Ash Talks Books

Ray Bradbury is a literary giant. I read one of his short stories recently. This prompted me to go looking for his book of short stories that I'd picked up years ago, which was languishing unread in my home library. The book cover tells me he is the winner of the 2007 Pulitzer prize special citation, winner of the 2004 National medal of arts, and a couple of other literary honours. This collection of stories is called ' We'll always have Paris'. But this title story is not my favourite. This one is about two men. A married man who leaves his sleeping wife in the room and goes out for a walk, following another man who leads him through the streets of Paris only to kiss him goodbye. They don't understand each other's language. The way the story was told, I took this to mean he was gay and was checking if the married man was, too. But the married man who was charmed with this man decided he wasn't and went back to his sleeping wife, forgetting all about t...

'A little journey' by Ray Bradbury is a 9-minute read on the Juggernaut app and is available there for free. It is a classic short story about a bunch of old women who are 'invited' to go to a relaxing spa in Mars. Mrs Bellowes is one among these women who is lured into going since she wants to meet the Maker, but how does this journey turn out exactly? For that, read the story on the app . When I read this story, I was reminded of a competition I took part in middle school. A few of us were chosen to take part in a contest that talked about life on Mars. I got through stage one of the competition. But stage two, I think, involved writing a story about life on Mars and going to Bangalore to attend the finals or some such thing. My dad had bought a book on Mars to help me with some of the background research. Then again, when I was a freelance journalist in '99, I remember interviewing a Chennai boy in school who had been invited by NASA for a tour of their prem...