Loosely based on the period in 1953 when Bradbury lived in Ireland and worked on the screenplay of “Moby Dick” for film director John Huston. A series of terrific set-pieces (such as, “The Terrible Conflagration Up at the Place,” “The Cold Wind and the Warm,” and “The Anthem Sprinters”) are strung together with accounts of the writer-narrator’s meetings with the director, and incidents of the latter’s casual cruelty and unreasonable demands. But the set-pieces, embedded in a 1992 volume, date from the mid-1970s and before, and one might have preferred a more direct, detailed portrait of Huston and Bradbury instead of this recycled collection. But if one has never read any Bradbury before, this is as good a place to start as any, particularly for its rich, entertaining portrait of Ireland and the Irish. Read by Jimmie A. Kepler.