"The Halloween Tree" by Ray Bradbury

Happy Halloween!

I thought, for my 31st blog post, it would be appropriate to post on the 31st of October, and more appropriate to review "the Halloween Tree" by Ray Bradbury (may he rest in peace!). "The Halloween Tree" is a book that my mother read to me as a child and that I took to reading every October a week or two before Halloween.

Fall is my all-time favorite season and I adore Halloween. I'm looking forward to watching Charlie Brown specials, drinking hot chocolate, passing candy out to children, cuddling up in a blanket, feeling warm, and happy, and content with life. I don't really do the scary Halloween thing, sadly (I just don't have the nerves for it!), but I've been filling my October with themed activities: Dorothy L. Sayers mystery books, audio books (for traveling), and dvds; "the Halloween Tree" novel and movie (narrated by Bradbury himself!); watching "Labyrinth" (though any season is a good time for David Bowie in tight pants); and carving pumpkins, eating pumpkin pie, pumpkin biscotti, roasted pumpkin seeds, pumpkin cream cheese dip.

This is my copy of the novel: the 1974 Bantam Books edition. In the hour since this has been taken, much of the candy corn has miraculously vanished...

Summary: On the evening of Halloween, friends gather to go trick-or-treating together and notice the absence of their leader, Pipkin. At his house, Pipkin has left a note urging his friends to start without him--that he would catch up. They chase his shadow to an old haunted house, with a great tree in the back yard that is laden with jack-o'-lanterns. Before they know it, the children are swept off on a quest to find Pipkin through centuries of Halloween traditions that collected make up modern day Halloween.

Upsides: I think this is an amazing book for children! The first time this was read to me, I was about 8 or 9 years old and it became a favorite of mine. It's written in with traditional Bradbury elegance and has that delicious way of captivation the reader. The book is a great way to learn more about how we've come to celebrate Halloween as we do, without being dry or too non-fiction-ey. I think another plus is the length, especially if you have kids; the chapters are a good length for read-out-loud time/busy schedules, and it's a book that's easy to get through if you don't have a lot of time to spare in your schedule or if you have kids with small attention spans (or God-forbid, both!).

Downsides: It's hard for me to find a downside for this book, but I will say that there are moments where you wish the scenes were a little longer and more fleshed out; this problem (I found after some research) stems from a heavy hand at the editor's desk (see my note below about this). It's hard to fault Bradbury for something he likely had little control over. I'll also nit-pick a bit and say that the secondary characters aren't particularly developed, but this novel is more about the plot and the traditions than the characters.

Overall Rating: 5/5 I always think it's a good thing to learn about cultural traditions (especially ones that we practice today) in a society that's highly consumer driven. I think this is not only a beautiful book, but an important piece of literature that reminds us that Halloween is not just about dressing like a whore or a jackass, drinking yourself into a stupor, or getting a bunch of free candy. It's a great book to read with kids (ages 5 and up, I would suggest) and a fun book to read as an adult.

NOTE: As I mentioned earlier, editor cuts were made to this book that Bradbury greatly disapproved of and in 2007 a new version of this book came out (I do not own it, but you can bet that state won't last long, that is the author's preferred text version--I've heard the editors cut a lot of large chunks out of this novel to make it more targeted toward a young-adult audience), so if you're a buyer, I would consider that heavily as an option. It's definitely on my Christmas list!

But that's not all! No Halloween is complete for me without watching the animated movie "the Halloween Tree" as well, which is narrated by Ray Bradbury and features the talent of Leonard Nimoy as Moundshroud. I think it may have made its way onto DVD at this point. I own it on VHS and go to great pains to hook up my VHS player to watch it every year. And with this posting, I'll be off to get that going...

Happy reading/watching!
AJ

PS. Two blog posts, two days in a row? What is this nonsense? Long novels always seem to bog me down for a month, but they are also some of my favorite novels to read. I'll try to have November and December more populated by reviews than this month will be! Coming up is a review of Dorothy L. Sayers' "Have His Carcase" and likely several more Dorothy L. Sayers novels. I'm planning to get back to the Wishbone Project soon in the form of shorter novels and eventually with "the Phantom of the Opera." I'm trying to plan out a book schedule for myself but with all these job interviews and running around, I've had a bit of a scattered schedule.

"A Dance with Dragons" by GRRM

I've been working on this blog post for weeks now! Thankfully, job interviews and travel have been really keeping me busy, so I haven't had a lot of time to be writing a blog post! But,  I'm finally caught up with the "Songs of Ice and Fire" books; it only took me 7 months to get there! Phew! I can finally read online forums and discuss it with friends!

A quick thanks to Shy for lending me "Dance with Dragons" so I didn't have to wait in line at the library to borrow it! Love you so much! Since she'd already read the book, as I was reading, I spent a lot of time also texting her about my impressions of the book as I was reading, so I'm going to try and include some of those thoughts along the way, because she gave some really interesting opinions on the book as well that I think are really valid.

Image courtesy of GRRM's website.Read my other GRRM reviews:
A Game of Thrones
A Clash of Kings
A Storm of Swords
A Feast for Crows
The HBO Series

I want to start briefly with some things I wrote as I was reading the book:

Early impressions: Thank God my favorite characters are back! I'm so happy to see that Daenarys gets an active role in one of these books; she really only had a few scattered chapters here and there in every single book before this. I'm particularly excited that for half a book, I won't need to read about Cersei's penis envy, Jaime's scorn for said envy, or the Dorne daughters complaining about how peaceful their father is. There's plot in this book, which is a huge upscale from the last book; "Feast for Crows" has a lot of important information and development in it, but that doesn't make it necessarily interesting. I'm really enjoying the pacing in the fifth book so far. There's enough action and development and forward momentum to be interesting, while still taking time to leave mystery and intrigue. Finally! I still don't think much of Jon's chapters at the wall, but they're more interesting than they have been at the past, so I'm not giving up hope just yet. The Reek chapters--ew. Simply put, ew. When I turn a page and get to a Reek chapter, I outwardly and inwardly groan in dismay; not only do they gross me out, but I frankly do not like the character and do not care what happens to him at all. I assume it'll be important at some point, but most of the time, I just read through, get nauseous, and move on. I enjoy that Tyrion's finally breaking solidly away from the Lannisters and seeking out new opportunities. There have been some great twists in the book so far and I'm excited to see where it leads me!

Upsides: There are interesting POV chapters and the first book in which Daenerys gets a lot of page time in a book. Tyrion and Daenerys are my favorite characters (and generally fan favorites), and they are featured greatly in this novel, so I find that a definite upside. The pacing and plot took a turn for the better in this book after the slow, death march of the 4th book. There were places where I was on the edge of my seat, places where I was lulled into a false sense of security, and places where I was genuinely shocked by what I was reading (in both a pleasant and unpleasant way).

Downsides: This first downside comes from Shy and it's also a complaint that I've had with the later books, especially book 3+: You'll be reading the book and then you'll come upon a POV chapter for someone like Melisandre or Reek and you'll just want to put the book down--at least I did. When I commented to Shy about the first Melisandre POV chapter, she said: "If I can't even remember those chapters then they did not add anything of consequence." I couldn't agree more--there are some chapters that I just don't see the point in and I'm willing to sit through a few of those for characters I like, but for characters I don't care about, I feel like it's wasting my time. Another of my problems with all of GRMM's "Song of Ice and Fire" books is that, especially in books 2-5, surprises/mysteries either come from absolutely nowhere with no lead up that you aren't surprised by them in the intended fashion, but in the way that you're turning back pages trying to figure out what's going on--OR there's so much build up to it that you guess what's coming miles before it happens. Toward the end of the book, when characters from the fourth volume are reintroduced, the pacing slows down and so does the action by quite a bit, which I found disappointing. There are also plots that he left more open-ended than I would have like for the end of a novel, even though it will continue in another volume; I especially was interested in Cersei's plot line and she only got one chapter in the book that didn't give her story any forward motion, though there was a bit of deserved justice. I continue to complain that many characters, that should be well-rounded and interesting, remain stale and one-dimentional (*cough* Davos *cough*).

What makes a well-rounded character: Case Study: Tyrion:
Here's why everyone and their mother loves Tyrion--he's a well-rounded character. What does that mean? He has depth, he's not flat or fake. People love Tyrion because, while he is a "good guy"/protagonist, he isn't perfect. He likes to drink and whore. He feels a full range of emotion--hate, love, regret, desire, anger, longing, etc. This makes him relateable. On top of that, he's clever and witty and beautifully blunt! As readers, we love him for his faults and his virtues and because we can relate to him in so many ways. He's funny, he's cool, he emotes, he has desires, he's relateable. He posesses motivation that, while not pure, is interesting and tangible: he wants to own Casterly Rock, he wants revenge against his family for his poor treatment at their hands, he wants to be happy, he wants, in general!

Why Davos doesn't seem (to me) as a well-rounded character:
Let's role play. My name is Davos. They call me the Onion Knight. I used to be a smuggler. Then Stannis cut my fingers off, so I knelt to him and became loyal. ??? Stannis trusts my council, though he never, ever listens to it and does the opposite of what I advise, but I'm still loyal, though I disagree with him. What else can I do? Even though 4 of my sons have been killed in Stannis' war, I'm still loyal. I became his Hand because he's the true king and that's all that matters in life. I haven't seen my wife or my three living sons in a billion years, why? Because I'm busy being loyal to Stannis and giving him council that he doesn't listen to and going on errands that may very well get me killed and going through battles that may very well get another of my sons killed. But I'm still loyal. *End role play*. That's why I find Davos flat. He has no personal motivation at all. He feels nothing but loyalty and a sense of duty--and those are good things to have when paired with other emotions, such as self-motivation or a desire for something. All characters must want something. All Davos seems to want is for Stannis to win the war and become king. He's inexplicably loyal to a fault. But then what? It's for these reasons that I just can't like Davos--he's simply not real enough for me. You're welcome to your own opinion, but that's mine.

Overall Rating: 4 /5 Stars. While the pacing issues from the fourth book (and for that matter, from the second) seem to have been ironed out in this book, I still had issues with a lot of the character development and some of the plot points didn't seem well thought-out. I wonder if the fame of these novels is putting GRRM under some pressure, because many of these books seem rushed and not perfectly planned to me. But it was a certain improvement on the fourth book and good to see Dani getting a more prominent place in this book.

Next up: Another Dorothy L. Sayers book review. I've been on a bit of a mystery kick (I am quite often getting on book kicks) and Sayers' Peter Whimsey books are my favorite for mystery; they seemed appropriate for October reads. I'm planning to read and review "the Halloween Tree" for October 31st--it's a book I read every year in October.

Happy reading,
AJ

PS. So, I was going through my old blog posts and found myself disappointed with how short they are, so I tried to add some more content in this post! I hope you enjoyed! Please feel free to leave some feedback in the comments below and let me know what you thought of the book!