Something Wicked This Way Comes

A couple of weeks ago I was meandering in the bookstore when I overheard two middle-aged (but older than I) women talking to each other. One said, "He also wrote Fahrenheit 451. Here's The Martian Chronicles. By today's standard it would seem overwritten, but it's really quite beautiful."

Anyway, I bough Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury because I recently heard it recommended. It's kind of slow. The prose is ... old fashioned, a bit languid and laying it on a bit thick. "Overwritten," as the woman put it so accurately, and a bit too sentimental. Funny how he makes the typical middle-American small town life seem so romantic. 

A little past the half-way point of the book, a description gave me an idea about shadows that kills people by drowning them in its darkness. But then I remembered that this idea has more or less been taken up by GRRM. Damn you! (waving my useless fist in the air :)