Books

Buy Bookends Made Out Of Ray Bradbury's House

by Crystal Paul

You can now have your books stand-up for the legacy of the late Ray Bradbury... literally. Pieces of Ray Bradbury’s house are now being sold as bookends. That’s right, the house of the famously weird and delightful author of Fahrenheit 451 has been recycled into home decor.

In case you missed the news a few months ago, let me break this to you carefully. These bookends are literally made from the wood that once was a part of what used to be Bradbury’s house... which means Ray Bradbury’s house has been demolished. The house was sold for $1.765 million to architect Thom Mayne back in June 2014, and demolition began this past January.

But before you get too too upset with Mayne, apparently the architect has plans to commemorate Bradbury with a wall in front of the house listing all of Bradbury’s works, and, according to Off Ramp, the idea to reuse parts of the house was actually Mayne’s idea. Even the Director of the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies Jonathan Eller has given the thumbs up to the project, and suggests that there will be more than Bradbury bookends to come out of the rubble.

“I wanted to thank you for the care you are taking with some of the 'bones' of the Bradbury home, which I understand will be reworked into wood projects in the future,” Eller wrote in a letter to Mayne, published by KCRW.

So, after you stop blubbering bummed bibliophile tears over the fact that Bradbury’s home of 50 years (and all of our literary feels) has been torn down, you can click on over to The ReUse People of America’s website and nab a piece of the literary hero’s home for $88 bucks, and cross your fingers that you didn’t just decorate your bookshelves with a piece from the bathroom.

According to the ReUse People’s website, each bookend is stamped with a “451 F” icon in honor of Bradbury’s best-known novel Fahrenheit 451 and comes with a letter from Bradbury’s daughter confirming the bookend’s authenticity. It might not be as awesome as getting to live in your favorite author’s former house filled with his own books, but it is a bite cheaper. But, you’ll have to hurry. There are only 451 sets of the bookends (how adorable of them).