Let's Bust a Recap : Dandelion Wine

Is Ray Bradbury my favorite author now? That is the question I found myself asking as Dandelion Wine immediately became one of my All-Time Favorite Books while reading it this summer. A few years ago, I read my first Bradbury—Something Wicked This Way Comes—and while I wouldn't necessarily say it's an All-Time Favorite Book, it did contain one of my All-Time Favorite Literary Scenes. When Dandelion Wine fell out of the TBR Jar right at the beginning of summer, I once again found myself immersed in the perfect book at the perfect time, and I savored Ray Bradbury's 1957 novel slowly over July and August. 

I say "novel" but Dandelion Wine could also be accurately described as a series of short stories loosely connected by their summer setting and the Spaulding family. The book centers around Douglas Spaulding, age 12, in the summer of 1928 in his small hometown of Green Town, Illinois, and his exploration of and attempt to capture his own coming of age in his journal with the help of his younger brother Tom. Just as Douglas' grandfather's homemade dandelion wine in the book serves as a metaphor for all the distilled joys of summer, so Dandelion Wine the novel itself is nostalgia distilled. I fell in love with it from the very first words, and sipped it slowly all summer long. When I finished reading it, I immediately ordered The Martian Chronicles.

I don't have much else to say. After reading Something Wicked This Way Comes and now Dandelion Wine, I feel confident in saying that Bradbury is a master of evoking a sense of place and memory in his writing, and he somehow manages to spill the human heart onto the page. Even though I've never been a twelve year old boy, or lived any summers before 1987, or seen a small Illinois town; Dandelion Wine somehow took me straight back to my own childhood summers, running wild over my small Central Florida town with my brothers and all my best friends, and living as hard as I could before school started again in the fall. Dandelion Wine should be read outside—preferably on a front porch—and stretched to last as long as possible, just like we wanted to stretch those childhood summers out forever. 

Despite Dandelion Wine winning a spot on my All-Time Favorites list, I wouldn't recommend it to just anyone. That often is the case with my favorite books. I feel more protective of them, and don't want someone who won't appreciate it reading it. So if you pick this one up, don't come to me to do anything other than praise its beauty because you will not find a willing audience in me. Dandelion Wine is a treasure. 

What are some of your All-Time Favorite Books?

Also, I just have to include this fun fact: our main character in Dandelion Wine was Ray Bradbury's childhood version of himself and he named him after himself and his father, "Douglas" being Bradbury's middle name, and "Spaulding" being his dad's middle name. Just another reason to love this little gem of a novel.