It's October...time for Bradbury!
First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys. Not that all months aren’t rare. But there be bad and good, as the pirates say. Take September, a bad month: school begins. Consider August, a good month: school hasn’t begun yet. July, well, July’s really fine: there’s no chance in the world for school. June, no doubting it, June’s best of all, for the school doors spring wide and September’s a billion years away.
But you take October, now. School’s been on a month and you’re riding easier in the reins, jogging along. You got time to think of the garbage you’ll dump on old man Prickett’s porch, or the hairy-ape costume you’ll wear to the YMCA the last night of the month. And if it’s around October twentieth and everything smoky-smelling and the sky orange and ash gray at twilight, it seems Halloween will never come in a fall of broomsticks and a soft flap of bedsheets around corners.
But one strange wild dark long year, Halloween came early.
One year Halloween came on October 24, three hours after midnight.
So begins the Prologue of Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes, arguably one of the greatest American dark fantasy / horror novels ever written.
It's October, time to break out this classic and give it an annual read. I confess, I couldn't wait this year and read it again two weeks ago. Sure, I have it in hardback, but I usually read this gem from my 1979 dog-eared and seriously faded paperback...the perfect edition for such a creepy book.
It is a brilliant thriller. If you've not read it, you're missing out. If you have, you know it's time to read it again. Enjoy!