This isn't my favourite classic dystopian, but Bradbury was onto something with his cautionary tale, despite being published in 1953.

Sure, global literacy rates are at an all-time high, and we can access information at lightning speed. It's easy to argue that Bradbury's fears of information censorship seem outdated.

Yet, for me, his message transcends literal book burning—it makes me think about what's emphasised or suppressed in our media-saturated world, no matter the medium. We're bombarded with information. So what gets promoted or buried? I guess it’s not so far-fetched to think we live in a world where media manipulation can hide atrocities while everyone’s fixated on who wore the best dress at the Met Gala. (Zendaya, duh.)

Love it or hate it, it's a thought-provoker.

"FAHRENHEIT 451 - the temperature at which book paper catches fire and burns"

Guy Montag is a fireman who lives in an absolutely insane world where firemen burn books and the homes of anyone who have them. The story is set in a futuristic time when wars are the norm with use of atomic bombs and people are ruled by huge walls of television.

Ray Bradbury fan here....great read!

It’s easy to see why ‘Farenheit 451’ is a cult classic, beloved by the majority of bookworms. Oh, it validates us, doesn’t it? Here is a future world where books are banned, and look at this; it has gone to the dogs. The saddest of all post-apocalyptic worlds, the bleakest dystopia, what a nightmare – NO BOOKS!

The good are those who read, the bad are those who watch the TV. Yes, this is what we like to read to make us feel all warm inside. And because of that we are seemingly willing to forgive Bradbury for a lot of things: really poor world-building skills, lacklustre characterisation, inconsistencies.

Oh, and sexism. The women in the books are generally brainwashed bimbos, except of course for the wonder-child Clarisse from the beginning of the book, who is a representation of a very annoying archetype as well.

And you would think that, since the book is mostly an endless roll call of all the authors and books that need to be salvaged from the fire, at least ONE female author would get a mention. Nope. Zero. They can all burn for all that Bradbury cares. After all, the secret gang dedicated to preserving the world literary heritage is made up entirely of men. Now, this to me does look like a very sad world indeed.

Go and read Farenheit 451. It’s not a novel in its fully developed sense, more of an allegory, a hyperbole and Bradbury occasionally produces sentences of startling beauty. The problem with this book is the same problem there is with a world without books – it’s somewhat flat, somewhat numb.

مملة جداً و مكتوبة بطريقة صعبة و توهت وأنا بقراها..
الترجمة كمان من أسوأ ما يكون...لم تعجبني!

Reseña 20/03/18

Lee algunas líneas y te caes por el precipicio

Lo primero que sentí cuando leí Fahrenheit 451 fue dolor ¿Los libros pueden sentir dolor? Porque casi escuchaba gritos en las escenas donde los queman. Y ahí una no sabe si son los gritos propios o si de verdad los libros se quejan. Esta historia causa impresión por varias cuestiones, pero las principales se reducen a dos: la aniquilación del conocimiento y la estupidización de las masas. Suena curiosamente real, ¿no creen?

Estados Unidos, año incierto (el futuro, eso seguro). Los bomberos ya no apagan incendios, sino que los provocan cada vez que alguien da el alarma: cualquier libro que se encuentre debe reducirse a cenizas, junto con la casa. Montag es un bombero que viene sufriendo una crisis “profesional” que se profundiza cuando conoce a su vecina, Clarisse, que le genera dudas en las conversaciones.

Bradbury presenta las preocupaciones de la época, donde cada pequeño invento era un gran acontecimiento. Y de repente las personas se veían atraídas por una pantalla, por las emisiones de radio, las comunicaciones y por la inmediatez de las noticias. Ahora esto nos parece pan comido, pero en aquellos años debió haber sido tan asombroso como terrorífico. En la realidad de Montag, la familia aparece por televisión, hablando y chillando cosas sin sentido. No hay debates, los pocos libros que existen (o que se permiten) están ilustrados y cuentan historias vacías, las artes liberales están prohibidas. En cierto momento el vacío de los diálogos y la negligencia de las personas generan pánico intelectual. Y no sé hasta qué punto no se trata del eco de un pánico actual (lamento ser pesimista, pero lo soy).

Montag, casado con Mildred, no se cuestiona seriamente su labor como bombero hasta que conoce a Clarisse. Mildred y Clarisse forman un par que se pondrá en oposición todo el tiempo, mucho más en lo concerniente a la inteligencia, así que eso resulta interesante. Y hablando de mujeres, la falta de representación de las intelectuales femeninas levantó mis sospechas.  ¿No hay profesoras mujeres? ¿No hay viejas alumnas? ¿Las mujeres no leen, a excepción de la anciana? ¿Por qué son ellas (hablo de Mildred y de sus “amigas”) los ejemplos del consumismo y de la estupidez? Hay cosas que no deberían llamarme la atención sobre la ciencia ficción del siglo XX, pero nunca está de más plantearse la cuestión. Uno de los personajes más interesantes, además de las mujeres ya mencionadas, es Beatty, el capitán de los bomberos. Su perspectiva cínica (e, incluso, un tanto hipócrita) teje el mundo de Fahrenheit 451 con unos pocos diálogos. Redoblo la apuesta: las descripciones del narrador en tercera persona no me parecieron tan útiles para entender ese escenario como sí me pareció Beatty. De Montag no quiero hablar mucho: su personaje se comporta de manera irritante. Es un nervio expuesto (gracias por la idea, Bruce Banner), un inconformista que desea salir violentamente del molde.

El estilo de Bradbury me gusta porque, aunque utilice la tercera persona, se mete en la conciencia del personaje y extrae pensamientos (sí, aunque esté prohibido pensar). Eso acompaña a los momentos de crisis de Montag. Las frases cortas, paradójicamente, aceleran la lectura como si fuera alguno de los libros permitidos en la distopía. Sin embargo, eso no significa que carece de profundidad. Lo único que tengo para criticar con respecto a la escritura es el uso reiterado de algunas metáforas (no sé si es un error… yo lo tomaría como algo que no me gustó mucho y ya) y la vaguedad con la que se tratan ciertos temas políticos. El centro de la atención está en la opresión, por supuesto, pero me hubiera gustado saber más de ese mundo en guerra.

En definitiva, todo esto que leyeron (ojalá que se hayan concentrado) desemboca en un “lo recomiendo” rotundo. Si les gusta leer, si se ponen mal cuando ven un libro deshecho (en esta novela los queman, no hay nada para hacer…), si les asusta la calidad del entretenimiento y la educación y una infinidad de temas acordes al siglo XXI, esta es su distopía. No hay nada que pensar.

Reseña anterior

Excelente. Uno de los libros que voy a volver a leer muchas veces.

Reseña en Clásico desorden

Il fuoco arde sulla città.
Parole in cenere si dissolvono nel vento.
Triste barcolla l'uomo infranto.

Cosa rimane all'umanità privata della cultura?
Un guscio vuoto che difficilmente potrà essere colmato.
Senza certezze. Perduta, in cerca di se stessa.

Uno dei capisaldi del genere distopico.

--------------------------------------
Fire burns over the city.
Words in ashes dissolve in the wind.
Sad staggers the broken man.

What remains to humanity deprived of culture?
An empty shell that can hardly be filled.
Without certainties. Lost, looking for herself.

One of the cornerstones of the dystopian genre.

"Burn all, burn everything. Fire is bright and fire is clean." pg 57

Overall this was very thought-provoking. Ray Bradbury used colorful language and descriptive imagery to show a dystopia where books are outlawed. Books have become symbols of confusion, dissent, and full-face challenge to a newly established societal norm. The new norm was books are essentially evil: this included literature, poetry, history, and religious/philosophies texts to include the Holy Bible.

The main character, Guy Montag, was a disenchanted fireman unhappy with life, his job, and his marriage. In this dystopian future, firemen are constantly on mission to find out, destroy book by burning them, and removing society's crutch of knowledge and further confusion. As the story progressed, Guy was transformed from destroying books to becoming someone dedicated to preserving culture and knowledge found in books. His job and his new perspective came to collision as the story progressed.

I have seen this in every bookstore and until now, I was the only person in my social circle who had not read it. It wasn't my favorite book but it was pretty good. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in a dystopia where reading is outlawed (sounds like hell to me...). Thanks!

“Puede que los libros nos saquen un poco de esta oscuridad. Quizá eviten que cometamos los mismos condenados y disparatados errores”

Estamos ante una clásica distopía sobre los enormes peligros que tiene y provoca la falta de conocimiento, libertad y pensamiento libre.

En un futuro sombrío y muy perturbador, Montag forma parte de una brigada de bomberos cuya misión no es sofocar incendios, sino producirlos para quemar libros. Y es que en su mundo está prohibido leer, porque lo que se quiere suprimir es la capacidad de pensar. Una vez que Montag lo comprenda, alertado por una organización secreta dedicada a memorizar volúmenes enteros, sabrá que ha llegado el momento de elegir entre la obediencia y la rebeldía.

Estamos en un mundo alternativo que nos muestra un fuerte y realista mensaje, donde los libros y su lectura se han vuelto ilegales. Por lo tanto, poseerlos es una desobediencia al y una violación de la tiránica ley impuesta. Todos los libros hallados son quemados por un grupo especial de bomberos, irónico, que cazan a los lectores sin piedad. Cuando los encuentran, queman sus colecciones y los dejan morir. Seremos testigos de una escena que me marcó, sobre una mujer que se quema con su preciada y valiosa colección de libros y por elección propia, rechazando así someterse a la ignorancia y a la imposición de la ley y la tiranía contra la libertad.

La quema de los libros es una herramienta tan horrenda como efectiva para controlar de una manera tiránica a la población, que el mensaje de Fahrenheit 451 de Ray Bradbury es a su vez aterradoramente realista. Si se pudiera quitar la sabiduría de la sociedad, también se podría quitar su libertad. No deja de ser conocimiento. Algo tan importante.

Si se quemara el conocimiento, la población se quedaría en un estado completo de absoluta y triste ignorancia. Sin lugar para el pensamiento libre, se les podría contar cualquier cosa sobre la historia, la historia ya hoy día cuesta saber que es verdad y que no lo es. La historia es una mentira, es posible en muchos casos. La historia esta contada por los vencedores, también tiene su punto de verdad.

Estos bomberos no saben exactamente por qué lo hacen, no lo cuestionan, simplemente lo hacen sin vacilar, porque eso es lo que se les dice que hagan. No pueden entender además el porqué una persona pelearía hasta la muerte por unas palabras escritas en un papel.

Guy Montag forma parte de esos bomberos. Vive una vida mundana. Él es algo miserable. Realiza la quema de libros, como los demás, sin pensarlo dos veces hasta que un día una joven inocente cambia su vida para siempre. Ella es su vecina y es una lectora. Poco a poco van hablando y le hace preguntas le muestra puntos interesantes que le hacen dudar y darse cuenta de lo que ha sido su existencia.

Se consuela con una colección de libros que ha robado mientras trabajaba, un símbolo de que él y el mundo algún día podrían llegar a ser libres. El conocimiento que adquiere cambia su percepción del mundo para siempre. Se trata de una evolución en el personaje interesante.

Este clásico fue escrito por Ray Bradbury más o menos en el período de la guerra fría, cuando el terror de las armas nucleares con la trágica experiencia de la guerra mundial nos llevaron a preocupantes reflexiones sobre el futuro, este libro es un examen muy preciso y terrible de la aniquilación humana a través de un excesivo control de la sociedad. Y bueno, pleno siglo XXI a día de hoy, ya vemos lo que está sucediendo..

Una obra maestra, unas palabras atemporales y adaptables a cualquier época. Alimento para el pensamiento desde cualquier ángulo posible del que lo mires. Hoy en día podríamos reemplazar esa televisión y la radio, por las redes sociales.

Un futuro distópico que lleva tan al extremo el aplanamiento de la mente humana.

Lo que se conoce como ficción especulativa, no es nada efectiva para contarnos el futuro sino el presente. Toma un aspecto de la actualidad que nos preocupa o que nos parece peligroso y lo amplía extrapolando las consecuencias.

No pretende ser una predicción, sino más bien una advertencia..

so i have decided that this is the summer i read all the books i "should" have read by now—all the classics i have not gotten around to. this was, oddly, sparked by an asshole customer who said to alyssa "this is why small bookstores are better—no one in big bookstores knows anything about books." which is, of course, inaccurate and ridiculous—poor alyssa is a nineteen-year-old girl who has not read any philip roth, and wasn't able to recommend a title to the (fifty-year-old) man, but she's probably read more books than most people you will pass on the street today. (unless you live on bookland ave) and i, too, love small bookstores, but that is not the point. another thing that is not the point is that there are other people in the store besides the nineteen-year-old girl (who is really not the target audience for philip roth), and between tom and greg alone, every philip rothbook has been read by our staff. anyway, so i just started thinking about all the books i haven't read that are canonical (not philip roth—i've read four and that's plenty) but, say, fahrenheit 451. so—long review short, i read this yesterday. and it's pretty much what i expected. even if you haven't read it, you know what it is about. i think it makes some important points, but it won't be making my all-time-favorite list. still, i'm glad i read it. his afterword is very good—i think i may have liked it more than the novel itself. so.

come to my blog!

I don't even know what to say ... How did this become a classic? Fahrenheit 451 is about the worst book I have read this year, and that would be in comparison with books like Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol and Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Effect! No, wait, the latter would be the worst, but Fahrenheit comes very close.

I guess everyone knows the plot. A distant future in which books are banned and people who have them are considered criminals. Their houses are burned down, and fire'men' start fires instead of putting them out. The theme is fascinating and something I really would have wanted to see explored properly. Instead, this mess is what Bradbury saw fit to give us.

First, the plot doesn't make sense. Why have books been banned? Why are people not allowed to talk to each other? How did this world come to be? Clarisse makes Montag think, but if this is when he really comes out of his regime-induced haze, why has he hoarded books through the years? What was Mildred's suicide attempt all about? There are just random stuff happening because the author wants them to happen. There is no emotion in the narrative, no flow to the story, and absolutely no dimension to the characters. The writing is flowery and pretentious at times completely obscuring the message or the action. Without these unnecessary padding words, the story would be seriously done within 10 pages. The author could have used these words to instead create a more detailed world.

And I have to ask, what's with all these women? Why are they sitting at home in a FUTURISTIC society? Montag accuses Mrs Bowles of having had twelve abortions. TWELVE! What, in a futuristic society that has a programmed mechanical hound and endoscopes (and apparently safe abortions), they have not managed to invent that little thing called the pill? Or condoms? Seriously? The depiction of women in this supposedly futuristic era is simply ridiculous and stereotypical. Why aren't they out there setting fires to books or something? There is really no sense to this.

The biggest fallacy in the ridiculous plot is that there are some amazing inventions that this society has made. The aforementioned mechanical hound is one such thing. It can be fed with all kinds of information, including the smell of people, and it can be sent off to attack them. It's cool. And it happened because of science. Then there is the endoscope or whatever which clearly saves Mildred. Not to mention the highly technical seashell ear thimbles or the wall televisions. All science. So is the author trying to claim that people just kept science locked up in their heads and never put it down? How can people have learned to make these things without books in the first place? The entire story structure falls down here for me.

Another thing that was absurd was that of ALL the books that Montag might have chosen to have copied, he chose the Bible. Really? I rolled my eyes so hard that they almost rolled right out of my head. Wish they had, then I wouldn't have been able to read the rest of this crap. I've nothing against the Bible or those who read it, but really, not the book I would have thought required urgent copying when there are so many other more useful and enlightening books.

Despite the story being ridiculous, I might have considered it worth my time if I actually agreed with the author. But I don't. While I do agree that reading must be promoted, that's where Bradbury and I part ways. He considers mathematics unnecessary to be taught in schools. I disagree. That's silly. He doesn't think universities are important. I disagree. He seems to think that television is a terrible invention and makes people stupid. That's just ridiculous. There are bad books and good television shows. The worst part of Bradbury's ideas for me is that he seems to think that people who are not intellectuals and don't (or can't) read have nothing to contribute to society. That's pretty elitist and insulting. Sometimes, you don't need books to have common sense or knowledge about certain things. Also, not everyone can afford access to books, and not everyone is literate enough to enjoy reading, and not everyone has the time to read books!

In short, I'm not impressed at all. Bradbury is famously said to have written this book in nine days, and it shows. It really shows.

I am in 6th grade. My Language Arts teacher assigns us a book report; tells us we can choose the book but that our grade will be based on the maturity of the novel the report is based upon.

My mother and I are in K-mart. I've mentioned to her about this book report to be done, and so before we leave with a basket filled with clothes I know I will be embarrassed to wear, we stop by the rack of books. She selects a few pulp paperback titles, throws them into the cart.

A few days later she hands me Fahrenheit 451. "I've read those books I purchased," she says. "I think this is the best of the bunch. You should like it."

I am skeptical. When does a 12 year-old boy like anything that his mother does? I admit to myself that the cover looks really awesome - a black suited, menacing man shooting flames over something that looks like books. I give it a go.

Tearing through the pages, the chapters, the three sections, I finish it over a weekend and am in awe. A fireman that starts fires? Books are outlawed? I look at the small library that I've had since childhood; a shelf of about 30 books. They now look to my 12 year old eyes as books of a child. Fahrenheit 451 is the book that launched me from childhood, my first book dealing with the adult world.

I ask my mother to box up my old books and put them in the attic. I am proud to start a new library with this novel as my first edition. I carefully, lovingly, sign my name on the inside cover. Let the firemen come, I think, I am proud to be a book-reader.

n  n

I continue to read this book again and again through the years. I enroll in a college course at Penn State my freshman year, simply because this book is on the course materials. I memorized the entire poem Dover Beach because it is the selection Bradbury chose to have Montag read aloud to his wife and her friends. As the years roll by, and I age through my 20s and 30s, I noticed that fewer and fewer of the people I know read any books. Even my avid reading friends from childhood moved on to their careers, their marriages, their children. In the late 1990s a friend invited me to his house to show off a proud new purchase - a television screen the size of one of his walls. I mention how frightening this was, that he was basically mainlining Bradbury's foreshadowing. He handed me a beer and fired up Star Wars; told me to relax. I watched the movie and felt like a traitor.

The last time I read F451 was about 10 years ago - I think I was afraid that if I were to pick it up again that it would diminish in its importance to me - much like Catch-22 and The Sun Also Rises. But on this first day in May I have a day-trip to Socal for business and I bring this book with me. And I love it, all over again, as if reading it for the first time. Until Beloved came along, this was my favorite book. I remember why.

I joined Goodreads in 2009 with low expectations; I am not a social media person. But there was something I found here that reminded me of Montag's joining the campfire of fellow readers. We may all be from different walks of life from places all around the world, but we come here often and with excitement - because we love books. They are some of the most important things to us and our lives would be ruined without them.

So to you, my fellow Goodreaders, tonight I raise a glass to each of you, and I want to say thank you thank you thank you for making my life better, for exposing me to authors I would never have known, and for reminding me that although I'll never get to all of the books I want to read in this life, I can stand on the shoulders of you giants and witness more wonders of the written word.

Somehow, I have gotten through life as an English major, book geek, and a science-fiction nerd without ever having read this book. I vaguely remember picking it up in high-school and not getting very far with it. It was an interesting premise, but far too depressing for my tastes at the time.

Fast-forward 15 years later. I just bought a copy the other day to register at BookCrossing for their Banned Books Month release challenge. The ALA celebrates Banned Books Week in September, so one BXer challenged us to wild release books that had at one point or another been banned in this country during the entire month. Fahrenheit 451 fits the bill -- an irony that is not lost on anyone, I trust. (Everyone knows Fahrenheit 451 is about the evils of censorship and banning books, right? The title refers to the temperature at which paper burns.)

I didn't intend to start reading it. I really didn't. Somehow it seduced me into it. I glanced at the first page and before I knew it, it was 1:00 in the morning and I was halfway through with the thing. It's really good! No wonder it's a modern classic. Montag's inner emotional and moral journey from a character who burns books gleefully and with a smile on his face to someone who is willing to risk his career, his marriage, his house, and eventually his life for the sake of books is extremely compelling. That this man, product of a culture that devalues reading and values easy, thoughtless entertainments designed to deaden the mind and prevent serious thought, could come to find literature so essential that he would kill for it...! Something about that really spoke to me.

It raises the question: why? What is it about books, about poetry, about literature that is so essential to us? There is no doubt in my mind that it is essential, if not for all individuals (although I find it hard to imagine life without books, I know there are some people who don't read for pleasure, bizarre as that seems to me), then for society. Why should that be? Books don't contain any hard-and-fast answers to all of life's questions. They might contain great philosophical Truths, but only subjectively so -- there will always be someone who will argue and disagree with whatever someone else says. In fact, as Captain Beatty, the evil fire chief, points out, no two books agree with each other. What one says, another contradicts. So what, then, is their allure? What is it that made Mildred's silly friend start to weep when Montag read the poem "Dover Beach" aloud to her? Where does the power of literature come from?

I think the reason that books are so important to our lives and to the health of our society -- of any society -- is not because they give us answers, but because they make us ask the questions. Books -- good books, the books that stay with you for years after you read them, the books that change your view of the world or your way of thinking -- aren't easy. They aren't facile. They aren't about surface; they're about depth. They are, quite literally, thought-provoking. They require complexity of thought. They require effort on the part of the reader. You get out of a book what you put into the reading of it, and therefore books satisfy in a way that other types of entertainment do not.

And they aren't mass-produced. They are individual, unique, gloriously singular. They are each an island, much-needed refuges from an increasingly homogeneous culture.

I'm glad I read Fahrenheit 451, even if the ending was rather bleak. It challenged me and made me think, stimulated me intellectually. We could all do with a bit of intellectual stimulation now and then; it makes life much more fulfilling.