Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) was an American fantasy and horror author who rejected being categorized as a science fiction author, claiming that his work was based on the fantastical and unreal.  His best known novel is Fahrenheit 451, a dystopian study of future American society in which critical thought is outlawed.  He is also remembered for several other popular works, including The Martian Chronicles and Something Wicked This Way Comes.  Bradbury won the Pulitzer in 2007, and is one of the most celebrated authors of the 21st century.  Author Ray Douglas Bradbury was born on August 22, 1920, in Waukegan, Illinois, to Leonard Spaulding Bradbury, a lineman for power and telephone utilities, and Ester Moberg Bradbury, a Swedish immigrant.  Bradbury enjoyed a relatively idyllic childhood in Waukegan, which he later incorporated into several semi-autobiographical novels and short stories.  As a child, he was a huge fan of magicians, and a voracious reader of adventure and fantasy fiction—especially L. Frank Baum, Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Burroughs.  Bradbury decided to become a writer at about age 12 or 13.  He later said that he made the decision in hopes of emulating his heroes, and to "live forever" through his fiction.  Bradbury's family moved to Los Angeles, California in 1934.  As a teenager, he participated in his school's drama club and occasionally befriended Hollywood celebrities.  His first official pay as a writer came for contributing a joke to George Burns' Burns & Allen Show.  After graduation from high school in 1938, Bradbury couldn't afford to go to college, so he went to the local library instead.  "Libraries raised me," he later said.  "I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money.  When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression, and we had no money.  I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years."  https://www.biography.com/writer/ray-bradbury   

Ray Bradbury’s writing life was sparked by an encounter with a carnival magician, Mr. Electrico, in 1932.  At the end of Electrico’s performance, he reached out to the twelve-year-old Bradbury, touched him with his energy-charged sword, and commanded, “Live Forever!”  Bradbury later said,” I decided that was the greatest idea I had ever heard.  I started writing every day.  I never stopped.”   https://raybradbury.com/13-things/   

November 7, 2022  Shelf Talkers is a series at Lit Hub where booksellers from independent bookstores around the country share their favorite reads of the moment.  Here are recommendations from the staff at Gramercy Books, a bookstore in Bexley, Ohio.  https://lithub.com/shelf-talkers-what-the-booksellers-are-reading-at-gramercy-books/ 

When it comes to reading, most people can identify a book (often one they read in adolescence) that changed the way they think.  Stephen King has cited William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, which he encountered when he was twelve years old.  He described it as, “The first book with hands—strong ones that reached out of the pages and seized me by the throat.”  We don’t even have to take his word for it.  Elements of Lord of the Flies permeate King’s books, which reveal the innate potential in kids for both good and evil.  When we say that something changes the brain, there are two ways that a change might manifest.  The first is a transient alteration.  The majority of psychological experiments are designed around this phenomenon.  These transient changes are relatively easy to detect.  You define a control condition and then present the subject with a stimulus that is designed to evoke a particular response.  The experimenter assumes that once the stimulus is gone, the response will return to its baseline.  The response could be anything measurable.  It could be a keypress on a keyboard, or it could be a physiological response like a change in heart rate, skin conductance, or brain response as measured with fMRI.  These types of experiments are efficient.  Trials can be repeated over and over until the experimenter acquires enough data for analysis.  The second type of alteration is a long-lasting change, but these are more difficult to measure.  When it comes to the brain, transient alterations represent ephemeral change, and most neuroscientists interpret them in terms of momentary information processing rather than lasting change.  The visual cortex, for example, responds to changes in the visual field, but these are not thought to persist.  Once a stimulus is gone, so is the brain response.  Gregory Berns  https://lithub.com/how-do-the-books-we-read-change-our-brains/   

For only the 13th time in 120 years, France’s oldest and most celebrated literary award the Prix Goncourt was won by a woman on November 3, 2022.  The prize is worth just €10 but guarantees renown and massive book sales.  Most winners prefer to frame rather than cash their Goncourt cheque.  Brigitte Giraud, 56, a French writer of novels and short stories was declared winner with Vivre Vite (Live Fast) after the jury voted 14 times.  After a final vote ended in stalemate, the president of the Goncourt Academy cast a deciding vote, choosing Giraud over her closest rival Giuliano da Empoli.  Vivre Vite is a short autobiographical story in which Giraud recounts the chain of events leading to the death of her husband Claude in a motorbike accident in 1999, leaving her with a young son and a recently signed contract to buy a new family home.  Kim Willsher  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/nov/03/brigitte-giraud-becomes-13th-woman-to-win-prix-goncourt-vivre-vite?   

The oldest relationship between humans and ancient trees naturally occurs in Africa.  The continent’s longest-lived tree is the largest, too.  Amazingly wide for its height, a mature baobab appears otherworldly.  Leafless for most the year—an energy conservation strategy—its branches resemble roots marooned in the sky.  According to traditional stories, the original baobab was planted upside down as punishment by gods, heroes, or hyenas.  The “upside-down tree” also goes by “elephant tree.”  The connection between Africa’s greatest megaflora and megafauna goes beyond size.  The calloused bark of a baobab is elephantine in color and texture.  Botanists speak of pachycauls (thick-stemmed plants) as a cognate of pachyderms (thick-skinned mammals).  Moreover, bush elephants consume the bark.  In the dry season, tusked males gouge the trunks, peel away strips, and chew their fibrous trophies.  Baobabs heal over wounds that would kill other trees.  They are among nature’s apex regenerators.  Their wood contains a high percentage of living cells, and a high percentage of water—up to 80 percent.  Jared Farmer  https://lithub.com/meet-natures-apex-regenerator-the-mighty-baobab-tree/

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was born November 11, 1922 in Indianapolis, Indiana.  He published his first novel, Player Piano, some 30 years later, and in the decades after that, proceeded to become one of this country’s most beloved and influential writers.  Celebrate the centennial of his birth with a few of favorite Vonnegut-ian reads at https://lithub.com/how-to-celebrate-100-years-of-kurt-vonnegut/   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2591  November 14, 2022