A Sentimental Journey

I could probably spend years of my life thinking and writing about the stories of Ray Bradbury, it would be the masters program of my dreams, studying, understanding, and re-imagining, the genius of the man.  From one standpoint, it is so simple to see what he planned for each book, why he assembled and reassembled such stories in this collection and that collection, and the greater joy of enjoying yet again a favourite story, in a new setting, adding nuances that were not there before, just because he wanted you to feel some other way before you re-read something of his.
There is so much to think about after each story, there are messages here, important ones, that I think he hoped we would understand and that would somehow change the way we thought about life.
With age, he just kept on improving, getting richer, more mature.  This collection proved this repeatedly, as he and his characters took a sentimental journey, having written this just ten years before his death.   This was the first time (after reading this book in 2002), that I started to dread the inevitable, that at any time he would no longer be with us, so I began treasuring everything written after that, knowing that it might be his last book, always hoping for just one more story.