Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

I just really love his writing style. He made me love reading when I was a teenager, and I'm quite a bit older than that now! He brings back characters and places into new told stories and you feel like they are your old friends and hangouts. He can be a funny guy too. Very witty.

Consisting primarily of Bradbury shorts, it's sprinkled with stories that eventually grew into novella's or collections such as the Chronicles. This collection is perfect for a daily dip into the imaginative worlds Bradbury conjures so vividly.

Title says it all. You get all sorts of stuff in here. It's a good, thorough sampling of his work. I like to read it before I go to bed. The stories vary in length from pretty short to longer than that.

Title says it all. You get all sorts of stuff in here. It's a good, thorough sampling of his work. I like to read it before I go to bed. The stories vary in length from pretty short to longer than that.

In this collection, 100 of his best as the title of the book says, Ray Bradbury takes us to other worlds of thought. Whether it's a fraudulent time traveler who lied about seeing a brighter future 300 years hence in order to inspire humanity or a boorish mortician everyone mocks who secretly rearranges corpses in their burials for revenge, he provides stories with ideas that burn images in the mind that remain long after having read them. I've no doubt that Ray Bradbury's image will burn on, whether or not someone travels back in time just prior to his death to save him. Not knowing him personally, I find his stories nonetheless make him a familiar figure, and that person is one who was passionate about the power of ideas to transform readers. Consider this reader transformed!

--J. Stephen Howard

Anytime I want to be swept away from day to day stress and drudgery Ray Bradbury does it for me every time. His timeless tales run the gamut from sci fi, to tales of the unexpected. Ray is no longer with us, but these stories will forever live on.

I think Ray Bradbury is the most poetic writer in the science fiction genre. I particularly enjoy his Irish stories - they are laugh-out-loud hilarious 0 you can hear the Irish accent as clear as day.

This book is just amazing, i would recommend it to anyone and everyone who loves stories.

i went to Japan this summer and stayed with a host family, every night, i would curl up on my rice-pillow and read these stories.

great colelction :D

His stories are wonderful because they: depict different worlds, provide realistic characters and alternative points of view. I read only one story at a time so that I may think about each one after I read it.

I found this book at Barnes and Nobles, but it was close to 30$ and I didn't want to shell out that much. I came on facebook to look for a brand new book for cheaper. I found one and purchased it, but worried that it would look al banged up from the shipping (It's a gift so I didn't want it to look used at all.) When I checked the mail yesterday I was really worried because of the packaging. It was sturdier than I thought! The book looked brand new and I know that my sister will love it! The book was also shipped within the week which was awesome, because I didn't have to pay extra for it to get here so quickly!

My daughter asked for a Ray Bradbury book, but didn't give me a specific book, so I thought she'd enjoy this one, and she has! Thanks for getting it to me so quickly--but then the store always does! Chris

I purchased four copies of this book so that I could share three of them with a small writing group. Our topic for this month was to revisit a beloved book from our youth and I chose to go back here. I found the return to be so delightful that I wanted the others to have the experience. I will keep the fourth book myslef to revisit in another ten years.

I was really looking forward to reading this book because I remember enjoying a couple of Ray Bradbury books as a kid. I found his writing to be overloaded with metaphors and many of the stories seemed pointless and difficult to know what point he was trying to make.a lot of the stories involved writers answered pretty boring. Some of the stories were pretty good but I can't remember one standing out. Many wee lower open ended and sometimes you knew the rest of a story could be found in another book. I couldn't read it straight through the full 888 pages so I read a story a night while reading other books.also, these weren't really his top 100 short stories. These were 101-200 because the best ones were contained in anorher of his books.

I won't go into what everyone else has already stated about this collection. Instead, I want to put out there that when ordering a book (whether you're intoxicated or just giddy), make sure you check the dimensions. This collection is physically too large. It's shaped more like an American lit textbook. I've read a couple of the stories, and of course they're magnificent; but the size of the book makes it nigh impossible to lie in bed and read it comfortably. I'll hang onto this collection for my library, and to pick at now and then for a good story; but I'll be purchasing "The Martian Chronicles" today in a format more suited to my lazy reading habits. As far as the content, you can't beat Ray Bradbury for speculative "people" fiction. He was one of the greats. The "Banshee" story makes me not regret spending the money on this collection, despite its size.

Ray Bradbury, at his best, is excellent. This collection, however, is decidedly second-rate. What's unusual is this collection was published while he was alive. I can't fault him for wanting to cash in, but this is the kind of material that usually emerges after the author has died and the publishers start scraping the bottom of the barrel--for example, all the posthumous Vonnegut short story collections.

I was fooled by the subtitle of this collection--"100 of His Most Celebrated Tales". Celebrated by whom? Maybe the publishers popped some champagne corks for putting one over on the public.

The sheer volume of this volume (approx. 111 cubic inches) led me to mistake it for being somehow definitive. It is not and I caution Bradbury fans against buying it as an introduction for eager young readers. Better by far to start them off with The Illustrated Man or Martian Chronicles for short stories, Dandelion Wine or Fahrenheit 451 for novels.

Bradbury was ambitious and published at a time when short stories were in high demand and thus there was a relatively low bar for quality and it shows in this collection. Much of this feels like hack work churned out for a paycheck. At his worst, Bradbury's prose is overwrought, tending to purple, his characters are mere ciphers, and the dialogue is atrocious. The ideas are often pretty thin and most of these stories come off as half-baked Twilight Zone episodes--premise, set-up, and then a twist you can see coming from a mile off.

This collection will likely disappoint fans and scare off those new to Bradbury. Sorry I bought this.

If you love Ray Bradbury, this is one of the must haves. My only regret is that this volume has paper covers, not hardcovers; the latter would last longer and stand up to repeated use.

Shipping was good, tho unexpected. Packaging was clean. No damage to the product. Am enjoying it immensely.

THank you.
C. Steve Allen

This was my first Badbury novel - hughe disappointment. This is cheap mass production of fiction - shallow characters and un-engaging stories. I rarely do not finish a book I have started to read, but I gave up on this one.

Ray Bradbury is probably my favorite American author. This collection is amazing. It includes short stories for all of his major works and from some that are not so familiar. It is a must have for the devote Bradbury fan and a wonderful introduction for someone who wants to meet an American Master

This Collection is not the best work of Ray Bradbury, that can be found in "The Stories of Ray Bradbury". But instead this is for those who want more or need more of his work. Consider this book the 2nd 100 best stories, good for the most part, some very good, some just average. I gave this book only 3 stars because I found a story in my copy that was missing the ending. I don't know if it is just the paperback version or all versions or just my copy, but the ending of the story TRAPDOOR is left out. The story originally appeared in The Toynbee Convector, which I have. In Ray Bradbury Stories the last page of this story is left out, whether by accident or on purpose I don't know. If anyone knows I would like to hear.

This book is amazing! It's used but to my ashtonishment there is nothing wrong with it at all! The only problem was that the shipping took a little longer than I expected it to. It took about a week and a half for the book to arrive on my door step, but it was well worth the wait!

This was my first experience reading stories by Ray Bradbury and I have to say, that after reading sixteen of the stories that so far I'm dissapointed with them, which is why I only gave the rating of three stars. Some of the stories are really boring, and missing that something special that I like to find when I read a book. I don't think I'll try any other books by this author, but there's a hundred stories so maybe I'll read one that I'll love but it's looking doubtful. Too bad because I wanted to like them too.

I never was a fan of Bradbury and I now know why. To me many of the story lines are depressing and what we now know about Mars makes his frequent use of that setting seem silly now, like reading about an earth - centered solar system.

I loved Bradbury growing up but this compilation suffers the same problem that most compilations suffer -- uneven quality. Some stories are great and some are, well, not so great. And unlike some other SF authors, I don't think Bradbury's stories have aged well. An all-male rocket crew celebrating their Mars landing by getting drunk and shooting up ancient ruins? I understand it was a different time when it was written, but there were too many such jarring scenes.

Still, his writing is wonderful and flowing, with lots of good images and old friends along the way. Worth the read if you just keep remaining yourself about the times when it was written.

I loved most all of Ray Bradbury until this. Read his other books and short stories. I don't know where they got this stuff but it is not the Bradbury I fell in love with. Buy "The Illustrated Man" or "Something Wicked This Way Comes" or The Martian Chronicles" Those are the Bradbury's to love. This is very poor.

Wish I had read Sharon the Brat’s review first ( thanks for including table of contents ). Bought the book solely because I needed All Summer in a Day. When I input that title this book came up. Unfortunately the short story is not included in this generous volume.

These are not his best stories, with a very few exceptions (Heavy-Set, Ylla, The Man). Most of them are rather aimless, dull, and lack the power of his best works. There are many much better Bradbury collections.

Ray is the grandmaster of the short story—his novels The Martian Chronicles (The Grand Master Editions) Publisher: Spectra; Grand Master Ed edition and Dandelion Wine (Grand Master Editions), are just stitched and woven garments of his finest silks and purples.

Two things I learned. One, we normally think of Ray as a sci-fi visionary, which is true. But he also delves in to comedy, horror, and even true-to-life Mayberry. He is quite the soul-brother to Rod Serling (Rod Serling and The Twilight Zone: The 50th Anniversary Tribute), and both are well rounded authors and artists.

There is something here for everyone, and a lot of it!

Second, I am beginning to like anthologies. Each story is an independent artifact—even relic, and we are not nailed down to someone's trilogy or never-ending series that slow stales and moulders. Quick, to the point, we can move on, or set the book down, and pick it up with out losing a thing.
Plus, with multi-author affairs, you get exposure to new talent.

A win-win-win all around.

When I read the stories of Ray Bradbury, I felt that those tales belong in a different era because of the language he uses and way of telling the story. I didn't finish the book, I stopped after 2-3 stories because the style and language were so out of date I felt.

In my teaching career, I have encountered many youngsters who are simply not interested in reading. As electronic devices for games & smart phones become more popular, for many students the old fashioned joy of reading hits the dust bin. When I encounter such a student, I will invariably assign a Ray Bradbury short story and very rarely has it failed to spark an interest in reading more Ray Bradbury. Mission accomplished! I've lost count of the number of copies of FAHRENHEIT 451 I have given as birthday gifts to friends and family of all ages over the years. It never fails to thrill. My college boyfriend & I had the absolute best winter weekend of our lives reading Ray Bradbury together at his parent's cabin. While recovering from surgery in the hospital, Ray Bradbury stories took my mind off the pain & boredom. There is simply no stopping once you start reading Bradbury. You will be hooked. The greatest thing about Bradbury is that he teaches while entertaining. It is impossible to read Ray Bradbury's books without examining society's values and how they may be shaping you. You will only be the better for it.

The volume of 893 pages contains 100 delightful tales by Ray Bradbury, an average of 9 pages per tale, although some are close to 20 pages long. All are very good, with some better than others. All have good endings, many of which are surprising, somewhat like O’Henry tales. Others are science fiction.
Examples of stories are: In “The Whole Town’s Sleeping,” women are afraid of getting caught by a serial killer. In “The Rocket,” a poor man builds a rocket to fly his family to Mars. In “Season of Disbelief,” youngsters are unable to imagine that older people were once young. In “And the Rock Cried Out,” there is a switch on the idea of discrimination. “The Beggar on O’Connell Bridge” explores giving charity to beggars.

I already own this book in paperback. The stories could be best described as "profound" or even "magnificent." I am soon going to pay about $12 to download it to my Kindle. Why? I want to be able to get the stories in front of my eyes quickly and easily. I love to write stories or short pieces in which the mood is foul weather (such as in "Wild Night in Galway"), or the mood is of an unusually perfect summer day (like those described in the mood pieces from Ray's novel "Dandelion Wine"). Almost anyone who likes to play around with writing descriptive fiction would have to admit that thirty minutes of reading anything by Mr. Bradbury just cannot help but give the novice writer ideas about how many incredible subjects still exist out there. In other words, Ray can take a somewhat mundane subject area (for example, a father and two sons travel out to a woodland north of Waukegan and the sons discover, simultaneously, that the world is one incredible place), and he can make you grateful that he invited his reader to come along. I disagree with one of the reviewers here -- who said that the dialogue is full of profanity. Ray makes people talk in the normal way they talk. I am so grateful for the 91-year duration of Ray's life. He gave us a bunch of gifts. There will be no one who ever equals his creations. I am 71 years old now, and I sometimes worry that the letter I once received from Ray (in 1975) will be destroyed by persons who come across it and do not accurately assess its true value. When the Kindle book is safely downloaded, I will be truly pleased to read the best of Ray's short fiction on an e-reader (even though I know that Ray balked against the whole concept of electronic reading when it first became popular).

I had forgotten what a wonderful writer Ray Bradbury was. It seems like we've all read "Farenheit 451" and other of his classics but the true test of a good writer (so I've heard and so I believe) is how well they master the short story. These are masterful!

While a few (the unfortunately semi-literate few) might dispute the quality and importance of the fiction gathered in THE STORIES OF RAY BRADBURY, this second cousin/companion collection doesn't often get half the respect it deserves -- even from Bradbury fans!

Other reviews before this claim the stories in this second, huge, collection aren't as good. Which makes one wonder: Did they actually _read_ all, or at least any, of the stories in the book? Along with Bradbury's later stories (from '70s, 80s and 90s), there are plenty of _older_ classics which weren't included in the first, already busting at the seams, "stories" collection, due to space and marketing considerations. One such story, "The Machineries of Joy", deals with one religious man's struggle to get others to accept the "deliverance" of men into space and of scientific information into the "old world", the world as those hesitant religious men see it. Here's an excerpt:
"Learn what? That most of the things we've taught in the past on Earth don't fit out there on Mars or Venus or wherever in hell Vittorini would push us? Drive Adam and Eve out of some new Garden on Jupiter with our very own rocket fires? Or worse, find there's no Eden, no Adam, no Eve no damned Apple or Serpent, no Fall, no Original Sin, no Annunciation, no world tailing another?"

That's not only powerful story-telling, it's STILL (sadly) powerful and unsettling thought, even in the 21st century. Anyone who says otherwise is clueless.
Following hot on the heels of THAT classic, is "Bright Phoenix", the short story (originally published in the "Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction") which morphed into the novella "The Fireman", which, in turn, inspired more wordage from Ray Bradbury and became the world famous novel, FAHRENHEIT 451.

"All On a Summer Night", another brings readers back to the "battlefield" (found in the novel, FAREWELL SUMMER) of young and old, this time finding an armistice at hand, with a young boy cheering up a neglected older, spinster. It's both compassionate and elegiac, much like the best of Bradbury's work.

There's also "Usher II", which tells the tale of a man, living on mars, who builds his own, Edar Allan Poe-inspired, House of Usher. Or "The Whole Town's Sleeping", a suspenseful and spooky story, that evokes Grimm's Fairy Tales, about a young woman, walking home from a night out with her friends, who must pass through dark forest said to be frequented by a madman/murder; "The Pedestrian", a chilling tale that, for me, translates as a referendum on a country (the U.S.A.) wherein too many people have locked themselves inside cars and malls and houses, and have forgotten how to interact (forgotten the "art" of communities and front porches); and "Icarus Montgolfier Wright" (which evokes the names three men famous for their attempts to fly), gets inside the head of the first (fictional) man to fly a rocket to the moon, taking the hopes of mankind with him (the short story was turned into an Oscar-nominated, animated film).

Those are just _some_ of the older classics in this collection.
The newer classics, written during the 1970s, 80s and 90s, include Banshee", a story, set in Ireland, celebrating the craft of story-telling, which envokes the name of title creature in a supernatural way (it has autobiographical roots, since it harkens back to the time Bradbury went to Ireland to work with John Ford on a film). Written in the mid-'90s, "Hopscotch" revolves around two lovers, a children's game, and sort of gateway; it's leavened with some of the most poetic, clear-eyed writing Bradbury's ever done. And "The Toynbee Convector", a story about a man who claims to have traveled in time (he has destroyed the time machine), telling the media about an amazing world which has come about in the future, despite the despair and ecological damage currently seen in the present world. Published in 1984, it's a beautiful story about hope and imagination, with just the right twist near the end. Any one of those stories hold up well against just about any of Bradbury's classics from the 40s, 50s and 60s.

The perfect companion volume to THE STORIES OF RAY BRADBURY, and the perfect melding of young Bradbury (with the inclusion of many early, classic stories) and older Bradbury (stories written during the '7os, and largely during the '80s and 90s, when Bradbury got a "second wind" of creative energy), BRADBURY STORIES: 100 OF HIS MOST CELEBRATED TALES is, like the first huge collection, further proof that Ray Bradbury, via his seemingly inexhaustable supply of beautiful and entertaining stories, will, indeed, Live Forever! (A pronouncement made to him by a Carnival "magician" when Bradbury was a young boy).

I have the hard bound edition of this book. I'm told the paperback is no different.

This collection was assembled by the Man himself. So each story has significance in being included in this particular collection.

As an artist myself, I see the stylistic approach to Bradbury's writing as that of an impressionist. He doesn't bore you with minute details. He paints with an indistinct stroke, so to speak, providing just enough information for your imagination to take over and create the images and people as you see them, not as he demands you see them.

To write in such a fashion takes real talent.

Bradbury is by far my favourite author of science fiction and fantasy precisely because his stories are less about the science, even the fiction and fantasy, than they are about the people who inhabit his myriad worlds and dimensions of life.

Rather than point to any single story, I would direct you to simply buy the book, sit down in a very comfortable chair, and begin to read, and to get lost in the many places you will find yourself presented.

Trust me, there are stories here that will bring tears to your eyes, laughter echoing off the walls, and which will leave you scratching your head. And yet, you will love and adore each and every one... even if you do not particularly care to admit it.

It may very well have been a novel by Ray Bradbury, though it could have been one by Zenna Henderson, Isaac Asimov, or any one of a dozen other authors, that I was holding that summer, long ago, when I heard my father mutter as he stomped out the door with the hoe in his hand, "You read too much!" Suffice it to say that I am no stranger to Ray Bradbury's longer works, but this was my first exposure to a collection of his short stories, and I was not disappointed.

When we describe this collection as one of short stories, we do mean short. Most of the stories here run from two to six pages in length, and it is to Bradbury's credit that he packs almost every one with significance and meaning far beyond the scope of the story itself. Here, the reader will find profound observations on the human condition, on the thin veneer of civilization that can be easily ripped asunder, on the human need for approbation, on the human need for love, on the human need for belief and spirituality, and on every other characteristic that makes one human. Do not misconstrue my comments: this not a book of essays preaching and pontificating on any of these profound things; this is a book filled with fascinating characters and wondrous interactions. Bradbury never beats his reader over the head with profundity; it is the reader himself who adds that to Bradbury's intriguing tales.

Tales-that's the word I've been searching for. This is a book of tales. Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Sharer" is a short story. Ray Bradbury's "The Man in the Rorschach Shirt" is a tale. In fact, let us use the French word "conte" as we would to describe the little slices of the world that we see in the contes of Guy de Maupassant. Bradbury is the English de Maupassant as de Maupassant is the French Bradbury.

I used to picture Bradbury as purely a writer of science fiction, but I was wrong to limit him to a specific genre. This collection of one hundred tales is proof irrefutable of Bradbury's broad range and scope. The book should take one quite a while to read, by the way. True, one could blast through it with all those remarkable speed reading techniques, but what a shame to do so. These tales need to be read one at a time and then pondered and mulled over as one would savor the taste of fine food and good wine. To gulp them down in a feeding frenzy is to forgo the pleasure of remembering them and of adding their implicit lessons to one's own repertoire of knowledge. In fact, the three months I spent on this book was too brief a period. I shall keep it at hand and reread these tales, perhaps one a week for the next one hundred weeks. This feast is incredible, and I would not have it fade from memory too quickly. Please join me at the table and dine on Bradbury's joyously creative wit and wisdom.

Some may complain about the stories that were left out, and considering the author has penned a story a week for most of the last sixty years, there are sure to be many fine tales that didn't make the final cut. That said, this is an immensely satisfying collection of Bradbury's fiction, some of it recent, other pieces pre-dating the space age. Most of the best is here and whether this is someone's first introduction to Ray Bradbury, or this is bought by a longtime fan, this anthology is sure to provide hours of enjoyment for an imaginative reader.

Ray Bradbury was my favorite author when I was a teen, in the 1950s. It was a joy to find this collection of a hundred of his short stories. They revealed his total ignorance of the complexity and cost of space flight, but also his total understanding of the emotions and dreams that power us through life and his ability to sweep his readers along on a journey to mars or along a country road in Vermont or Kilkenny.

If any twentieth-century American writer deserves a revival, it's Ray Bradbury, king of the dime novels and refiner --- if not the inventor --- of mainstream science fiction. Unlike contemporaries H.P. Lovecraft and Philip K. Dick and disciples like William Gibson and Stephen King (who has greedily borrowed Bradbury's otherworldly horror + local color equation), Bradbury isn't very widely read by people beyond their teenage years. His novels THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES and FAHRENHEIT 451 are mainstays of junior and senior high school reading lists across the country, and therefore have acquired the stigma of youth-oriented fiction (which seems ironic now that so many adults are giddy like schoolchildren over Harry Potter). As if out of spite for being force-fed his work so early, many people seem to ignore Bradbury as they grow older, consigning him to the world of adolescence.
All of which is unfortunate, for Bradbury stands as a singular chronicler of the second half of the twentieth century, peeking into our dark corners to see what scares us. BRADBURY STORIES: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales presents these demons anew, collecting pieces from every stage of his long career, from his dime novel beginnings to his work in Hollywood to his recent resurgence with original books like LET'S ALL KILL CONSTANCE and ONE MORE FOR THE ROAD. For those who haven't read Bradbury since high school, this collection serves as a fitting introduction to the surprisingly wide range of styles and subjects he has addressed; for longtime fans it is a reminder of the author's ability to evoke "the monsters and angels of my imagination" through dreamy prose and unforgettable imagery.
As well as any other American writer of the last century --- and certainly better than any other "genre" writer --- Bradbury creates a particular mood and setting in his stories that is best described as eerily autumnal. In THE OCTOBER COUNTRY, arguably his best collection, he describes this setting as "that country where it is always turning late in the year, that country whose people are always autumn people, thinking autumn thoughts." In the cycle of seasons, fall is the season of death --- falling leaves, browning grass, chilling winds, early darkness --- before rebirth, and in Bradbury's stories death always lingers nearby, tracking and chasing characters and greeting them in unsuspected places.
Whether or not they conjure the supernatural, the stories in this large collection show that this narrative texture, this October country setting, transcends that one collection and informs almost everything Bradbury wrote.
Furthermore, the October country Bradbury evokes is a flip-side America, one where the American dream has been subsumed by collective nightmares. If nothing else, BRADBURY STORIES demonstrates the writer's talent for heatedly and unpretentiously addressing social and political ills through his imaginative stories.
"And the Rock Cried Out," for example, follows two wealthy travelers in Africa who discover they're the last white people on earth. Their punishment for the West's constant imperialism is the loss of all worldly possessions and a life devoted to menial labor.
In "The Garbage Collector," a man learns that if a bomb hits the city, he will have to collect the dead in his truck. The title character must decide whether to quit his job and assuage his conscience or keep working to support his family. To Bradbury's credit, it's difficult to tell which crime is more outrageous --- the civic government viewing its citizenry as refuse or making its employees compromise their morals for family.
Any collection of this size is necessarily defined by what it omits as much as by what it includes. BRADBURY STORIES contains so many wonders, but where are "The Scythe," "The Crowd," and "Homecoming" from THE OCTOBER COUNTRY? What happened to "The Picasso Summer" and (a personal favorite) "Some Live Like Lazarus"?
Such glaring oversights are certainly not the fault of Bradbury, unless you count prolificacy and quality among the most grievous of literary sins. Nor are they the fault of the editors and compilers, who doubtlessly had to make many painful cuts. Instead, they serve as a cry for another volume, perhaps entitled 100 MORE BRADBURY STORIES. It is maybe only a slight exaggeration to say that he could fill 100 such volumes with highly inventive and deeply felt tales.
--- Reviewed by Stephen M. Deusner from Bookreporter.com

I wouldn't get this for your kid if you don't aprove of foul language. There is a lot of swearing an cussing in the dialog.

But besides that the stories are pretty clean and creative. It is mostly sience-fiction. A lot of the stories are fairly dark and depressed. Ofcourse there are some happy tales that are child freindly. The writing is descriptive and intriguing, with good character development. It is a simple read, with a good variety of vocabulary words that requires a dictionary sometimes.

To simplify, it has bad language content. Overall it's a great selection of Ray's short stories and is definitely a must read.

Re: Mr Deusner's review from September 12, 2003, "but where are "The Scythe," "The Crowd," and "Homecoming" from THE OCTOBER COUNTRY? What happened to "The Picasso Summer" and (a personal favorite) "Some Live Like Lazarus"?"

Those are in "The Stories of Ray Bradbury" (1980), a marvellous collection of 100 stories. This collection has another hundred - no overlap, which makes it an essential "volume 2" for those with "volume 1". Of course, the best thing is to simply buy all the books, especially considering that RB is the greatest writer ever!

If you're a Bradbury fan you'll love this book. I do wish they'd release a volume of ALL his short stories, or, at least all his fantasy/sci-fi short stories, because there were several missing in here that I would've liked to have seen.

I have read Bradbury since the early seventies and looked forward to some re-read. This copy IS MISSING pages 785 through 816. Death and the Maiden is not included in this publication! Thirty pages is not a deal breaker but a real disappointment to me.

I've been kind of struggling my way through this book off and on, putting it down and then coming back to it. There are a few real gems in here, but also lots of stories that seem to just squeak by on the strength of who their author is, as opposed to their merits. I bought this book because I was hoping to enjoy lots of good, short sci-fi stories by one of the genre's masters. Sadly, many of these stories aren't even sci-fi. A lot of them seem to be autobiographical missives about Bradbury's experiences drinking in Ireland.

I'm sorry, but I'm not very interested in reading about anybody's experiences drinking in Ireland.

Another gift. I bought it for someone as a birthday present.
Bradbury is awesome, but his stories are uneven in quality. Some are great, some (mainly his more recent stuff) are kinda' iffy.

In any case, "The Martian Chronicles" is a much better way to familiarize yourself with Bradbury's work since it's pretty much the best thing he's ever written.

Ray Bradbury is the consummate artist of the written word! He can thrill you with a thousand worlds and a street just around the corner. Literate and inventive! If you've never really read much other than a few off hand pieces-do yourself a favor and be haunted by the best! Some of these will hit you in the gut and stay there.

A large collection of quite short stories, published first in all sorts of places, some of them of the mundane variety, which I have taken out. A lot of these in past I have found dated and a bit twee, and it hasn't changed too much now. (3.34 average overall for around 70 of 'em, so not too bad).

Bradbury Stories : The Whole Town's Sleeping - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Rocket ["Outcast of the Stars"] - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : Season of Disbelief - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : And the Rock Cried Out ["The Millionth Murder"] - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Drummer Boy of Shiloh - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Beggar on O'Connell Bridge ["The Beggar on Dublin Bridge"] - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Flying Machine - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : Heavy-Set - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The First Night of Lent - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : Lafayette Farewell - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : Remember Sascha? - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : Junior - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : That Woman on the Lawn - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : February 1999: Ylla ["I'll Not Look for Wine"] - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : Banshee - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : One for His Lordship, and One for the Road! - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Laurel and Hardy Love Affair - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : Unterderseaboat Doktor ["Unterseeboot Doktor"] - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : Another Fine Mess - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Dwarf - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : A Wild Night in Galway - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Wind - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : No News or What Killed the Dog? - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : A Little Journey - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby's Is a Friend of Mine ["The Best of Times"] - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Garbage Collector - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Visitor - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Man - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : Henry the Ninth ["A Final Sceptre, a Lasting Crown"] - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Messiah - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : Bang! You're Dead! [Johnny Choir] - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : Darling Adolf - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Beautiful Shave - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : Colonel Stonesteel's Genuine Home-Made Truly Egyptian Mummy - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : I See You Never - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Exiles ["The Mad Wizards of Mars"] - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : At Midnight, In the Month of June - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Witch Door - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Watchers - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : 2004-05: The Naming of Names - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : Hopscotch - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Illustrated Man - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Dead Man - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : June 2001: And the Moon Be Still as Bright - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Burning Man - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : G.B.S.-Mark V - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : A Blade of Grass - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Sound of Summer Running ["Summer in the Air"] - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : And the Sailor Home from the Sea ["Forever Voyage"] - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Lonely Ones - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Finnegan - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : On the Orient, North - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Smiling People - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl ["Touch and Go"] - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : Bug - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : Downwind from Gettysburg - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : Time in Thy Flight - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : Changeling - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Dragon - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : Let's Play "Poison" - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Cold Wind and the Warm - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Meadow - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Kilimanjaro Device ["The Kilimanjaro Machine"] - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Man in the Rorschach Shirt - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : Bless Me Father for I Have Sinned - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Pedestrian - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : Trapdoor - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Swan - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Sea Shell - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : Once More, Legato - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : June 2003: Way in the Middle of the Air - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : By the Numbers! - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : April 2005: Usher II ["Carnival of Madness"] - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Square Pegs - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Trolley - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Smile - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Miracles of Jamie - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : A Far-Away Guitar ["Miss Bidwell"] - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Cistern - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Machineries of Joy - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : Bright Phoenix - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Wish - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Life Work of Juan Diaz - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : Time Intervening ["Interim"] - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : Almost the End of the World - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Great Collision of Monday Last - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Poems - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The April 2006: Long Years - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : Icarus Montgolfier Wright - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : Death and the Maiden - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : Zero Hour - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Toynbee Convector - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : Forever and the Earth - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Handler - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : Getting Through Sunday Somehow ["Tread Lightly to the Music"] - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Pumpernickel - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : Last Rites - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : The Watchful Poker Chip of H. Matisse - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury Stories : All on a Summer's Night - Ray Bradbury

Killer surprise.

3.5 out of 5

Nifty ride for the kids.

3 out of 5

Resigned to their new world.

3 out of 5

Grass ghost girl.

3.5 out of 5

Noisy dead woman waits for the obnoxious.

4 out of 5

Kaleidoscope periscope.

2.5 out of 5

Ghost return.

2.5 out of 5

Scary little dude.

3.5 out of 5

Unexpected airy visitor.

3.5 out of 5

Losing a dog in the science fiction age.

4 out of 5

Old women spaced.

2.5 out of 5

Nuke 'em, the garbos will clean it up.

3 out of 5

Hypnotist victim of Martian isolated projectile overenthusiasm.

3.5 out of 5

Locals not too impressed by space travellers.

3.5 out of 5

No longer have any use for that royalty rubbish or the country.

3.5 out of 5

Conversion of Martians a tall order.

3 out of 5

Midwestern Egypt.

3 out of 5

Old horror men on the red planet.

3.5 out of 5

Suspect woman.

3.5 out of 5

Insect phobia.

4 out of 5

Martian boot hill.

3 out of 5

Fat man's scary tattoos.

3.5 out of 5

Alive, maybe not, but definitely smelly.

3 out of 5

Chicken pox, and murder.

3 out of 5

Robot play dude.

3 out of 5

Organic life a no-no.

3.5 out of 5

Two hard up guys on Mars, smell woman, start shooting.

3 out of 5

Big spider, it seems.

3.5 out of 5

Ghost on train prefers English tastes.

4 out of 5

Cutthroat dinner.

3.5 out of 5

Dead art and little spiders.

3 out of 5

Dead president possibilities.

3.5 out of 5

Time kids.

2.5 out of 5

Replacement people.

3 out of 5

Iron monster.

3.5 out of 5

Defenestrating death kids.

3.5 out of 5

Complaining about the weather is for the sidhe.

3 out of 5

Time travel timing.

3.5 out of 5

Sensory stunning.

3.5 out of 5

2053 is pretty crime free.

3.5 out of 5

Vertical luggage overload, or really, really big rodents.

4 out of 5

Life tour with deadline.

3.5 out of 5

Sick kid's swimming disappearance.

3 out of 5

Beautiful bird noises.

4 out of 5

Mars trip not popular with all.

2.5 out of 5

Retirement, with a bullet.

3.5 out of 5

Book and ball people.

3.5 out of 5

Ship off the crazy people.

3.5 out of 5

Healing and leading can get you down.

3 out of 5

Well dead.

3.5 out of 5

Priests in space.

3.5 out of 5

Wanted: undead dad.

3.5 out of 5

Unexpected exhumation.

3.5 out of 5

Bad colors.

3 out of 5

Dead cyclist sightings.

3 out of 5

Good writing can be bad for reality.

3 out of 5

Electric people simulation.

4 out of 5

Get lost, Reaper.

3 out of 5

Martian kid games.

3.5 out of 5

Time traveler paradox interview fib pep talk function.

4 out of 5

Futurist writing is tricky.

4 out of 5

Undertaking revenge.

3.5 out of 5

Harping.

3 out of 5

Time travel benediction.

3 out of 5

The Bradbury Collection includes about one-hundred short stories, but most are not considered to be among Bradbury's best work (visit his other collection for those). The selected stories range from mundane to thought provoking; some with twists or sublte messages and others that are just plain ordinary. None of the stories are longer than about twenty pages, most well short of that with some even only a couple pages in length. Bradbury seems to be somewhat polarizing; most either love his work or find it mind numbing. If you are new to Bradbury this particular collection might be rather drab. The stories are all over half a century old and and many are affected by a lack of relevance. Of course, one can hardly blame Bradbury for this, yet given that these aren't even his best stories it does leave this collection rather lacking when everything is considered. Bradbury has the timeless ability to produce enduring content, yet that is not evidenced by the stories found in this collection.

This book took a while. Part of that was because it is massive (888 pages); part of it is because this is the kind of book that you savor. It you read too much of it in a stretch, then you start losing the beauty of the writing. Bradbury paints pictures in his stories. Some of these are science fiction, some are fantasy, and other have just a touch of horror. It isn't the horror that leaves nothing to the imagination, but rather the one that you just know that what happens after the last word is going to be unpleasant.

Many of the stories I knew from other collections, still others were new to me. All of them are good. I'd suggest if you are reading to meet a goal of "X" number of books that you save this until after you've met your goal or that you read it in between books. You'll want to dip in and enjoy it.

Who will like this book? Anyone who enjoys fantasy or enjoys reading beautifully drawn stories. I think you will find it rewarding.