Reading Log #1

reading: Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

Context: read this book in high school for an AP English class and remembered nothing about it other than the word "calliope" so - picked it up at a Bookstore (coincidentally for independent bookstore day) and I'm diving back in.

chapters 2-9

Jim and Will are opposites - and they always have been - in a complimentary way. There's a play between darkness and lightness here. Jim flirts with darkness, adultness, maturity. Will is brightness and innocence.

I'm beginning to see the hint of what the carnival means to the townsfolk - it's tied to the balance of Jim and Will. The promise of the carnival through the whiffs and whispers of how it's seen at this point are tugging at nostalgia for the townsfolk. There's promise of newness, excitement, the promise of things that may be taboo. Things to be ogled and observed. Sweetness, excesses, luxuries, and hints to more carnal desire. The Theatre and the most beautiful woman in the world are playing to these desires deeply. There's a sense of this carnival as an outsider - being grittier and nastier and intense, an anomaly in the town, representing desire and decadence not typically expressed.

Bradbury writes in a way that is absolutely haunting. The rushing of flyers - trash on the street, essentially - has no right to be as maddeningly eerie as it is in this instance. Same with the pleasantness of a library, painted as a tomb of history and exploration, but feeling empty and hollowed at the same time.

I wish I was reading this book in October. I can feel the way the wind blows in the fall when I read these pages.