Summer is Magic: Forever Summer · 1:55am Sep 24th, 2014
I didn't read this in time to promote it when it could have gotten into the featured box, but...
Forever Summer by Cold in Gardez
I shouldn't have to promote this story. It's by CiG. It's adorable. Rumor says reading it will stave off the cold winds of October for at least another week. It's a look at summer through the eyes of the CMC, who tackle it with an old-school pagan combination of enthusiasm and seriousness. If you liked Dandelion Wine, you should like this.
And it's only got 500 views. Featured Box, you have failed us again.
(In fairness to Bradbury, Dandelion Wine has a few recurrent themes woven into its episodes, about life and death, and what's important in life, which contribute to its strength as a novel. It's too soon to tell whether Forever Summer will have a strong thematic angle.)
Another belated recommendation: Spring is Dumb by HoofBitingActionOverload. This one was in the featured box, but it turns out it was good anyway. It's cute and humorous RariDash.
In other news, I have 998 watchers. Just click the "Follow" button now, and you could become my 1000th watcher and win FAME and FORTUNE!
...oh, wait, you're already following me, aren't you? Never mind. You're useless. 
I could have sworn Forever Summer hit the feature box. I read it, enjoyed it... Oops, forgot to give it a thumbs up. There, fixed it. All nice and green, just like summer grass. Ah, to be a kid again.
It was in the Feature Box yesterday evening (or was it Sunday?), at least third from the bottom, even with Mature turned on. Far too short a time.
CiG is pretty consistently amazing, and while I haven't read Forever Summer yet, I'm looking forward to it.
And Spring is Dumb was just plain fun.
Nice recommendations, Bad Horse. You may be bad (and a horse), but at least you're taste is good (and possibly also a horse, I'm not clear on that point).
If I unfollow you and then refollow you, will that help your viewer count, or is the counter strictly one pony one vote?
Maybe I could create a couple of alt accounts for the express purpose of following you enough times to get you to the 1k followers mark.
Sure, it defeats the purpose, but I can use some FAME and FORTUNE. Right now all I've got is infamy and misfortune; both are less satisfying than they sound.
Incomplete stories are usually avoided, and this is no exception. People don't like to leave books open. I'm sure they'll check it out when it's through. I know I will.
I'll probably read this regardless, but now I'm having misgivings.
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What you do is: you unfollow him, then wait for it to hit 999, then re-follow him.
I DO like summer...
Excellent. More people telling the world about Spring Is Dumb.
Did you only just read it?
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It would be hilarious if everyone did that, and his follower count went from 998 to 0 as a result.
I would have loved Dandelion Wine if Bradbury hadn't shoehorned those two kids into every single one of those stories, even the ones they obviously didn't in belong at all.
Oh, and thanks!
I showed this blog post to a friend and got you bumped to 999. I recommend you keep it there to scare inverted numerologists.
It's not an incomplete story. It's a complete story in a planned anthology.
And yes, some of the more ornamental paragraphs do remind me of Bradbury.
As I was saying to--well, I think it was Cold in Gardez, at that--if you want to write lyrically, it's not enough to love language: language has to love you back.
He seems to have gotten to first base, at least. :-)
What if I unfollow you so that I can wait for the 999th person and then refollow? Does that count?
2481576
Crap, I was just about to suggest that. You beat me to it. >:[
2481576 As my drill sergeant used to say, "If you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin'."
2478861 I don't know what you mean about shoe-horning them in, but my problem with Dandelion Wine is that Bradbury loves to write about kids, but he writes about the Platonic Bradbury child. His adults are distinct characters; his children are all the same.
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Bradbury had a tendency to revise his short stories to include characters that didn't have any reason for being there just for the sake of connecting the stories together so he could publish them as pseudo-novels, and they usually ended up weaker for it. Been a while since I've read Dandelion Wine, but one of the most striking examples was that story about the young man and old woman falling in love. Bradbury edited it to include an introduction with the two kids that doesn't add anything at all to the story, and then the story forgets about them for its remainder, and then, if I remember correctly, they show up again at the very end to continue adding nothing of substance to what was otherwise a really strong story. There was also a great little horror story in there about a woman running home and locking herself inside only to find the murderer already in her home, which is then completely ruined in the next section by a little part with the kids explaining that it was all a big misunderstanding and everything turned out fine. Bradbury's short stories are awesome on their own. A lot of the revised collections are pretty so-so for this reason.
Are they? I always felt like Bradbury was writing the same character again and again, himself in different situations, in his novels at least. Maybe that doesn't apply as much to the short stories.
2499240 You're right about the young man/old woman story. He made use of the new ending for the horror story, though, which I think was worth more than the original story.
As to whether his adults are distinct--well, they may all be subsets of Ray Bradbury, but at least they're different subsets. The kids aren't even that.