When was dandelion wine written

He told the story in such a way it was hard to turn it off for the day. After reading some of the other less over flowing reviews, I believe that the readers thought that the story would be more of a sci-fi theme.

However it is a story about life, how we perceive our place in the world, how youth transitions into adulthood then into old age and death. Ray Bradbury's characters show us these transitions over the course of a summer. His descriptions are mesmerizing and Stephen Hoye's narration perfectly added to the quality of the story. This is one book that I will look forward to listening to over and over. I enjoyed this book very very much and the narration was wonderful I know that this version is not available online anymore.

I don't know why but this is a great book. This reads more like a series of connected short stories, a few powerful and riveting, but most banal, all read in a tone of reverence and awe that only sometimes makes sense. As brilliantly written by the amazing Ray Bradbury.

In a rural Midwest town, filled with parents and grandparents and shopkeepers and friends and sometimes creepy neighbors, Mr. Bradbury allows us to relive the memories of our youth with a wisdom and insight we only wish we could have had. If you could sum up Dandelion Wine in three words, what would they be? Nostalgia, for a time that has long gone; a better time that we can now only dream of. Joy, in watching a young boy grow up.

Fear, that everything may just go wrong for him. Who was your favorite character and why? The main character, a young boy Name forgotten I'm afraid , who is so busy trying to just grow up and to understand what the whole thing is about. But he is such an interesting character that, despite everything, you feel drawn to him, to wish him well. No, but I shall look for him again. Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Pretty much. It was beautifully done, both the writing and the narration. Any additional comments? I read one of Ray Bradbury's later books a long time ago. This has made me realize that I must re-visit his list. Coming of age that hovers on the edge of magical realism but never quite crossing it. Amazingly, the books that follow definitely have elements of strong magical realism and are also exceptional. Add to Cart failed.

Please try again later. Add to Wish List failed. Remove from wishlist failed. Adding to library failed. Please try again. Follow podcast failed.

Unfollow podcast failed. Stream or download thousands of included titles. Dandelion Wine By: Ray Bradbury. Narrated by: Stephen Hoye. No default payment method selected. Add payment method. Switch payment method. We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method. Pay using card ending in. Taxes where applicable. Listeners also enjoyed Citizen of the Galaxy By: Robert A. Born in Waukegan, Illinois, in , Ray Bradbury's formal education ended with his graduation from a Los Angeles high school in For several years after graduating high school he earned money by selling newspapers on street corners in Los Angeles.

Bradbury began writing at a young age, and in he sold his first science fiction short story. Bradbury became well known writing short stories that were published in science fiction magazines, and he won several awards for his science fiction short story writing. True fame for Bradbury, however, came with the publication in of The Martian Chronicles.

His most widely read book is Fahrenheit , published in Bradbury had published hundreds of books and stories and in addition has written for television, radio, theater, and film.

He has won numerous awards for his fiction, and a crater on the moon was named after Dandelion Wine. Dandelion Wine takes place in Green Town, Illinois. I can actually smell the aromas of the darkened movie theater, the county fair, and grandmas cobblers baking in the oven. This story was a breath of fresh air, a sip from the fountain of youth, and it brought back some memories about life and loss that touched me in a way that I can only give this my highest rating.

I admit, Dandelion Wine is not an epic, not an action packed adventure or thriller to tantalize a readers fancy. But what it accomplished in the heart of this reader makes it deserving of the best I can offer.

View all 9 comments. If you are looking for science fiction because it's Ray Bradbury, or a logical straightforward plot, or a book like all the others that you usually read, leave this one alone. If you want magic between the covers once you start turning pages, then by all means open these doors. If you want beautiful prose " the bee-fried air", bee-fried air, for Pete's sake!

If you need some lovely practicality, there's plenty from Grandma and Grandpa and Great Grandma too. Philosophy, time travel just from listening to elderly people, magic spells and potions that may or may not work, but who cares, it's all included in these pages. This book made me happy. What more can you ask? View all 22 comments. Haven't tasted anything as good as this season's dandelion wine. It is rich, effervescent: it transports you like some Madeline to a time when it was bottled: its sunshine color will redden your cheeks and make you remember This coming of age idyll is absolute perfection.

This, because idylls are fictional: the remembered anecdotes of childhood is where darkness creeps, and where nature has plans that are cyclical and macabre. Of this Bradbury writes in astonishing prose, of the undertow, of " Haven't tasted anything as good as this season's dandelion wine. Of this Bradbury writes in astonishing prose, of the undertow, of "that crouching malignancy down below.

The childhood lessons border on the metaphysical--again, I am sure Bradbury has arrived at the root of the root of It shows us this part of himself that shows us part of ourselves.

The novel is very unpredictable, life-as-lived. What image from the writer's early biography will we be standing before in awe next? Even the fantastic dialogue displays tremendous themes, battling it out with everyday minutia. Youth and age are in silent revolt: as is technology and daily life, as is life and death.

In this ebb-and-flow-created "harmony", the master brings out the shady outlines of death; almost a century old, the novel is nothing if not modern, futuristic even, in so many regards Enorm in his description power, you can see, hear and even smell the summer!! I must digest all this beauty and enchanted prose, folks.. Bradbury has blown me away with Dandelion wine!!

But I must continuing my readings, Ray Bradbury has me again on the hook, and he will not let me go until the last page is enjoyed!!

The Storys are superb.. I want much more by Bradbury and his Green Town series!!! A wonderful and exciting experience!!! Great and powerful written!!!

Highly recommendable to all of you lovers of very good fiction!!! View all 6 comments. Dec 03, Dave Schaafsma rated it it was amazing Shelves: sci-fi. The words were summer on the tongue. The wine was summer caught and stoppered. Bradbury published this book in , though you can see why this became popular in the late sixties, celebrating summer and nature as it "Dandelion wine.

Bradbury published this book in , though you can see why this became popular in the late sixties, celebrating summer and nature as it does. As I began the book, a reread after decades of separation, it felt romanticized and sentimental, compared to my teenaged reading of it, which was just celebratory, as I seem to recall. It certainly is nostalgic, which as a much older man I appreciate more than I would have earlier in my life.

Rereading the early chapters made me want to write my own book about, say, my own summer of But on the whole I liked these early chapters quite a bit. And all of this, this breath-warmness and plum-tenderness was held forever in one miracle of photographic is chemistry which no clock winds could blow upon to change one hour or one second; this fine first cool white snow would never melt, but live a thousand summers. One incident I like has to do with the almost ecstatic memory of wearing new sneakers on a sunny day.

Which is to say that several things operate as what would now be called magic realism. Early themes established include the importance of memory, of course; youth vs.

The Ravine, Mr. Lonely who kills young women , and the Tarot Witch from the Penny Arcade, all these loom ever larger as the summer proceeds. The specter of death is everywhere, as Grandmother dies, a young woman is killed, and as Doug himself gets very ill at one point. Doug has a realization: "So if trolleys and runabouts and friends can go away for a while or go away forever, or rust, or fall part and die, and if people can be murdered, and if someone like great-grandma, who was going to live forever, can die.

Then I Douglas Spaulding must also. Goodreads friend Michael Jandrok says one should read Dandelion Wine, a meditation on summer, and summer's childhood's end, every September. Wicked is Bradbury's Halloween book, to be read maybe every October.

There is something special about a book when I keep thinking about it and how it just makes me smile! So, I am upgrading my rating from 4 to 5 stars! It's definitely worth it! What was so magical about the summer when you were 12? Ray Bradbury has given us a magical story about the imagination of a young boy captivated by the marvel and wonder of the first day of summer. This is the summer when Douglas Spaulding realizes he is alive and all he wants to do this summer is to feel all there is to feel.

It is summer and a time for a 12 year old boy to be free and independent and test boundaries and find magic. Douglas pretends as most 12 year olds will do and through this imagination he is able to turn the ordinary, everyday things into magic!

When morning comes, Douglas manipulates the stars and the lights of all the houses to turn on with a swish of his hands. He is the magician in control of waking up the town and turning on the day. Douglas, conducting an orchestra, pointed to the eastern sky.

The world, like a great iris of an even more gigantic eye, which has also just opened and stretched out to encompass everything, stared back at him. The first one, and the most important, is picking the dandelions and then making the wine with grandpa. Dandelion Wine. And now that Douglas knew, he really knew he was alive, and moved turning through the world to touch and see it all, it was only right and proper that some of his new knowledge, some of this special vintage day would be sealed away for opening on a January day with snow falling fast and the sun unseen for weeks or months and perhaps some of the miracle by then forgotten and in need of renewal.

Since this was going to be a summer of unguessed wonders, he wanted it all salvaged and leveled so that any time he wished, he might tiptoe down in this dank twilight and reach up his fingertips. And there, row upon row, with the soft gleam of flowers opened at morning, with the light of this June sun glowing through a faint skin of dust, would stand the dandelion wine.

Hold summer in your hand, pour summer in a glass, a tiny glass of course, the smallest sip for children; change the season in your veins by raising glass to lip and tilting summer in. Dandelion wine represents the power of memory and nostalgia - it is a way for the boys to have something physical to preserve the memories they will make all summer.

They are meant to savor each memory. It is a world that is inhabited by the pure joy and thrill of boys Douglas and his brother Tom, 10 and how they experience circumstances that are important to them in the summer of He does not simply give us a straightforward story about a wonderfully nostalgic summer.

Concepts such as thinking that old people were never really young, that a happiness machine would make life better, and that people let you down are hard to learn. There is also a darker side he explores that will cause Douglas to wonder about the stability of life and that nothing stays the same forever, people grow up and life will come to an end.

My favorite stories were about grandma and great grandma. Seen through the eyes of Douglas, grandma was a wonder woman. She was a woman with a broom or a dustpan or a washrag or a mixing spoon in her hand. You saw her cutting piecrust in the morning, humming to it, or you saw her setting out the baked pies at noon or taking them in, cool, at dusk.

She glided through the halls as steadily as a vacuum machine, seeking, finding, putting to rights. Shelves: recommendations , , 4-star , He started jotting down his "discoveries and revelations" in a notepad so that he won't forget about them. We through him met extraordinary people of this small town. A man adamant on making a Happiness Machine, an old woman who thought that she had met her lover from her past life, going away of a dear friend, last ride on the trolley, and magic it was the summer of , way before Radio or TV were part of our life.

A man adamant on making a Happiness Machine, an old woman who thought that she had met her lover from her past life, going away of a dear friend, last ride on the trolley, and magical kitchen and many more stories.

Each story was unique in its own way and was connected to other stories. I fell in love with how beautifully and smoothly he mixed these simple stories with magic. If a day ever comes when the patisseries of the world draw back their prized pastries and sweets, and replace them with old and new copies of Dandelion Wine, I would be the first one, surely, to grab hold of the person next to me and aver in my most jubilant voice that Yes, I did see it coming.

Nobody else but me in the whole wide world. Twelve-year-old Douglas Spaulding snaps his finger before a slowly waking Green Town, and thus begins the summer of A summer of surprises, of mysteries, of If a day ever comes when the patisseries of the world draw back their prized pastries and sweets, and replace them with old and new copies of Dandelion Wine, I would be the first one, surely, to grab hold of the person next to me and aver in my most jubilant voice that Yes, I did see it coming.

A summer of surprises, of mysteries, of adventures, of love, and of death. A summer not to be forgotten, but to be relished. A summer to be bottled and put away, safe. Oft, reclining on the bed, after several bouts of breathing in the fragrance from the heart of the book and wool-gathering, I would pull out the bookmark and open the page on which I fell asleep the previous night, and I would wait. A reminder to bottle them, to put them away safely.

And then one day, when you feel like it, you can climb down the stairs and walk into the dark cellar, and dip a finger into the bottle, and taste them once again. Jun 23, Jen - The Tolkien Gal rated it it was amazing. It was a wonderfully colourful read - one that had a surging presence that sucked me into childhoods past and whet my appetite for the summer to come. Just like these crisp and fresh summers of a long gone childhood, I may not remember all that happened, but I certainly remember how wonderful and infinite I felt reading this.

And dandelions and devil grass are better! Because they bend you over and turn you away from all the people in the town for a little while and sweat you and get you down where you remember you got a nose again. Gardening is the handiest excuse for being a philosopher. Nobody guesses, nobody accuses, nobody knows, but there you are, Plato in the peonies, Socrates force-growing his own hemlock.

A man toting a sack of blood manure across his lawn is kin to Atlas letting the world spin easy on his shoulder. Only now does the title resonate so warmly with me. Courtesy of Jen's mini review View all 4 comments. The sun began to rise. He folded his arms and smiled a magician's smile. Yes, sir, he thought, everyone jumps, everyone runs when I yell. It'll be a fine season. He gave the town a last snap of his fingers.

Doors slammed open; people stepped out. Summer began. Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine is a masterpiece, and one of the most emotionally evocative books I've ever had the pleasure of reading. Told through a series of vignettes, the su Douglas, conducting an orchestra, pointed to the eastern sky. Told through a series of vignettes, the summer of is magically unfurled for the reader by this truly inimitable author.

Bradbury is an absolute nostalgia machine: for summers gone by, for the enchantment, innocence, and boundless adventure of childhood, for experiences we've all had at one time or another Things we remember. About who we once were. About who we are.

The characters in this book are top-notch, and unforgettable. The young Douglas and Tom Spaulding Douglas is the main protagonist in this book , rocketing from one crazy adventure to another. Colonel Freeleigh, the human time machine. Leo Auffmann, the town jeweler who strives to build a "Happiness Machine".

Grandpa Spaulding and his lawn, which he likes just the way it is. Jonas, the junkman. Even The Lonely One, the mysterious serial killer who haunts the town, provoking religiously-locked house doors and early curfews for the town's children. Dandelion Wine is a quintessential summer book, and in my opinion Bradbury's greatest achievement in this book is his powerful portrayal of the cyclic nature of summer, and, perhaps, of life itself?

True, last summer is gone now. Its grasses have turned from vibrant green to dull brown. Its sounds have been silenced. That work, Dandelion Wine, and Something Wicked This Way Comes which does not have the same characters but is set in the same town and is similar thematically are referred to as the Green Town Trilogy. The work has been adapted for a radio show and the stage; it was slated to be made into a film but this has not yet happened. In , the Apollo 15 astronauts named a moon crater after Dandelion Wine.

The Question and Answer section for Dandelion Wine is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel. Grandfather tells Douglas and Tom that the dandelions are ready, and the two boys joyfully begin to scoop them up. These flowers will be dandelion wine, magical words on the tongue. These beautiful summer days will be sealed away in bottles and