in the U.S. I hope we can find the complementary ability to work together and not destroy ourselves in the process.
3/6/23 – “I See You Never” by Ray Bradbury (TGAOTS) – A sad story about an immigrant that is being sent back to Mexico and the relationship between him and his landlady, he is devastated about all he is leaving behind and she is very sad to see him go. A favorite line (beautiful, haunting imagery) – “She remembered the iron mountains and the dusty valleys and the ocean beaches that spread hundreds of miles with no sound but the waves-no cars, no buildings, nothing.”
3/7/23 “Embroidery” by Ray Bradbury (TGAOTS, story written in 1951) – Ugh. Such an innocent title for such a devastating story. Interesting writing device – there are 3 women in the story busy embroidering, but none of them are named – just first woman, second woman, third woman. Makes since with the brevity (not even four pages) of the story and the subject. The poor ladies are embroidering and not worrying about dinner as it nears five p.m. because the WORLD IS ENDING AT 5! Ugh. There’s some uncertainty if the “world is ending at 5” is real or not, but in the last two paragraphs, it is real.
3/8/23 – “En La Noche” by Ray Bradbury (TGAOTS, story written in 1952) – The story is about a forlorn woman who is wailing night and day in a tenement house because her husband has left for the Army. No one else can sleep. A man in the building comes up with an interesting solution – to seduce her. His wife is fine with the idea because she needs to get some sleep! Interesting story. Great use of similes and metaphors, here are a couple of examples – “They moved like dream figures, like clothes dummies worked stiffly on wires and rollers.” “Silence lived in every room like a light turned off. Silence flowed like a cool wine in the tunnel halls. Silence came through the open casements like a cool breath from the cellar.”
3/9/23 – “The Golden Apples of the Sun” by Ray Bradbury (TGAOTS) – A wild ride to the sun to collect some of it’s ‘apples’, a sci-fi story. Entertaining and intense story.
3/11/23 – “The Flying Machine” by Ray Bradbury (TGAOTS) – 400 A.D. A Chinese Emporer has a man killed who had invented a flying contraption where he could fly like a bird. The empower worried that if an evil man were to discover this ability that he’d put it to ill use. As a fan of flying dreams, I loved this description from the flier – “I have soared like a bird; oh, I cannot say how beautiful it is up there, in the sky…how free one feels!”
3/12/23 – “The Big Black and White Game” by Ray Bradbury (TGAOTS) – written in 1945. A segregated baseball game at a resort where the black workers of the resort play an annual ballgame against the white male guests. The teams are sorely mismatched in skill and strength and it turns dark. The POV character is a young white boy who is admonished by his mom when he cheers for the black workers that he has met. He especially cheers for Big Poe who serves up the popcorn every night at the dance pavilion. Big Poe gives the kid “lots of butter”. Vivid details of a baseball game and the resort life.
3/14/23 – “The Wilderness” by Ray Bradbury (TAGOTS) – written in 1952, this story was looking way ahead to the year 2003. There are two women in this story, Janice and Leonora, who are anxiously awaiting their trip to join their husbands – on Mars. They liken their situation to those of women pioneers whose husbands took wagons across the plains and mountains to go west in the U.S. to unchartered territories. They eat their “food pills” and imagine what the long travel will be like in the rocket ships. An interesting story that makes me wonder what we may still see as exploration in my lifetime.
3/15/23 – “The Garbage Collector” by Ray Bradbury (TGAOTS) – Another terrifying story of a garbage collector who’s happy with life, with his family and with his job until he is told that he has to train to pick up dead bodies if there is ever an atom bomb that hits their city. He grapples with the horror of such a day. The imagery in this story is just terrifying. I loved when the protagonist says, “And, oh Christ, it just doesn’t seem right a man, a human being, should ever let himself get used to any idea like that.”
3/18/23 – “Sun and Shadow” by Ray Bradbury (TGAOTS) – A humorous story about a man, Ricardo, that becomes enraged when photographers begin to shoot fashion photography in his working class neighborhood. He disrupts there efforts, not wanting to see his home and neighborhood used as a prop. He even goes as far as to ‘drop trou’ – “his pants where a man’s pants rarely are”. The photographer calls for a police officer to help, but he knows Ricardo and does nothing. The photographer gets so angry that “It seemed that at any moment he might snap and bite and bark and woof and race around in circles” – such a memorable image.
3/22/23 – “The Murderer” by Ray Bradbury (TGAOTS) – Wild to know this was written seventy years ago. In the story, there are talking wristwatches where you could communicate to anyone anywhere – cell phone anyone? The protagonist in the story is a psychiatrist who needs to interview ‘the murderer’ who is accused of murdering the electronics in his life – first, his telephone, then he shorted out the intercommunication system at work, and other such crimes. He became overwhelmed with the noise that was EVERYWHERE. I can relate sometimes.
3/26/23 – “The Lady, or the Tiger” by Frank Richard Stockton (1882) – My great-niece, Scarlette, read this in school and wrote her own ending to it (the story itself ends in a cliffhanger). My niece asked if I had read it – I had not, so I downloaded it through the library app and read it. The story was GREAT. But the best part was the ending that my niece wrote – so imaginative, so clever, so grusome. I loved it! Can’t wait to see what Scarlette does in the future! I’m cheering this future New York Times Bestselling Author on!
3/26/23 – I’ve missed a few days so glad to have a 2 short story day! The second story I read today was “Hail and Farewell” by Ray Bradbury (TGAOTS) – an inventive tale of a 40 something man that perpetually looks twelve. So, he finds a new family to “adopt” him every three years or so. Until he would become apparent to others that he is not aging, then he moves on and looks for a new family.
3/27/23 – “The Great Fire” by Ray Bradbury (TGAOTS) – By the title, I thought it was about the San Fran fire. but no. It’s about love-sick Marianne who dates a different guy every day.
3/28/23 – “Powerhouse” by Ray Bradbury (TGAOTS) – I got nervous when I started reading this today as it is about a woman going to see her dying mother and tomorrow is the 5th anniversary of my mom’s passing. After taking a deep breath, I got through the story just fine. A beautiful story of finding faith in the strangest of places – a powerhouse where the couple had to stay overnight as they were traveling on horseback and a strong storm comes up. Some beautiful lines in this story. “In all the years, how certain she had been. Never, never would she have need of a church. … Hers was simply not a pew-shaped spine.” “Loneliness was a shutting of the eyes. Faith was a simple opening.” and “she was humming, humming a strange soft tune….it was the sound you would expect to hear from sun-warmed railroad ties on a hot summer day when the air rises in a shimmer, flurried and whirling; a sound in one key, one pitch, rising a little, falling a little, humming, humming but constant, peaceful, and wondrous to hear”. AHHH. Simply divine.
3/29/23 – “Invisible Boy” by Ray Bradbury (TGAOTS) – Moral of the story – don’t become a lonely old hag and have to trick a young boy into keeping you company by telling him you can cast a spell and make him invisible.
3/30/23 – “The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl” by Ray Bradbury (TGAOTS) – Great story about a person and his mind under extreme duress. He “accidentally” (?) kills an acquaintance in the acquaintance’s home. He thinks he can get away with it if he just cleans off any fingerprints he left behind and can get out before morning when others may call for a visit. Well, let’s just say he becomes obsessed with wiping off EVERYTHING in the house (even in the attic which he never went into).
3/31/23 – “A Sound of Thunder” and “The Great Wide World Over There” by Ray Bradbury (TGAOTS) – “A Sound of Thunder” reminded me of the butterfly effect (affect?), how one incident millions of years ago could have lead to a different today. “The Great Wide World Over There” – the power of the mailbox and the thrill of getting mail. The story reminded me of my grandpa who couldn’t read or write very much (only had a third-grade education before he was sent to work in the coal mines). Great story.