My friend, Jo, recently published her A-Z Bookish Survey Tag on Youtube and her selection for "important moment in my book reading life" was Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. This book had occupied quite a while on my TBR list so I decided to go ahead and read it based upons Jo's ecommendation.
Book: Fahrenheit 451
Author: Ray Bradbury
Published: 1953
Publisher: Del Rey Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group
Date Read: 6 October 2014
Format: eBook
Source: Scribd.
First Line: "It was a pleasure to burn."
Genre/Rating: Science Fiction (Dystopian) / 4 stars
GoodReads Rating: 3.94
Awards: Hugo Award for Best Novel, 1954; American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, 1954; Commonwealth Club of California Gold Medal, 1954; Prometheus Hall of Fame Award, 1984; National Book Award Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, 2000; and Best Novel Retro Hugo Award, 2004.
Other Books by Author: The Martian Chronicles (1950), Dandelion Wine (1957), Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962), The Halloween Tree (1972), Death is a Lonely Business (1985), A Graveyard for Lunatics (1990), Green Shadows, White Whale (1992), From the Dust Returned (2001), Let's All Kill Constance (2002), Farewell Summer (2006)
Review: Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 is a disturbing look at a dystopian future where books are outlawed by society and firemen exist to discover and destroy caches of banned books.
Guy Montag is one of these firemen and he takes great pleasure in executing his work but a happenstance meeting with Clarisse McClellan one evening gives him a mote of doubt which grows and grows until he questions his life's work.
This dystopian novel was very slow to start but soon became very engrossing and I found that I could not put it down. Published in 1953, the novel was a strong predictor for the ways of our society today. Not only does state-based censorship exist in the world, but mass media is marginalizing the reading of literature. Given the choice, would teens in our society today rather read Fahrenheit 451 or turn on the latest episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians?
SPOILER: One of the greatest parts of the narrative was toward the end of the novel when we learned that people existed outside of society who had committed books to memory in order to preserve the great works of the world. Montag, himself, was a receptacle for the Book of Ecclesiastes. Given our part in this dystopian world, what book would you commit to memory and why? I believe I would committ the Psalms to memory to preserve this great book of prayer for the world.
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