I've stayed in houses that were in the country, and in England, but I'm still not sure that I've stayed in an English country house.
Lev GrossmanThatโs what death did, it treated you like a child, like everything you had ever thought and done and cared about was just a childโs game, to be crumpled up and thrown away when it was over. It didnโt matter. Death didnโt respect you. Death thought you were bullshit, and it wanted to make sure you knew it.
Lev GrossmanMore than fantasy or even science fiction, Ray Bradbury wrote horror, and like so many great horror writers he was himself utterly without fear, of anything. He wasn't afraid of looking uncool - he wasn't scared to openly love innocence, or to be optimistic, or to write sentimentally when he felt that way.
Lev GrossmanEvery year the literary press praises dozens if not hundreds of novels to the skies, asserting explicitly or implicitly that these books will probably not be suffering water damage in the basements of their authors' houses 20 years from now. But historically, anyway, that's not the way the novelistic ecology works.
Lev Grossman