We'll Always Have Paris: Stories

Written by Ray Bradbury

Narrated by Jesse Bernstein, Mark Bramhall, Marc Cashman and Kirsten Potter

From the winner of the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters comes a brand new, never before published collection of short stories

Following the success of his recent collections, The Cat’s Pajamas and One More for the Road, Ray Bradbury has once again pulled together a stellar group of stories sure to delight readers of all ages. We’ll Always Have Paris is a treasure trove of Bradbury gems—eerie and strange, nostalgic and bittersweet, searching and speculative—all of which have never before been published. A brilliant addition to the master’s oeuvre, this wonderfully entertaining and imaginative collection is a joyous celebration of the lifelong work of a literary legend.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperAudio
• Release date: Jul 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9780063041530

Ray Bradbury

In a career spanning more than seventy years, Ray Bradbury inspired generations of readers to dream, think, and create. A prolific author of hundreds of short stories and close to fifty books, as well as numerous poems, essays, operas, plays, and screenplays, Bradbury was one of the most celebrated writers of our time. His groundbreaking works include Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Dandelion Wine, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. An Emmy Award winner for his teleplay The Halloween Tree and an Academy Award nominee, he was the recipient of the 2000 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the 2004 National Medal of Arts, and the 2007 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation, among many honors.

Reviews for We'll Always Have Paris

[ronrose1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Of course we will always have Ray Bradbury! As long as children run to the sound of the carousel, and the circus parade; as long as dandelions still grow in our front lawns; as long as the call of the train or bright trails of rockets reach out to us across the miles, Ray will be with us. Whether, as in this collection of never before published stories, we walk the streets of Venice, Ca., or the rues de Paris, or discover the true nature of man's best friend or the truth in young love, we we can be sure that Ray's view of the ordinary will be just a bit extraordinary.

[ashryan_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Yet another excellent collection of stories from Ray Bradbury...several great ones, many good, only a couple of really weak ones and none that I would call bad (with the possible exception of "Pater Caninus"). From "The Reincarnate", about a man who rises from the grave and tries to pick up where he left off with his beloved ("Love depends on more than thought...because thought itself is built upon the senses"), to "A Literary Encounter" about a couple whose relationship reflects whatever he happens to be reading at the moment, these stories are brimming over with Bradbury's characteristic feeling and charm.But my favorite story here, and now one of my all-time favorites, is "Un-pillow Talk". It opens with a couple who've just made passionate love, but we soon learn that they've just been friends up to this point and now worry that this will ruin the really great friendship they've had. So the story mainly consists of them sort of retracing their relationship, trying to talk themselves back to where they were before they made this terrible mistake. The ending is so sweet and absolutely perfect and left me feeling good for days.I just picked this collection up from the public library, but I enjoyed it so much that I'm going to have to add it to my own personal library!

[burnit99 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A collection of short stories by the Master, these harken in style back to his earlier days of effortless whimsical fantasy. There is a nursing home dog who makes the rounds of those soon to die, listening patiently as they pour out their last thoughts as if he were human and had a collar. There is an elderly couple who convince themselves to break out of their fossilized routine, realizing by day's end that lifelong routines have their little points. Particularly touching are "Pieta Summer", a perhaps autobiographical story in which a boy suddenly realizes the true breadth of his father's love, "If Paths Must Cross Again", in which a new couple about to be separated by duty and World War II discover that their paths crossed years ago in their childhood town, and "A Literary Encounter", in which a couple who have been patterning their lives by the classics they read, re-discover their love by going back to writers who valued the true and fine in life, including an old favorite of mine, William Saroyan. I suspect that Ray Bradbury and I have read and loved many of the same books.

[figre · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This book makes me sad. It has all the style of Bradbury that we have all come to expect. The quiet moments. The perfect sentimentalism. The microcosmic snapshots of life with “things” going on around them. It comes so close to that Bradbury magic. Yet, the stories are all missing something. It is almost as if someone is imitating Bradbury – using his style to tell stories that don’t really matter.And that gets to the problem. The stories, once the reader is done, just don’t matter. There is not a single one that sticks in the mind, that haunts the reader, that brings the reader to a new place. I, literally, look through the table of contents after reading the book and struggle to remember what a single one of the stories is about.All the style; none of the substance. And now I desperately need to go back and re-read the older collections to remember how Bradbury, at his best, could do so much with the short story.

[rbeffa_2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

One of Bradbury's final books, released in 2009. This is a broad collection of subjects, primarily mainstream in my opinion, and the flyleaf says it is a new collection of never-before-published stories. In his brief introduction Bradbury states,after discussing the first story: "The other stories, one by one, came to me throughout my life - from a very young age through my middle and later years. Every one of them has been a passion."I got the feeling from that intro that these stories were probably ones put away in a file after writing, that maybe weren't his best and didn't have a place to go. Like songwriters and musicians, though, sometimes really good songs were born between albums, or didn't fit with the style of others, and slipped away until collected at a later date. I was hoping to find some of the "hidden gem" stories in this collection that might be like that. There are a couple of good stories in here. However, for the most part many of these stories are rather mediocre and unmemorable, bits of fluff. Let's call them lesser tales from the master. Some needed more polish, some were never fleshed out, and some others just aren't remarkable. A few I disliked or wondered why they had been written. One story, "Arrival and Departure" was also in "Summer Morning, Summer Night," published at about the same time.There is one story in here that is nominally science fiction. Two rockets go to Mars. That is all the science fiction in the story. What the story is really about is explorers far from home. Overall this was weak and disappointing and barely an "OK."

[danajean_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Some nice solid short stories in this collection from Ray Bradbury. I liked some more than others, but all were interesting and just very simply laid out. A quick read for sure. If you're a Bradbury fan to begin with, they will feel familiar and comfortable.

[bensdad00 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Short stories with a decided emphasis on love and relationships.