fluffmugger:

Everyone when they think of Ray Bradbury tends to think of Farenheit 451, or Something wicked this way comes, but my favourite of all his works, just for the brilliant deftness of it…has to be There Will Come Soft Rains

There Will Come Soft Rains

In the living room the voice-clock sang, Tick-tock, seven o’clock, time to get up, time to get up, seven o’clock! as if it were afraid nobody would. The morning house lay empty. The clock ticked on, repeating and repeating its sounds into the emptiness. Seven-nine, breakfast time, seven-nine! 

    In the kitchen the breakfast stove gave a hissing sigh and ejected from its warm interior eight pieces of perfectly browned toast, eight eggs sunnyside up, sixteen slices of bacon, two coffees, and two cool glasses of milk.

    “Today is August 4, 2026,” said a second voice from the kitchen ceiling., “in the city of Allendale, California.” It repeated the date three times for memory’s sake. “Today is Mr. Featherstone’s birthday. Today is the anniversary of Tilita’s marriage. Insurance is payable, as are the water, gas, and light bills.”

    Somewhere in the walls, relays clicked, memory tapes glided under electric eyes.

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(via deadlineisoverrated)

I just learned about Ray Bradbury’s death. A pebble thrown into the pond with ripples which, I am worried so much, would be swallowed up by myriads of young adult fantasy products of writing of today’s.
Dont get me wrong; they are good and some shine.
But Ray Bradbury was great.

So I’m going to blow the dust off my copy of his A Graveyard For Lunatics and be set once again aglow with this opening:

“Once upon a time there were two cities within a city. One was light and one was dark. One moved restlessly all day while the other never stirred. One was warm and filled with ever-changing lights. One was cold and fixed in place by stones.”

I just got done reading Stephen King’s Big Driver (it’s the second story in his 4-story collection: Full Dark, No Stars) last night. Big Driver is a rape story with a twist. It’s always hard for me reading stories like this. 

snarkasticmoviegeek:

I’m sure many of you guys have seen the trailers/commercials for the upcoming Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax based on the children’s book of the same name. When I initially heard that there would be a new movie adaptation, I was excited since The Lorax is my favorite Dr. Seuss book, but when I saw the trailer… I wanted to throw a sharp object at the screen. Do NOT destroy this movie, Illumination Entertainment, or there will be another fire in Universal Studios.

The reason I’m getting so butthurt about this movie is probably that I love this book. It made me into the little environmentalist that I am today. Like all the other Dr. Seuss books, it had an important moral, and it was told through a story that rhymed. What little kid doesn’t love rhymes? 

But this new movie… why. Why would you change the story? Why can’t the protagonist just do some good for the environment for the sake of being a good person? Why does he have to do it for the affections of a girl?

Because that just wouldn’t get money. Kids wouldn’t be interested about a movie revolving solely on the environment, which is fine because they’re kids. However, what truly irks me is that it seems as if the studio only made this movie for money, not to educate kids about the importance of conservation. That is what the story is about. Not about romance and whatever else the movie will have.

Some people would say that the new movie actually does do that, but can’t the actual book do that, too? What is so wrong with actually reading the book? 

Or at least watch the original 25 min. long cartoon.

If the snot-nosed little kid can’t appreciate the book or the original cartoon, he doesn’t deserve to hear the story. 

I’m still going to watch Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax though, sooner or later, someday eventually. Just to watch it. I hope it doesn’t stray too far from the story because it’s such a wonderful tale. It would be a shame for for our future generations not to have knowledge of it. 

Three weeks might pass without a single book being sold, said the shop’s general manager, El Tayeb Mohammed Abdel Rahman, who has been associated with the business for decades.

But shutting the doors is not really an option for the 110-year-old store which Abdel Rahman believes is the oldest in Sudan, “and maybe in Africa.”

“It is a famous place,” he said, recounting how people tell him: “Please do your best not to close this shop.”

Tucked away on a garbage-strewn side street in downtown Khartoum, the business reflected a “book culture” which developed under British and Egypt rule and in the post-independence years after 1956, said historian Abdullah Ali Ibrahim.

“So it is a very sad thing” to see the store decline along with the role of books in Sudanese society, Ibrahim said.

“This city used to have the bookstore at the forefront. Now you have restaurants and all these busy, busy commercial things,” he said.

Any school receiving Federal funds should be required to have a credentialed School Librarian on staff full time with a library that contains a minimum of 18 books per student. Failure to have a school library open to all students and/or failure to have a credentialed School Librarian to run that library should be punishable by a immediate withdrawal of all Federal monies.

Study after study has shown that well-stocked, well-funded, well-organized school libraries staffed by a “highly qualified” School Librarian, or other similarly qualified credentialed individual, improve student reading scores, test scores, and literacy rates. All children have the right to read and to have access to materials that will help them grow as learners and as people. No Library = No Freedom to Learn

Please take a moment to sign the petition.