Included with a Kindle Unlimited membership.

Buy new:

$9.99

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime & FREE Returns

FREE delivery: Wednesday, April 28 on orders over $25.00 shipped by Amazon. Details

Fastest delivery: Monday, April 26
Order within 9 hrs and 21 mins Details

Available to ship in 1-2 days.
As an alternative, the Kindle eBook is available now and can be read on any device with the free Kindle app.

$$9.99 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Secure transaction

Ships from	Amazon.com
Sold by	Amazon.com

Details

Ships from

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Return policy: This item is returnable

Add a gift receipt for easy returns

Share <Embed>

Have one to sell?

Sell on Amazon

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See all 2 images

Follow the Author

Ray Sikes

Life in the Cathode Ray Glow Paperback – August 26, 2010

by Ray Sikes (Author)

5 ratings

See all formats and editions Hide other formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$2.99

—

Paperback

"Please retry"

$9.99

—

Kindle
$0.00 Read with Kindle Unlimited to also enjoy access to over 1 million more titles $2.99 to buy
Paperback
$9.99

4 New from $9.99

Enhance your purchase

Life in the Cathode Ray Glow Throughout these works of fiction, Ray Sikes creates an engaging and vivid world with characters that are altogether believable and human. This collection starts off with a dozen stories about a boy growing up in the '60s and '70s. As a child, he colors with only a black crayon and lives a fantasy life as a space traveler. Later, he joins his brother in a sadistic war against invading 17-year locusts and impersonates daredevil Evel Knievel on a chopped spyder bicycle. He plays sports in the days when kids weren't handed trophies for merely showing up, gets into fights, and is both captivated and mystified by girls. Like many disenchanted teenagers of that era, he smokes dope, plays Led Zepplin songs in a cover band, and remembers exactly where he was when Lynryd Skynrd's plane crashed. Five miscellaneous stories round out this compilation. In them a hunter feels displaced by modern life, a celebrity roast is held for a dead comedian, an old man predicts the devastation of Hurricane Hazel in 1954, an elderly lady relives her life in a night, and a botched robbery reveals hypocrisy at a neighborhood drugstore. At various times nostalgic, humorous, and poignant, these stories above all else depict life as it is actually lived.

Print length

258 pages
Language

English
Publication date

August 26, 2010
Dimensions

5.25 x 0.65 x 8 inches
ISBN-10

1450561691
ISBN-13

978-1450561693
See all details

Special offers and product promotions

Amazon Business: Make the most of your Amazon Business account with exclusive tools and savings. Login now
Amazon Business : For business-only pricing, quantity discounts and FREE Shipping. Register a free business account

Start reading Life in the Cathode Ray Glow on your Kindle in under a minute.

Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.

Product details

Publisher : CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (August 26, 2010)
Language : English
Paperback : 258 pages
ISBN-10 : 1450561691
ISBN-13 : 978-1450561693
Item Weight : 10.4 ounces
Dimensions : 5.25 x 0.65 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #12,310,889 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #63,503 in Coming of Age Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
5 ratings

Customer reviews

5 star		63%
4 star		37%
3 star 0% (0%)		0%
2 star 0% (0%)		0%
1 star 0% (0%)		0%

How are ratings calculated?

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Lisa Donovan

Salient Details

Reviewed in the United States on October 28, 2010

Verified Purchase

For those of you who have read other books by Ray Sikes, this one is unique in that it's a collection of stories based on Ray's experiences. For Ray's fans, some of the stories may seem familiar since several have been published elsewhere: those familiar ones are worth reading again and "taste" even better as the years go by. The stories I was unfamiliar with are rich with descriptive snapshots which carry the storyline. As with Ray's other books, there's an honesty and integrity in Ray's style of writing. He chooses which details to include and his thoughtfulness achieves a powerful result in enabling the reader to both know the characters and relate to the experiences he describes. Each story Ray included has merit and the "Afterward" section should even be read before you read the stories. For those of you who have grown up in the 60's and 70's (or simply like that era of history) this book will bring back many familiar images, evoke laughter, and prompt you to ponder.

Helpful

ncartistguy

Very Enjoyable

Reviewed in the United States on December 8, 2010

Verified Purchase

Ray captures a moment in time perfectly. Much is written about the baby boomers but not many writers of the "Baby Busters" have painted the backdrops for those of us caught between the hippies and the disco beat. Well done Ray!

Helpful

Tammy M.

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on January 11, 2015

Verified Purchase

good

Helpful

L. C. Henderson

Exploration of Character Makes Stream of Consciousness Short Stories Evocative Renderings of Life

Reviewed in the United States on December 9, 2010

The first twelve stories in this volume, though containing elements of the author's own childhood and teenage perceptions and experiences, are, nevertheless, fictional. With an inherent distrust of biographies, fiction is the only medium that Sikes considers to be authentic enough to relay most of the truth about life. As he writes in the "Afterward: Telling Stories", "the act of reducing a life to book length makes the person seem much more interesting than he or she actually was, and once the events are recreated and twisted with commentary and description, what's there isn't really accurate." Sikes' concern with the truth has led him to prefer writing fiction to rehashing his own personal reality as a form of renegotiating the truth. To Sikes, fiction contains "enlightening hints at universal truths...[and]...insights about people and life in general." In such vein, he invites one to read his collection of short stories, Life in the Cathode Ray Glow: Stories about Growing Up in the '60s and '70s and Other Fiction.

Reminiscent of Bill Bryson's finest, the first twelve tales in the volume are amusing, insightful and true to life. All of them have some trenchant point to relate and leave one thinking more deeply about some aspect of our human existence, though they are in no way preachy. The deeper meaning of one's experiences is brought home without hitting one over the head with gospel truth. In fact, it came as quite a surprise to me that Sikes had already written an acclaimed spiritual non-fiction book called Keeping it Between the Ditches: Living the Christian Life. Provocative and stimulating are two words that I would definitely choose to use in reference to his latest collection.

The narrator of the first twelve tales appears to be the same young lad, whose fictional experiences reveal not only interesting aspects of those whom he encounters, but also a solid upbringing in an ethically sound home. They are enough to make one long once more to revel in the childhood encounters of yesteryear. The other five tales are told from a variety of viewpoints, and are more stream-of-consciousness and character sketches than the conventional sharp and slick beginning--middle--end of the traditional short story. No matter the protagonists or the setting, though, this collection is well worth reading and thinking about.

Sikes is a prolific writer, having had many of his short stories, essays, and poems published in a variety of publications and webzines, such as USA Today, The Wilmington (Delaware) News Journal, Out and About, Poor Mojo's Almanac, Cornerstone, Focus on Teachers, and The Nazarene Standard. No matter your age, you should find something about which to reflect in his writings. Sikes' honesty and integrity shine out from these pages, and are most refreshing in these days of over-the-top hype and gutless mudslinging. Do read him--he's well worth it. [Reviewer for BookPleasures.com]

Helpful

Ric

Expertly Nostalgic but Profound

Reviewed in the United States on December 14, 2010

Sikes' latest work is a collection of short stories compiled over his long writing career. This is a book well worth reading. It does have some flaws, which I will discuss first. Two stories, "Roasting the Dead" and "The Prophet of Hurricane Hazel," flirt with allegory, and to me this is a weakness. I find allegory generally distasteful, and any piece where one can say "the moral of the story is..." I will generally dislike. That being said, Sikes handles expertly even these allegories. The strength of the book, however, is how in the rest of the stories the author uses his own childhood to allow themes to grow organically. This is when Sikes is at his best. Even an atheist reader like me, dismissive of Sikes' religious message, finds himself enthralled (and perhaps even enlightened) by the themes and characters. These strengths far outweigh the weakness previously mentioned and make the book worth reading no matter what one's philosophical bent happens to be.

Helpful

Buy new: $9.99

Follow the Author

Similar authors to follow

Life in the Cathode Ray Glow Paperback – August 26, 2010

Enhance your purchase

Special offers and product promotions

Product details

Customer reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Buy new:

$9.99