Bradbury to Talk at Library

Friday will be a big night for The Friends of the Glendale Library. After working quietly for 18 months to organize the library support group, members will go public at last.

Their first event will be an evening with a celebrity author who promises to be only partly out in left field.

“I’m the whole baseball team,” the speaker exclaimed, attempting to define his topic. “Left field, home base and shortstop.”

No. The subject won’t be baseball. That’s just science fiction writer Ray Bradbury’s way of saying that he’ll probably cover a lot of ground.

As he usually does, the author of “The Martian Chronicles” and “Fahrenheit 451” will talk about . . . just about everything that has to do with books.

“I raised myself in the Los Angeles library public room,” Bradbury said. “By the time I was 28, I’d read my way through most of the rooms.”

He’s been doing similar talks for eight or nine years, he said. “It’s a heck of a lot of fun. People show up because they’re lovers of libraries and books.”

The Friends of the Glendale Public Library formed in the summer of 1990. Christine Vasquez said that she and a handful of other volunteers decided that the library needed a friends group. Sue Curzon, director of the Glendale Library, consented.

“We spent the first eight or nine months setting up the bylaws,” said Vasquez, group president. “Once it started to go, it snowballed.”

In planning their premiere, members thought that “it seemed most appropriate for an author to come,” Vasquez said. “And Ray Bradbury’s name kept coming up.”

The program is free. Bradbury’s books will be available for sale, with profits benefiting the library. He will sign books both before and after his talk, and he said he hopes the sale will raise about $1,000.

“An Evening With Ray Bradbury” will take place at the Glendale Central Library, 222 E. Harvard St., at 6:45 p.m. Friday. A social hour will begin at 6 p.m. Several restaurants will provide refreshments.