Thank You Michael Bond! RIP

Thank you, Michael Bond. #PaddingtonBear pic.twitter.com/wDVOoReolF

— Flavia Fazenda (@FlaviaFazenda) June 28, 2017

Michael Bond at home in 2014. He said of Paddington Bear: ‘He’s never put down or deflated. He has the naivety of a child and the sophistication of an adult.’
Photograph Courtesy: Geoff Pugh/Rex/Shutterstock

Much more on Michael Bond and Paddington in The Guardian.

Bob Dylan 2016 Nobel Lecture in Literature

A treasure beyond belief.

Writer of Magic: Ray Bradbury Dies at 91

Ray Bradbury
Santa Monica, California 2009
Photo by Gregg Chadwick

The author Ray Bradbury died yesterday in Los Angeles. He was 91. Gerald Jonas in the New York Times describes Bradbury as "a master of science fiction whose lyrical evocations of the future reflected both the optimism and the anxieties of his own postwar America." After atomic weapons obliterated the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, fears that science had become more of a threat than a boon found their way into science fiction films and stories that depicted a dystopian future. Bradbury used the magic of stories to create literary works that used this threat as a source of tension in works that often left an impression of hope rather than horror.

For the book loving Bradbury, his novel Fahrenheit 451 - whose title refers to the temperature at which paper ignites - seems to be the most harrowing of his works. A future America that would burn books and thus control the river of ideas and imagination was a horror to be avoided at all costs. François Truffaut turned the book into a critically acclaimed film in 1966 which featured a moving film score by the composer Bernard Herrmann. When Herrmann asked Truffaut why he was chosen over more modernist composers to create music for the film, Truffaut replied,"They'll give me music of the twentieth century, but you'll give me music of the twenty first." Ray Bradbury gave us stories of the 21st century and beyond that will continue to inspire. 

Ray Bradbury
Santa Monica, California 2009
Photo by Gregg Chadwick

More at:

Ray Bradbury's Website