On the Blogs

It sometimes seems that blogs were made for lists, since so many blogs give you the 20 best or 10 worst of a given item. Well, here's another one: a list of ten books you were supposed to read in school but didn't - with a suggestion of why you really ought to read them now you're all growed up. A Bradbury title is listed - and for once it isn't Fahrenheit 451.



Less listy is writer Sierra Godfrey's post on what makes for a scary story. Naturally, Stephen King gets a mention, but so too do H.G.Wells and Ray Bradbury.



This next item is a review of Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes, but of an audiobook version rather than the print version. What interested me about this is the reviewer's reaction to the dialogue in Something Wicked, and their assumption that they would have taken the dialogue differently if they had seen it written down. Bradbury's dialogue is often criticised for being unrealistic - this was one of Rod Serling's excuses for not doing more Bradbury on The Twilight Zone. But Something Wicked is a fantasy AND a period piece, so what would count as realistic dialogue? And why does dialogue that works on the page become unrealistic when performed? Read the review here.