Check out our Most Anticipated Books for 2025

Book Summary and Reviews of A Pleasure to Burn by Ray Bradbury

A Pleasure to Burn by Ray Bradbury

A Pleasure to Burn

by Ray Bradbury

  • Critics' Consensus:
  • Published:
  • Mar 2010, 304 pages
  • Rate this book

  • Buy This Book

About this book

Book Summary

Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 is one of the undisputed classics of modern science fiction. Its title has become part of our common language. Its portrait of an increasingly soulless society in which books and ideas are anathema has become part of our cultural heritage.

A Pleasure to Burn is the ideal companion to Bradbury s great novel. Edited by Bradbury authority Donn Albright, this generous volume gathers 16 vintage stories and novellas. Some of the stories, such as "The Pedestrian" and "Pillars of Fire," will be familiar to the author's long-time fans. Others, such as "The Bonfire" and "The Reincarnate," are more obscure. The true heart of the collection are the long novellas "Long after Midnight" (which has only appeared once in an expensive limited edition) and the 25,000-word tale, "The Fireman," the immediate precursor to the final, full-length novel. These independent, brilliantly original tales are a significant publishing event.

Together, these stories chart the evolution of the images, ideas, and social concerns that found their purest, most potent expression in Fahrenheit 451. A Pleasure to Burn is at once surprising, illuminating, and hugely entertaining. Intended equally for scholars, aficionados, and casual readers, it is both an invaluable Bradbury sourcebook and a unique, intimate glimpse into the mysteries of the creative process.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. An essential addition to the bookshelf of every Bradbury fan, the collection is also accessible to curious readers with a taste for the dark, the strange, and the macabre." - Publishers Weekly Pick of the Week

"An indispensable companion to Bradbury’s most celebrated novel." - Booklist

This information about A Pleasure to Burn was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Author Information

Ray Bradbury Author Biography

Ray Bradbury, American novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, screenwriter and poet, was born August 22, 1920 in Waukegan, Illinois. He graduated from a Los Angeles high school in 1938. Although his formal education ended there, he became a "student of life," selling newspapers on L.A. street corners from 1938 to 1942, spending his nights in the public library and his days at the typewriter. He became a full-time writer in 1943, and contributed numerous short stories to periodicals before publishing a collection of them, Dark Carnival, in 1947.

His reputation as a writer of courage and vision was established with the publication of The Martian Chronicles in 1950, which describes the first attempts of Earth people to conquer and colonize Mars, and the unintended consequences. ...

... Full Biography
Link to Ray Bradbury's Website

Other books by Ray Bradbury at BookBrowse
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

More Recommendations

Readers Also Browsed . . .

more fantasy, sci-fi, speculative, alt. history...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: The Message
    The Message
    by Ta-Nehisi Coates
    It does not surprise me that Ta-Nehisi Coates' The Message is one of the most important books I've ...
  • Book Jacket
    The House of Doors
    by Tan Twan Eng
    Every July, I take on the overly ambitious goal of reading all of the novels chosen as longlist ...
  • Book Jacket: The Puzzle Box
    The Puzzle Box
    by Danielle Trussoni
    During the tumultuous last days of the Tokugawa shogunate, a 17-year-old emperor known as Meiji ...
  • Book Jacket
    Something, Not Nothing
    by Sarah Leavitt
    In 2020, after a lifetime of struggling with increasingly ill health, Sarah Leavitt's partner, ...

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Pony Confidential
    by Christina Lynch

    In this whimsical mystery, a grumpy pony must clear his beloved human's name from a murder accusation.

Who Said...

Censorship, like charity, should begin at home: but unlike charity, it should end there.

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

X M T S

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.