I am currently halfway through one Stephen King audiobook, most of the way through Lauren Graham’s audiobook, have recently restarted Neverwhere (I was in the mood for comfort food) and also listened to an hour of Outlander (my project for 2017 — listen to all the Outlander novels on audio) at the nail salon today. All of this to say: this will be my last review of 2016, as I’m nowhere near completion on anything else!
“I’m ALIVE. Thinking about it, noticing it, is new. You do things and don’t watch. Then all of a sudden you look and see what you’re doing and it’s the first time, really.”
About halfway through Dandelion Wine, there’s a 2-3 page chapter describing the main character (a young boy named Douglas) and his family cleaning their rugs at the beginning of the summer. The imagery and description in those few paragraph was just about the prettiest thing I’ve ever read. Dandelion Wine contains a lot of stories, many of which involve Douglas and his brother and friends, but it’s really a story about summer. It’s a beautiful story — one that will make you nostalgic for bike rides and playing on the swings.
“You’ll find out it’s little savors and little things that count more than big ones. A walk on a spring morning is better than an eighty-mile ride in a hopped-up car, you know why? Because it’s full of flavors, full of a lot of things growing.”
Ray Bradbury is a master, and this book is a masterpiece.