Customer Reviews

A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories

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4 star:		(3)
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Wow- this book is a creative, intelligent, easy-to-understand treasure! Each story is about 5-25 pages, some are shorter than others. They are not all alike, so you are guaranteed to like at least a few, but it is hard to believe that someone might not like most of them. ray bradbury writes very well and i am sure you will enjoy this book. try it!!

Ray Bradbury is one of the most distinctive and talented writers that the sci-fi pulps of the 40's and 50's spawned. He's got a really unique voice, and his stories, usually very short and very readable, are certainly a example of sci-fi at its finest. Some really great stories in this collection. However, I guess it's kind of silly to call this a sci-fi collection. There's horror, fantasy, sci-fi, and a lot of plain old good short story in this collection. If you like to read short stories, I highly recommend any of his collections, because they seem consistently good to me.

I always tend to think of Ray Bradbury as one of the science fiction masters. And that is not to say that this collection has zero science fiction, for it does. But there are several stories where Bradbury takes his skill past the sci-fi and fully into the heartfelt world he so often covers in his other books. The stories range from romance to the rainy worlds of Venus and every place inbetween as Bradbury demonstrates some stunning and always powerful imagination.

Ray Bradbury's A Medicine For Melancholy collection was a pleasant surprise after reading several horrible books in a row. This collection is full of stories that are sometimes scary, sometimes sad, and sometimes puzzling to the emotions. Most of the stories in this volume impressed me, even the ones that talked about rockets and Mars, which seemed to be every other one. A few of them are incredibly memorable like The Wonderful Ice-Cream Suit because of its erie but comical quality. I also loved All Summer In A Day which is an imaginative and impossible story about a small girl's huge disappointment on the planet Venus. The Town Where No One Got Off is yet another memorable story that made me wonder what would happen if I just got off the train at a town in the middle of no where without telling anyone. Great collection with very few duds in the mix.

i can't believe no one has reviewed this book. i imagine the reason is that no one has read it! otherwise, this thing would be overflowing with reviews. this collection of short stories is simply incredible. so well done. the title says it all, and every story is just that: a medicine for melancholy. i was lucky to run across a copy.