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"The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us."
I'm surprised this book wasn't required reading while I was in high school, a hiatus in my curriculum which is probably the reason why I got to this party so late. You all know what this book is about, even I knew what it was about before reading it, so I'll skip immediately to my ponderings while I was reading this book. Have a look at the perfectly innocent picture below, of a sunny day in the park:
It's difficult to claim this book is a dystopia and not part of current reality. As Beatty, the Fire Captain and main antagonist, states: there is no need to burn books if people are generally not paying attention to them anyway, being distracted by artificial surroundings that are specifically designed to that end. Just look at the image I took yesterday in the park and try to find a book in the scenery. You won't find a single one. You might think some people are carrying an e-reader but you're wrong. What you're seeing is people having gathered around a Pokemon hotspot, trying to capture cartoon creatures in a cartoon world, eating cartoon candies and fighting cartoon fights.
Before you think I'm being condescending, let me clearly state that I'm not immune. I had installed that same game on my phone as well, breeding eggs and hunting electro-mice and pyro-salamanders. But the immensely sad image of the people gathered around a lifeless fountain that almost gave up on gushing altogether for nobody is watching it anyway, combined with the timely reading of this book made me reconsider that particular life-choice. Books aren't burnt up, but the time that could be spent reading them is, through inane distractions that lure the mind to slide ever downward. To my great alarm it seems that more often than not the mind is very willing to let that happen.
Luckily there is a garden of Eden, in which communities such as Goodreads can thrive. In that sense this community is very reminiscent of the one living in the wilderness outside of the cold city described in this book. A community of people who value talking about the meaning of things rather than just the things, to try and catch glimpses of the bigger picture, to patch up the universe as referred to in the quote that opened this review. Will this garden of Eden ever grow out of its protective wall and become an unstoppable jungle taking over all minds and hearts? I doubt it. It will always be more subtle. But I also believe it will never be destroyed.
In case you were wondering why I didn't rate this book more highly despite its timeless and important message, the reason is aptly illustrated by the following excerpt:
"And what lights the sun? Its own fire. And the sun goes on, day after day, burning and burning. The sun and time. The sun and time burning. Burning. The river bobbled him along gently. Burning. The sun and every clock on the earth. It all came together and became a single thing in his mind. After a long time of floating on the land and a short time of floating in the river he knew why he must never burn again in his life. The sun burned every day. It burned Time. The world rushed in a circle and turned on its axis and time was busy burning the years and the people anyway, without any help from him. So if he burnt things with the firemen, and the sun burnt Time, that meant everything burned!
Bradbury's "powerful and poetic prose" annoyed me greatly. To see pages filled with paragraphs that have the same word in them at every beginning, middle and ending of a sentence was too much to take at times. I have an allergy to repetitions, no matter how great their artistic potential, and this book contained many of them. I can see how this can create a certain melodious, dreamy effect, but it didn't fit with the predominantly cold theme (despite all the burning) of the book and most certainly did not with my brainwaves. The saddest part is that there are some beautiful ideas in there. I liked the image of "time burning away" so much I used it in this very review. But it got strangled by too much of the author's self-indulgence. Whenever Bradbury burst out in another one of his songs I found myself wishing he'd just get to the point already, seeing my wish fulfilled only two tedious pages later. This for me brought down the book a great deal, for it broke immersion and created a stand-off between myself, who instinctively resisted being swept away by what felt like experimental word play, and an author who could not resist employing it.
Two big, shining stars for idea and vision, but three have been burnt up and spent while the author was busy weaving webs of words that found this reader frustrated, entangled in those webs almost every page of the way.
This review can be read in conjunction with Alex' review, with which I share many points, particularly regarding to character development, minus the severe conclusion.
I'm surprised this book wasn't required reading while I was in high school, a hiatus in my curriculum which is probably the reason why I got to this party so late. You all know what this book is about, even I knew what it was about before reading it, so I'll skip immediately to my ponderings while I was reading this book. Have a look at the perfectly innocent picture below, of a sunny day in the park:
It's difficult to claim this book is a dystopia and not part of current reality. As Beatty, the Fire Captain and main antagonist, states: there is no need to burn books if people are generally not paying attention to them anyway, being distracted by artificial surroundings that are specifically designed to that end. Just look at the image I took yesterday in the park and try to find a book in the scenery. You won't find a single one. You might think some people are carrying an e-reader but you're wrong. What you're seeing is people having gathered around a Pokemon hotspot, trying to capture cartoon creatures in a cartoon world, eating cartoon candies and fighting cartoon fights.
Before you think I'm being condescending, let me clearly state that I'm not immune. I had installed that same game on my phone as well, breeding eggs and hunting electro-mice and pyro-salamanders. But the immensely sad image of the people gathered around a lifeless fountain that almost gave up on gushing altogether for nobody is watching it anyway, combined with the timely reading of this book made me reconsider that particular life-choice. Books aren't burnt up, but the time that could be spent reading them is, through inane distractions that lure the mind to slide ever downward. To my great alarm it seems that more often than not the mind is very willing to let that happen.
Luckily there is a garden of Eden, in which communities such as Goodreads can thrive. In that sense this community is very reminiscent of the one living in the wilderness outside of the cold city described in this book. A community of people who value talking about the meaning of things rather than just the things, to try and catch glimpses of the bigger picture, to patch up the universe as referred to in the quote that opened this review. Will this garden of Eden ever grow out of its protective wall and become an unstoppable jungle taking over all minds and hearts? I doubt it. It will always be more subtle. But I also believe it will never be destroyed.
In case you were wondering why I didn't rate this book more highly despite its timeless and important message, the reason is aptly illustrated by the following excerpt:
"And what lights the sun? Its own fire. And the sun goes on, day after day, burning and burning. The sun and time. The sun and time burning. Burning. The river bobbled him along gently. Burning. The sun and every clock on the earth. It all came together and became a single thing in his mind. After a long time of floating on the land and a short time of floating in the river he knew why he must never burn again in his life. The sun burned every day. It burned Time. The world rushed in a circle and turned on its axis and time was busy burning the years and the people anyway, without any help from him. So if he burnt things with the firemen, and the sun burnt Time, that meant everything burned!
Bradbury's "powerful and poetic prose" annoyed me greatly. To see pages filled with paragraphs that have the same word in them at every beginning, middle and ending of a sentence was too much to take at times. I have an allergy to repetitions, no matter how great their artistic potential, and this book contained many of them. I can see how this can create a certain melodious, dreamy effect, but it didn't fit with the predominantly cold theme (despite all the burning) of the book and most certainly did not with my brainwaves. The saddest part is that there are some beautiful ideas in there. I liked the image of "time burning away" so much I used it in this very review. But it got strangled by too much of the author's self-indulgence. Whenever Bradbury burst out in another one of his songs I found myself wishing he'd just get to the point already, seeing my wish fulfilled only two tedious pages later. This for me brought down the book a great deal, for it broke immersion and created a stand-off between myself, who instinctively resisted being swept away by what felt like experimental word play, and an author who could not resist employing it.
Two big, shining stars for idea and vision, but three have been burnt up and spent while the author was busy weaving webs of words that found this reader frustrated, entangled in those webs almost every page of the way.
This review can be read in conjunction with Alex' review, with which I share many points, particularly regarding to character development, minus the severe conclusion.
