From 1953 to 2023 – oh, how times haven’t changed.

Seriously, did Ray Bradbury peer into a crystal ball while writing his dystopian classic, Fahrenheit 451? It sure seems like he did.

Because the world Bradbury foresaw back in 1953 is so eerily reminiscent of our world today. The book burning, the technology overload, the brainwashing and oppression of independent thought – it’s all very familiar.

There is much to unpack. I could spend days dissecting the themes, symbolism, and how the novel is a mirror image of today’s society, 70 years after it was written. But I won’t do it here, as no one really wants to read a lengthy dissertation on Goodreads. I’ll instead leave my thoughts swirling in my head and voice them to my husband. He will listen, nod, and smile.

I am so grateful to my dear friend, Terrie Robinson, for nudging me in the direction of the audiobook of Fahrenheit 451. Performed by the talented actor, Tim Robbins, his incredible narration creates a memorable listening experience.

Now off I go to unplug the TV and power down my devices. It's time to read a book.

"We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain & black loam." (111)

What outstanding prose--prophetic, which is by far the most rare and inspiring of attributes a work of literature can ever possess. & Ray "I Don't Talk Things, Sir. I Talk The Meaning Of Things" Bradbury is here at his absolute best. I cannot decide whether this or "Martian Chronicles" is my favorite... they are definitely my favorite of his, the best possible possibly in ANY sci-fi adventure.

This is "The Giver" for adults. Here, another example of overpraised books that shockingly do live up to the hype. It's a resplendent petition for life, beauty, & literature; an AMEN for The Book's very core of existence... THE BOOK that actually worships other BOOKS (like The Bible does with God). Personal events and not the battlefields of Tolkien-sized scope (I mean small occurrences such as breakdowns, unpleasant jobs, below-par relationships...) tightens the razor-sharp string of terror; a severe lack of details is a tenacious and masterful way to portray this post-apocalyptic nightmare in the most disconcerting way. (If you're a lover of books, this seems like some Dantean form of poetic retribution!)

"451" is an example of when planets aligned just right and gave the writer a light for him to share. This, a writer's "capacity for collecting metaphors" is absolutely enthralling. I am wholly amazed!

A PLUS: read the edition with the 3 introductions by the inspiring Bradbury (there are 451 printings or so of this novel after all) & save a couple bucks in a creative writing class. His writing tips are genuinely far-out!

You can check out thousands of better reviews here and across the internet, but here is all you really need to know...

This is one of the best books ever written. This is one of my favorite books of all time. ALL TIME. This is the third time I've read it. I audiobooked it this time.

Every line of Fahrenheit 451 is beautifully written. Poetic. Metaphoric. Transcendent. Awesome. The beginning, middle, and ending... all amazing.

If you consider yourself a fan of science fiction or dystopian novels or classic literature or banned books or books high-schoolers read or thought-provoking books, and you have not read this book... wow... just stop whatever you are doing right now, which is reading this review, I guess...

Stop reading this review. Put down your laptop, your phone, your iPad, your mouse and keyboard, your floppy disk drive, your PlayStation 4, your Smart TV remote, whatever. Just stop. Grab your car keys, hop on a bus, walk... run to your nearest bookstore. Dash frantically through the aisles, locate the fiction section, maybe science fiction. Maybe just ask someone who works there. Find a copy of this book. It's written by Ray Bradbury, but my God, if you don't know that by now...

Demand a copy of this book from the bookstore, happily open up your purse or wallet and pay whatever price they make you pay for a copy of this book. Don't ask any questions. Don't have them put it in a bag for you. Don't get a copy of your receipt. Just hand over the money and get the hell out of there. Dump all of your spare change you've collected onto the counter. Tap into your 401k if you need to.

Rush home and instantly sit down in your easy chair or whatever it is you like to sit, lay, or stand on while reading. The bathtub perhaps. A recliner. A porch swing. It really doesn't matter. Pour a glass of wine or grab a beer. Pour a glass of wine AND grab a beer. Take two shots of whiskey then pour a glass of wine and grab THREE beers.

Then, in one sitting just plow the hell right through this book. Just breathe it all in like the cool, salty ocean air. Let it sink down deep into the depths of who you are as a person living as a human being in the world right here on Earth. Let it just smack you right in the mouth with how awesome it is. Let it punch you right in the jaw with how mind-blowing it is. Let it leave you lying on the floor with your mouth wide open trying to figure out what in God's name just happened to you. Let it elevate itself high above pretty much every other book you've ever read, maybe all the way to the top of that damned prestigious mountain, and let it hoist its flag into the soil of your mind and proclaim to every other book ever written that it is king of literature. Other books can bow down and bring burnt offerings to it. It shall reign forevermore.

Don't wait to get it from the library. Don't even think about ordering it on Amazon, and I don't even give a damn if you have Prime and woohoo look at me I can get it shipped in two days. One day shipping if I pay a few bucks! No. Run. Get a physical copy of the book. Don't settle for reading text on your Kindle or whatever it is you digitize books into. Get up now. I don't care if it's late and the bookstore is closed. Go wait outside like it's Black Freaking Friday. I don't care if you're the only one out there all night. Are you a reader or not? Do you care about books? How have you not read this yet? What's the matter with you? Why are you still reading this? Why haven't you left yet? God...

I love Fahrenheit 451. And I love you enough to demand that you read it. Reread it. Yes! This is wonderful! This is going to be one of the best days of your life. Maybe the best day of your life! Are you ready? Can you handle it?

Have fun.

Venía con expectativas bajas y resultó todo un éxito para mí, porque el libro dejó mucho que desear en algunos aspectos y en otros no tanto.

En realidad es un 2.5

Farenheit 451 es una distopía donde la sociedad estadounidense del futuro ha prohibido los libros y el gobierno tiene de su parte a los bomberos; quiénes en vez de apagar incendios los provocan, pero dirigido única y exclusivamente a la quema de libros. La trama suena interesante y a día de hoy comprendo perfectamente que el libro tiene un valor literario indudable. Es bastante visionario en algunos ámbitos y resulta triste en cierto modo que algunos de los temas propuestos puedan verse reflejados en nuestro día a día.

Lo que me gustó: las temáticas.

Esto es lo único que yo puedo salvar dentro de mi lectura. Es lo poco que me ha gustado y que subyace como múltiples mensajes entre las líneas, ya que el futuro propuesto está lleno de detalles que nutren y dan diversidad.

El concepto de la quema de libros y la censura en general para impedir ideas revolucionarias en contra a la norma regida; la curiosidad en el protagonista por aquellos objetos que contienen letras en su interior y el porqué se destruyen, una clara referencia al ser humano como alguien dispuesto a saber más y obtener conocimientos. Así mismo el porqué hay personas que se niegan a dejar perder sus libros considerando muy valioso el contenido de ellos. El gobierno como un ente opresor y de máxima autoridad con habitantes sometidos y acorralados; la eliminación total del libre pensamiento, e incluso las conversaciones entre vecinos, amigos y/o familiares; donde se sustituye el pensar y la comunicación con los demás por una clase de vida donde prima el consumismo y la desconexión lo que permite la idiotización de las personas a través de la industria de las comunicaciones, que bombardean continuamente con información manipulada. La felicidad y las relaciones como algo desechable.

En fin, muchos mensajes por extraer. Y hacia el final es sublime el clímax que te entrega otro último mensaje; la reflexión que se da sobre la importancia de un libro y su contenido a nivel histórico como algo que perdura y marca la humanidad, sin la necesidad de estar escrito sobre el papel.

Lo que no me gustó: el aspecto narrativo.

Esto es esencialmente para mí el punto flojo. Lo primero que me cruzó por la mente una vez llegué al final es que es demasiado corta para mi gusto, sentí que no hubo el desarrollo adecuado del personaje mismo; quien tiene una catarsis emocional demasiado rápida para la trama. Los sucesos van pasando uno tras otro a una velocidad alarmante y la capacidad mía como lector, de empatizar con Montag (personaje principal) fue nula; al igual que con los demás personajes que van apareciendo.

Esto me lleva a confirmar otra cosa, que la narración es caótica a veces. La mente del protagonista es un enjambre de pensamientos y frases que a veces se hacen difíciles de comprender. Pero sobre todo me hizo darme cuenta de que la atmósfera del libro no me transmitió nada ni los mismos personajes se me hicieron humanos o atractivos. Las situaciones y los problemas por los que pasaban me producían gran indiferencia.

Subjetivamente valoro demasiado que un libro me transmita algo y logre generarme emociones, cosa que este no logró en ningún momento. Ni con la prosa, ni con la atmósfera, ni con los diálogos, ni con los personajes. Con nada. Hay frases muy bonitas y bastantes figuras literarias para adornar la narración. Bonitas y con mensajes intrínsecos, pero lastimosamente nada más.

“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..

Its 4:27 in the morning, an infusion of grey darkness and elusive daylight can be seen yonder my room window as I lay awake exhausted of the little sleep I had, I feel the dull pain in head and the numbness beneath, and I know I’ve read something very sad. I connect with the characters I meet and the words I read at the extent of being them, I am the books I read and they aren’t very pleasant. There is deep loneliness in this book, the lonely of heart and the lonely of mind. It becomes unbearably sad, and even for a shortest while, I want this besieging loneliness to wane, the strength of Bradbury's vision leaves this future etched in our minds long after the book is finished.
This is the story of a world where books are outlawed and if found are burnt by firemen, where wall to wall telescreens numb the minds and give a phony sense of pleasure and heightened delight, where people talk about nothing at all that is life, where relationships are completely empty of emotion and the systemic stifling of minds is overpowering everything, where if you were spotted with a book down your coat will be vaporized then and there, where people have all kind of amusement save words and scent of a book, and true sadness is, they’re not bothered at all. That is the world where one dark night fireman Montag overwhelmed by the power of unknown, steals a book from the home he burns along with the woman who refuses to leave!
"You weren't there, you didn't see! There must be something in books, things we can't imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don't stay for nothing."

And the curiosity to know the unknown, brings the fire in his own home, as Montag bathes the house with kerosene we can’t help but love him even more, bewildered and betrayed Montag runs with a book down his chest, the book he knows nothing of, the book he knows not how to read, the book he stole with the sheer purpose of knowledge and nothing more, now all he has in the world is the book he holds, and he runs, as far as his trembling legs let him, this is the most powerful and achingly visual scene ever written with such deft and heart the reader is left exasperated too as he reaches the shore.
“That's the good part of dying; when you've nothing to lose, you run any risk you want.”

We never come to know why we are living until we realize what we’d die for, everyone must leave something behind when he dies, a child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there. I am little concerned about the thematic debate that aroused about this tale, as censorship is the tongue tip one and much referred by later events or the technophobia of Ray, as he mentions TV, radio being the sources to kill thinking minds and putting them in a sham happiness, It’s well understood as the time book was written TV was so fascinating a thing who talked to you and showed you the world while you being on your sofa,yet,Ray could’ve been mindful books are always read by a little community out of whole population, there are bad books and there are good TV shows, so the book falls short in this prophetic clumsiness.
What the whole tale stores for us is importance of books in our lives and what we hold dear in the face of adversity, as choices make who we are, and what will our coming ones be!!
“With school turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the word 'intellectual,' of course, became the swear word it deserved to be.

Edit for 2021 reread: It just gets better every time I read it!

Original review: I haven't read this in many years, but I just taught it for the first time and oh! What a joy it was to teach! As a bibliophile, the idea of burning books makes my hair stand on end. I have considered, with great seriousness, what I would do in case of a fire in my home. How would I save my books? Which books would I save first? I would imagine these are questions that all of us on this site have asked ourselves at some point in time. To me, even more horrifying, more telling, is the fact that the entire problem with books in this dystopian society began not with the firebug firemen but with the wholesale rejection of books by the general populace. THAT was the root of the problem, the beginning of the end of the free dispersal of knowledge. That is so much more horrible to me than the firemen because I don't see arsonist firemen lighting up people's personal libraries in our world today--but I do see the continual moving away from books by our young people. Censorship is still a concern today, but the overall social rejection of it has greatly diminished its use. Recently a school district banned Huck Finn and it made national news and the district was roundly condemned.

Sure, we still have bookworms in school, but there are way more of the kids who never pick up a book voluntarily--EVER--than we do of the readers. Having to pick up a book would mean having to put down their phones, and that is intolerable. I so enjoyed watching the students' lightbulb moment: the moment that they realized that the character in the book they most closely resemble is poor old Mildred. And they did realize it. Their obsession with their phones rivals Mildred's for her parlor walls and in many cases, surpasses it. At least Mildred left her walls to go to bed. I'm pretty sure many of these kids sleep with their phones cradled against their cheeks so they can feel the vibrations of incoming texts, tweets, and snapchats even in their dreams. I think the rehabilitation centers for phone addictions are a certainty in our future.

Back to the book! The prose is hauntingly beautiful, the imagery so vivid that it needs to be read slowly and savored. So many technologies that did not exist when Bradbury wrote this book later turned out to be real that it is mind-blowing. Giant screen tvs, interactive and touch screens, earbuds, robot dogs, and many more.

The book's message is even more on-point today than it was in Bradbury's time. Although he feared the effect of tv on people's acquisition of knowledge, people were much more apt to read in his time than they are now. I worry about the replacement of technology for reading. I am also concerned about the scientific evidence that points to the way phone use is affecting the wiring of young people's brains--they are unable to focus on one thing at a time. They are too accustomed to that constantly shifting screen in front of them to focus for a sustained period of time on any one thing.

What's frightening to contemplate is Bradbury's eerie accuracy in his predictions. If he was right about so many things in this book, how much more of his story is going to come true? How much more of it will we LET come true?

“A book is a loaded gun.” – Ray Bradbury

“We need to make books cool again. If you go home with somebody, and they don’t have books, don’t fuck ‘em!” – John Waters


This is going to be a review/rant and there might be spoilers.

One day, I was at the hair salon getting my mop splattered in bright pink hair dye. I can’t wear headphones with all that colored goop on my head, so obviously, I always bring a book and try to ignore the (usually) loud and (often) inane conversations I overhear as I wait for the color to set. Alas, hair salons are rarely temples of highbrow philosophy. I think I was reading an Atwood novel on that particular evening, when I overheard one of the hairdressers talking to her client. She was saying something like: “I can’t see the point of reading. I mean, if I have some free time, I don’t want to have to think, you know?”. As luck would have it, my hairdresser chose that moment to offer me a gin and tonic. I asked for a double, and homicide was averted (we often fault alcohol for the bad behavior it can result in; I say give it more credit for all the times it helped some people avoid beating an idiot to a pulp with a hairdryer).

I don’t know that other hairdresser well enough to pass judgment, but those words made me tense up and clench my hands into fists. To me, her words meant: “Why think when you can be satisfied by entertainment? Why think when (unreliable) media give you pre-chewed (potentially erroneous) information on important topics? Why think when someone else might do it for you?” I bet she’d have been fine in Bradbury’s imaginary near-future America. Content. Or too stupefied with vacuous entertainment to bother thinking about it…

I am not the first person to read this book and to look around only to find that we are living more and more in Bradbury’s nightmare, glued to screens at all times, neglectful of true human relationships, disconnected from our minds and our imagination. He was afraid of the media being controlled by the government, of people caring more about being entertained than about being informed, of humans being so disconnected from each other - even from those closest to them - that seeing someone suffer before their eyes made them feel nothing.

Guy Montag is a fireman, but not the kind we know. Books having long been banned by the government, owning them is now a criminal act, and Guy’s squad’s job is to set fire to the possessions of those who are found owning books. He meets a teenage girl named Clarisse, who seems strange to Guy at first: she doesn’t care to watch the parlor wall, the enormous television screen most people are hopelessly addicted to, preferring to be outside, thinking and talking about things that he had never thought about himself. A few days after meeting Clarisse, Guy is called upon to burn down an old woman’s house: rather than live to see her books being burnt, she sets herself on fire and dies as her home is being ransacked. In the confusion and chaos, Guy steals a book from that woman’s collection. And it turns out its not the first book he smuggled back home...

I originally read this book about ten years ago, and I had forgotten the way Bradbury perfectly illustrates the quiet desperation of Guy and Mildred’s dull life, notably through the casual attitude of the paramedics who rescue suicide attempts ten times a day. Clarisse does have a bit of the manic pixie dream girl thing going on, which is grating, but also charming because she represents a liveliness that is tragically absent from Guy’s hollow life. I had also forgotten how intriguing the ambiguous Captain Beatty is: a clearly very well-read man who has been indoctrinated by the powers that be... but has he? Would he have hunted Guy or was he trying to liberate him in a way he himself could never be? The final metaphor about how we come to embody the books we read and love is simply perfect.

If you are reading this, it’s safe to assume you love reading as much as I do. I’ve been told by someone that I fetishize books, and while they meant it as something weird, I have long embraced that fetish. Reading is definitely about the words; but I’d be lying if I told you I took no pleasure in the act of touching the pages, smelling the inimitable perfume of ink and binding glue, running my fingers along the spines of the books on my shelves and admiring those shelves the way I would a lovely painting or artwork. They are objects of infinite beauty, filled with knowledge, memories, wonder, unknown worlds and ideas to explore and beautiful language to swirl around in one’s mind, like good wine in a glass. No image horrifies me quite as much as the thought of burning books.

I have the 60th anniversary edition, with a brilliant introduction by Neil Gaiman, and plenty of essays at the end about the context in which the book was written and the many reasons it is still a relevant and significant work; all this additional material is quite worth the time to explore, especially Bradbury's own essay about why he wrote science-fiction and the coda to "Fahrenheit 451".

A lyrical and chilling book. No, it’s probably not Bradbury’s best book (though it remains my favorite for sentimental reasons). No, paper doesn’t actually burn at 451 degrees Fahrenheit. Yes, the characters are underdeveloped. Yes, it is occasionally didactic, the pacing is sometimes rushed and Bradbury wasn’t super good at predicting some aspects of the future (sci-fi is a thought experiment, not meteorology). But it is an important reminder that we are still lucky to have the freedom to read and to think – and that it can be taken away if we don’t use that freedom. It makes me proud to be that weird girl, sitting in a corner of the break room with her book. A must-read, in the same league as “1984” and “Brave New World”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZG38V...

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Reading “Fahrenheit 451”, I was reminded of a very strange play by Amélie Nothomb titled “Human Rites” (“Les Combustibles” in the original French - which makes a lot more sense), where she takes a similar idea and spins it on its head: set in a cold country under siege (Eastern Europe is implied), a small cast of characters have burned everything they own to keep warm, and eventually, the only combustibles they have left are their books. In such a situation, which book would you refrain from burning, and possibly sacrifice your comfort and life for? The play is far from perfect (probably one of her weakest works, honestly), but it is an interesting exercise of thought, as it can be interpreted to be about many things: the importance of culture and literature, certainly, but also their price – on many levels. In the play, the more books are burnt, the more animalistic and inhuman the characters get. As the symbols of their culture and civilization vanishes in the flames, so does civilized behavior...

In Ray Bradbury's creepy classic, Montag is your typical modern fireman , burning books for a living with his dedicated gang. None of that old -fashioned putting out fires, he and a hose full of kerosene and just a little old match, does the trick. Sets books a blazing, it's more fun too! Besides no one reads anymore and the warm inferno, towering high into the sky, makes a pretty picture, lighting the cold, dark night . Father was a fireman, so was his grandfather, the family business, you can call it, Montag didn't really have a choice, tradition must continue. Coming back from a good evening's work, the fire setter, pardon...the savior of the world (keeping bad ideas from spreading to the gullible public, they need protection). He discovers his unhappy wife took too many sleeping pills again . An accident she later claims , maybe even believes. After getting her stomach pumped, Mildred is as good as new, poor Guy, on the long road of life's journey, every step seems in the wrong direction. Mildred is addicted to wall to wall television, (so are her friends) the fantasy world negates somewhat the pain and emptiness . Happy shows of course, no others will penetrate the dreams of the ladies, reality is not fun . Yet doubts come when a nearly 17 -year- old curious girl, a next door neighbor, starts asking Guy Montag, many uncomfortable questions, Clarisse McClellan admits she's crazy. In the firehouse, Montag spends most of his time playing cards with the fellows, strangely in the future, no women are employed in that noble profession. But plenty of cigarette smoking, they are real firemen . Captain Beatty starts getting suspicious of Montag, the mechanical pet dog, also, it likes killing rats, the four legged kind I mean, and hates our great hero. War is in the air , jet bombers are flying around the skies in circles, atomic bombs threaten to rain down and annihilate the so- called civilization . Not to worry; get back to the TV walls, people and forget. Clarisse mysterious disappears, one ordinary day, she's here, then .... gone...Finally the forbidden fruit's temptation, becomes quite unbearable , and Montag arriving in a house full of illegal , but strangely attractive books, takes a sample. Big horrendous mistake, worse, the owner, an old woman, refuses to leave her place and goes literally up in flames with her beloved "friends". Everyone says it was a shame , but her own fault; no tears should be shed. Afterwards an incident occurs and Guy has to flee for his own life, the relentless mechanical dog is on the hunt. The petrified Montag jumps into the cold river and peacefully, gently floats down the beautiful stream. Getting out soon after , he sees a fire above, with a group of "Hobos" near the water . Is that a flash in the sky ? This warning of a maybe world, in the years to come , is still relevant today , though so much time has passed. SCIENCE FICTION makes for an interesting atmosphere, anything is possible and Bradbury's poetic words dazzle the mind.

This book made me realize I have not taken advantage of the gift that is public libraries. So much information and knowledge at our fingertips for free in an age where everything is behind a paywall

I’ve been thinking about how interesting it is that at some point in time, maybe when I finally was out of school at 21, maybe 8 months ago, I don’t know, I had a complete change of opinion on the importance of reading. from a young student just trying to score well on a test using short term memorization alone, to adult me trying to drink up and permanently store the heart and essence of books like Fahrenheit 451 in my brain forever. I didn’t take this type of reading seriously in Lit classes and never stopped to question why certain books had been hand selected for us to read and study. Never too late to start reading critically, as long as you start

My favorite lines from the Exiled Professor Granger: “You’re not important. You’re not anything. Someday the load we carry with us may help someone. But even when we had the books on hand a long time ago, we didn’t use what we got out of them…we’re going to meet a lot of lonely people soon, and when they ask us what we’re doing, you can say: We’re remembering.”

and also: “stuff your eyes with wonder. Live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. it’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.”

“The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.”

I also loved (and grimaced at) the completely accurate prediction on Bradbury’s behalf of a mindless consumerist society incapable of saving itself from looming nuclear annihilation. “Whirl man’s mind around so fast under the pumping hands of publishers, exploiters, broadcasters that the centrifuge flings off all unnecessary, time-wasting thought!” I have to delete tiktok and instagram FREEE MEEEEEEEE

First published in 1953, ‘Fahrenheit 451’ continues to inspire new generations of readers through the simple premise that the pursuit of knowledge and natural curiosity are so tightly bound together that to detach the two is humanly impossible.

This is an unsettling book for, like all great science fiction, the world which Montag and his contemporaries inhabit immediately conjures up Freud’s uncanny (both homely and strange), for we are already familiar with book-burnings, the suppression of knowledge, crowd control and government surveillance. Yet amid this scenario, we recognise too those cunning literary references and quotations, the association of true freedom with nature and childhood and the ways in which the Darwinian theory of natural selection might play out in a less humane world than our own.

This is a work that is timeless, thought-provoking and radiant.

Q:
"It's fine work. Monday burn Millay, Wednesday Whitman, Friday Faulkner, burn 'em to ashes, then burn the ashes. That's our official slogan." (c)
Q:
"You laugh when I haven't been funny and you answer right off. You never stop to think what I've asked you."
"You are an odd one... Haven't you any respect?"(c)
Q:
She didn't want to know how a thing was done, but why. That can be embarrassing. You ask Why to a lot of things and you wind up very unhappy indeed, if you keep at it. The poor girl's better off dead.
(c)
Q:
"You think too many things," ...
"I rarely watch the 'parlor walls' or go to races or Fun Parks. So I've lots of time for crazy thoughts, I guess. " (c)
Q:
"Is it true that long ago firemen put fires out instead of going to start them?"
"No. Houses. have always been fireproof, take my word for it." (c)
Q:
"I've been an idiot all the way."
"We're used to that. (c)
A re-re-re-read. The waify Clarisse McClellan and the fiery Guy Montag. Neither had any chance.

The way I read this book 1st time (a long, long time ago, when the Pterodactyls were still flying around and the sea teemed with unnamed creatures), it felt like a story about wasteful people living in wasteful times: burning books, what an idiocy! Have they got nothing better to do with their time?

Another thought: ok, in this world of idiots, it's the firemen who burn stuff. Ok. Who fights fire then? Or have they extinguished all usage of fire, all lightning strikes, etc, along with their sanity? Did they fireproof their trees and grasses as well? And what's wrong with their plastic? The one that they fire-proof their houses with? In my experience it burns fine and deadly.

Two atomic wars? Winners? How come that they still have some clean air/water/etc? Whoa? Which planet did they have those wars on?

The charactes of dreamy qualities felt like just an afterthought but a grandiose one. They were so obviously cut off from their contemporaries, of which only the most brazen 'delinquents' could be their intellectual equals. Hmm, that's a bad situation for any MC to be in. Even for the library-cious one. Not just in some dystopia but for any book.

Another really quirky thing here is memory. Compare the wife's almost total lack of focus and memory and 'bums on the outside, libraries inside' abd who way things like this: '... now we've got the method down to where we can recall anything that's been read once. ... We are also Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.' Well, all the best luck to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They are going to need all of it and more in this hot new world.

Dreamy stuff:
Q:
The air seemed charged with a special calm as if someone had waited there, quietly, and only a moment before he came, simply turned to a shadow and let him through. (c)
Q:
Her dress was white and it whispered. (c)
Q:
I'm seventeen and I'm crazy. My uncle says the two always go together. When people ask your age, he said, always say seventeen and insane (c) Uhhh. What if you never stop being those?
Q:
It was not the hysterical light of electricity but-what? But the strangely comfortable and rare and gently flattering light of the candle. (c)
Q:
How like a mirror, too, her face.
Impossible; for how many people did you know that refracted your own light to you? (c)
Q:
What incredible power of identification the girl had; she was like the eager watcher of a marionette show, anticipating each flicker of an eyelid, each gesture of his hand, each flick of a finger, the moment before it began. (c)
Q:
"What are you up to now?"
"I'm still crazy. The rain feels good. I love to walk in it."
"I don't think I'd like that," he said.
"You might if you tried."
"I never have."
She licked her lips. "Rain even tastes good."
"What do you do, go around trying everything once?" he asked.
"Sometimes twice." (c)
Q:
"I've got to go to see my psychiatrist now. They make me go. I made up things to say. I don't know what he thinks of me. He says I'm a regular onion! I keep him busy peeling away the layers."...
"The psychiatrist wants to know why I go out and hike around in the forests and watch the birds and collect butterflies. I'll show you my collection some day."
"Good."
"They want to know what I do with all my time. I tell them that sometimes I just sit and think. But I won't tell them what. I've got them running. And sometimes, I tell them, I like to put my head back, like this, and let the rain fall into my mouth. It tastes just like wine. Have you ever tried it?" (c)
Q:
My uncle drove slowly on a highway once. He drove forty miles an hour and they jailed him for two days.
...
"What's going on?" Montag had rarely seen that many house lights.
"Oh, just my mother and father and uncle sitting around, talking. It's like being a pedestrian, only rarer. My uncle was arrested another time-did I tell you?-for being a pedestrian. Oh, we're most peculiar." (c)
Q:
I'm anti-social, they say. I don't mix. It's so strange. I'm very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn't it? Social to me means talking about things like this." She rattled some chestnuts that had fallen off the tree in the front yard. "Or talking about how strange the world is. Being with people is nice. But I don't think it's social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you? An hour of TV class, an hour of basketball or baseball or running, another hour of transcription history or painting pictures, and more sports, but do you know, we
never ask questions, or at least most don't; they just run the answers at you, bing, bing, bing, and us sitting there for four more hours of filmteacher. That's not social to me at all. ... I haven't any friends. That's supposed to prove I'm abnormal. But everyone I know is either shouting or dancing around like wild or beating up one another. (c)
Q:
I like to watch people. Sometimes I ride the subway all day and look at them and listen to them. I just want to figure out who they are and what they want and where they're going. (c)

This would have been a very unpopular idea today. Most likely RB would've been forbidden to publish or gotten ostracised:
Q:
"Now let's take up the minorities in our civilization, shall we? Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don't step on the toes of the dog-lovers, the cat-lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All the minor minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did. ...
You must understand that our civilization is so vast that we can't have our minorities upset and stirred. ...
Colored people don't like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don't feel good about Uncle Tom's Cabin. Burn it. Someone's written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Bum the book. Serenity, Montag. Peace, Montag. Take your fight outside. Better yet, into the incinerator. Funerals are unhappy and pagan? Eliminate them, too." (c)
Q:
Luckily, queer ones like her don't happen, often. We know how to nip most of them in the bud, early. You can't build a house without nails and wood. If you don't want a house built, hide the nails and wood. If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. ...
Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. ... Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. ... Don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. (c)

RB called out consumerism long before it became the new black:
Q:
If we had a fourth wall, why it'd be just like this room wasn't ours at all, but all kinds of exotic people's rooms. We could do without a few things." (c)

RB called out the all-over simplification as the driver of the intellectual decline. Again, long before his time:
Q:
Out of the nursery into the college and back to the nursery; there's your intellectual pattern for the past five centuries or more." (c)
Q:
"School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. Life is immediate, the job counts, pleasure lies all about after work. Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting nuts and bolts?" (c)

Lovely ideas:
Q:
It was a pleasure to burn.
It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. (c)
Q:
If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you'll never learn. (c)
Q:
There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing. (c)
Q:
"What more easily explained and natural? With school turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the word `intellectual,' of course, became the swear word it deserved to be. You always dread the unfamiliar. Surely you remember the boy in your own school class who was exceptionally 'bright,' did most of the reciting and answering while the others sat like so many
leaden idols, hating him. And wasn't it this bright boy you selected for beatings and tortures after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in
the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man's mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well read man? (c)
Q:
They walked the rest of the way in silence, hers thoughtful, his a kind of clenching and uncomfortable silence in which he shot her accusing glances. (c)
Q:
"It doesn't think anything we don't want it to think."
"That's sad... because all we put into it is hunting and finding and killing. What a shame if that's all it can ever know."' (c)
Q:
... that's the wonderful thing about man; he never gets so discouraged or disgusted that he gives up doing it all over again, because he knows very well it is important and worth the doing. (c)
Q:
So long as the vast population doesn't wander about quoting the Magna Charta and the Constitution, it's all right. (c)
Q:
Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there. (c)
Q:
'Stuff your eyes with wonder, ...live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away. To hell with that,' he said, 'shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ass.'" (c)