Of Bradbury and Bukowski

Stopped on the way home Tuesday night at a beer warehouse. Not crowded, which is unsurprising for a warehouse place in a tiny, rush-hour strip that has a Subway and Advance Autoparts. Took my purchase to checkout and noticed the clerk had two books, splayed spine side up and resting on top of each other at the checkout counter. "Farenheit 451" by Bradbury and something by Charles Bukowski.

I raised my eyebrows and he laughed, saying sometimes he needed to get out of the darkness of Bukowski and into the ... more easiness (paraphrasing) of Bradbury (?) Also, guess it's boring waiting for customers.

Both books, by the way, looked pretty dog-eared. I've read lots of Bradbury, no Bukowski. My Bradburys are pretty dog-eared, too.

Not even going to attach a pic of Farenheit 451 ... because this guy's copy was clearly vintage. Wish I had asked if OK to take a photo, but I was tired and in a hurry (though I couldn't help but notice his reading material!)

For Book Nerds

If you are a dinosaur or dinosaurette who still reads paperbacks, or even hardbacks (and, yes, I do read on my phone and laptop occasionally), you may have often noticed that as you get to the center of the book, the inner margins get a bit tight. 

You have to push down on the book's spine to read it. You have to torture your book. (What do authors think about this, I wonder?)
 

Pages 168 and 169 of "The October Country" from 1996. Look
how nice and airy the inner margins are. (Katy Buchanan photo)

This book pictured, (I've posted previously, it's one of my very favorites, a soft-cover of Ray Bradbury's "The October Country") actually looks to have been well planned. It's a Del Rey Book, part of the Ballantine Publishing Group (part of Random House, part of Penguin, yada yada, which, come to think of it, should be a publisher, too).

There is a thing in book binding called, I think, 'creep' which means that pages laid out flat, with identical margins, do not end up even once the book is bound. The center pages have lots of space on the outer edges and very little at the spine.

But here is this book. At 338 pages, it has a lot of room for page creep. But at the very middle, the spread of pages 168 and 169, the inner margins leave the reader plenty of comfort to read without squashing down (torturing) the spine.

The margins are the same throughout the book. It has a very comfortable feel for a book of such strange tales.

I would love to know who was behind the production of this  October 1996 book. The text design was by Holly Johnson. For a mass market paperback, it's pretty neat. 

Happy reading.

The October Country

So, via the New York Times Book Review, I wandered to a place I would have arrived at anyway.

The October Country.

In brief reviews of old books republished, I found a link to the web site of the Paris bookshop Shakespeare and Company which has a very old copy, among many old books, of short story collection by Ray Bradbury entitled "I Sing the Body Electric."

I love Ray Bradbury. His prose is magic and wonderful and earthy and diamond-like. I would love to drink a glass of dandelion wine with him. I would love to walk a carnival midway with him on a deep and dreamy summer night in Illinois, songs of frogs and crickets in full midnight throat.

Not to be.

Therefore, time again for The October Country. Thank you Ray.  For "The Next In Line," for "The Watchful Poker Chip of H. Matisse," for "Touched with Fire," for "The Cistern," "The Homecoming" and for many more, most especially, for "The Lake," a story of life and of memory.

And thank you, too, to Joseph Mugnaini, (that's your work shown here) for your illustrations.

See you next October.

Much love,
Katy

Noisy world

Since about 2009, my cell phone has been my alarm clock. I've set it to a nice, chime-y wake up jingle that is infinitely preferable to the high-decibel beep-beep-beep of my alarm clock.

Unfortunately for me, no matter what the alarm sound, my drowsy brain is in enough command to order fingers to smash the snooze button.

What can I say? I am not a morning person.

That said, if I am forced to be out and about in the early hours, I truly enjoy the experience: the early morning light, the birdsong, the water dripping off leaves in the park, my dog trotting nicely beside me.

At this time of year, morning or evening (though it seems mostly to be evening) one of the loveliest sounds is of wind, acting like a bow, sliding across tree branches, acting like strings. The effect is most certainly not that of a violin, or cello, or violincello. But it is definitely the effect of an instrument, trees, being played, by the wind. The music is a long, deeply sighing and swiftly moving rush.

It is a large sound, confident yet hurried. You can hear it, sitting inside, in bed. So persistent, but there is no message, except that of presence.

Presence of the wind through the boughs.

One of my favorite books of all time is Ray Bradbury's "The October Country," a short story collection. One tale is titled "The Wind." It is, like most of Bradbury's tales, richly written, bursting with the sense of an age fading farther and farther away in our collective rear-view mirror. The illustrations by Joe Mugnaini in the original make a perfect match of art and story.
There is a cool left-to-right scrolling gallery here.

Meanwhile, the image is of a nearby park, altered to look sort of October Country-ish. Because at this time of year, it does feel that lonely.