Okay, so I wasn't sure about this one at all but it pulled me in from the first line to be honest and I'm glad to have read it and understood what messages it gave. It's not about just burning books and living a life where you are so damn busy to even think. It's so much more really.
It was an eye opener and it was something I knew-something we all know-but we don't really say it or even believe it.

We all live in this amazing world where we have so much to be grateful for, but we never are. We are so advanced in everything and yet we don't have time to appreciate a simple thing, a little beauty, some part of nature, or even ourselves. We are so damn absorbed in our activities that we don't even know why we're doing them. We don't have time for anyone and yet we have time for all the stupid stuff. We complain about everything and are thankful for nothing. We think only we know everything there is to know and yet we have no real knowledge of much. We think we're spending our time in the best possible way when we do know deep inside that we aren't. We do get time but we'd rather spend it doing something we are habitual to do than thinking whether we should be doing it at all. We have all the emotions and feels for the fictional world out there but we are stones when it comes to those who are close to us. Why is that? Why do we easily listen and respond to those who are virtually present than those who are right next to us? It's sad really, even pathetic.

Are You Happy?

Don't lie though-not even to yourself!

There is so much that could be said about this one, but I won't. I recommend you read it-and figure something out by yourself.

I wanna add something my friend Patty said about this:

"I think it’s hard for a book like this to have the impact it would have had in 1953. The world had just gone through WWII when Nazis did burn lots of books.

Since then, readers have had access to increasingly sophisticated science fiction, including my favourite old Twilight Zone. All the sci-fi movies, TV, and novels have made it harder to surprise or shock us.

His future of enormous TVs was predicted before much of the world had any TVs at all. Australia didn’t start TV broadcasting until 1956, I think!"

um what was this? boring. HORRIBLY difficult to read.

I get the idea of the books, and the author hates TV and all the techno stuff, but this could have been written more clearly. I was interested in the first part, like it made sense—Clarisse, Mildred, and Montag trying to figure out his whole life—but then, at 50% onwards, I was just sleep reading this.
The writing was so confusing at all times, full of metaphoric terms that could have many other meanings! The ending was disappointing, the climax was so quickly done, and the war and whoop! I reached the end.

*Sighs* Not a very good book to start for classics, but yeah, this was just boring.

________________________

uhuh.. yup, I also never saw this day coming.
me... reading a classic. ~surreal~

Believe me, I'm not the kind of guy who gushes over classics simply by virtue of the fact that they are classics, but this one was worth all the legend that it carries with it. I'm glad I never had to read this book in highschool. First of all, we would have ruined this truly awesome story by overanalyzing every mundane literary aspect, detail and device. Second, the story is SO much more profound in the year 2008 at the age of 30 than it could have been at 17 in 1995.

I always thought this was a book about the evils of government and how the folks in charge will try to restrict thought. After all, as the title of the book indicates, this is that story about "burning books." But Bradbury goes way deeper than some mere indictment of fascism. Taking place in the future, people of society have withdrawn from each other, focusing all their attention on mindless entertainment in the form of giant TV rooms and earphones. Books in this society are banned and "firemen" are put to work burning down the houses of anyone caught in possession of them. But as one character points out, government doesn't do anything that the people aren't already calling for and this assault on books is really just the natural byproduct of a society full of self-absorbed people who are pulling away more and more from any kind of thought deeper than what their television asks of them.

Reading this book in a year where reality TV, a thousand different video game consoles and half a billion mindless internet sites provide a good chunk of our mental stimulation, and where people routinely drown the world and everyone in it out via their iPod headphones, it's eerie just how prophetic this story is... considering it was released in the 1950's.

But this book isn't merely some kind of morality play. The story itself follows the transition of Guy Montag, from a book-leery, burn-happy "fireman" into a man who is on the run for not only possessing books, but killing a fellow fireman to protect them. There's action. There's intrigue. Ther's violence. There's character development. There's a story that you can actually follow and stay interested in. There's one particularly vivid and chilling description of a woman's final moment of life before a nuclear bomb goes off over her head. And yes, woven seamlessly into the exciting narrative are plenty of ideas to ponder regarding our direction as a society and the danger of never pursuing knowledge deeper than who got booted off 'Big Brother'.

"The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies."

That is a very unpleasant metaphor, and Fahrenheit 451 is an unpleasant book. It feels like it was written by a teenager, and if I were his teacher I'd give it a B- and not let my daughter date the weird little kid who wrote it.

Its protagonist, Montag, lacks any character; he changes as Bradbury's shitty story requires him to, from the dumbest kid in the world (his cousin once offered to pay him a dime to fill a sieve with sand and he sat there for ages crying and dumping sand into it - I understand that's a metaphor, but it's a metaphor for a dipshit) to a mastermind (telling Faber how to throw the Hound off his scent). You ever see film of someone skipping a pebble in reverse? Me neither, but I bet it's like this: plop plop skip skip wtf?

Each other character exists solely to advance the plot. There's the hot underage Manic Pixie Dream Girl - "her face fragile milk crystal" - who teaches him how to smell dandelions (and whose beauty is harped on endlessly) and then disappears off-stage; Faber, who's all of a sudden like best friends and then disappears off-stage; the bonfire circle of retired professors who happen to be right there when he stumbles out of a river looking for them.

There's his wife - "thin as a praying mantis from dieting, and her flesh like white bacon." He seems to loathe her, and all real women.

"Millie? Does the White Clown love you?"
No answer.
"Millie, does - " He licked his lips. "Does your 'family' [TV entertainment] love you, love you very much, love you with all their heart and soul, Millie?"
He felt her blinking slowly at the back of his neck. "Why'd you ask a silly question like that?"

There's a real conservative streak to this book. It looks backwards, as conservatives do. Bradbury blames his world's disgust with books on "minorities," what we nowadays call "special interest groups":

"Colored people don't like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don't feel good about Uncle Tom's Cabin. Burn it."

These are the only specific examples given during Captain Beatty's central speech about why literature has been banned.

There are some nice moments here. A disturbed and immature but intelligent kid flailing around will hit a few marks. The central idea? No, no props for that; book-burning was invented centuries ago. But the moment when the TV instructs all citizens to open their doors and look for Montag, that's nice. And the suicidal Captain Beatty is the book's only living character, although his speech is littered with what I swear are just random quotes. I even like the idea of a circle of book-readers, each responsible for remembering a certain book - but it's dealt with so lamely here. "We've invented ways for you to remember everything you've ever read, so it's no problem." Well, in that case I got like half the Canon, y'all can go home. Losers. Wouldn't it be cooler if these people had to work for it?

Point is, those little flashes of competence are so overwhelmed by terrible philosophy and so ill-sketched themselves that I have no idea how this book has escaped the bonfire of apathy, the worst and most blameless fire of all. It's just a lame, lame book.

I wouldn't burn this or any book. But I'll do worse: I'll forget all about it.

Muy buen libro. Ray Bradbury se ha ganado mi más completa admiración.

Las distopías son ficción, a nadie le gustaría vivir en ellas, pero ¿somos conscientes de que nuestra forma de vivir poco a poco se va pareciendo cada vez más a las historias relatadas en este tipo de libros? ¿Somos conscientes de que el frenetismo nos está arrebatando nuestra alma?

El mensaje de este libro me ha gustado mucho, y me parece bastante interesante tanto para analizar como para reflexionar. No se convierte en mi distopía favorita porque creo que ese lugar de privilegio lo seguirá manteniendo por mucho tiempo, Un mundo feliz de Aldoux Huxley; sin embargo, siento que las críticas que expresa el autor, hacia lo que él cree que está mal en el mundo, son mensajes muy valiosos que no deberían quedar en el olvido. No por nada este libro es tan nombrado, no por nada el autor es tan laureado, no por nada este libro después de 70 años sigue manteniéndose vigente.

Infelicidad, vigilancia extrema, mentes saturadas de información, falta de libertad de expresión, control total de una sociedad ignorante, tecnología, ciencia ficción, libros, incendios... estos y más temas son muy protagonistas en esta distopía, que recomiendo leer sí o sí. La prosa no es sencilla al inicio, pero solo un poco de concentración basta para capturar la esencia del mensaje que nos quiere transmitir el autor.

La calificación aun la estoy pensando, decidiré sobre ese tema cuando realice la reseña completa más adelante.

Review from Aug2012 when I listened to the audio version (d/l from local library) excellently read by Christopher Hurt:

From Wikipedia: "Bradbury has stated that the novel is not about censorship, but a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature, which leads to a perception of knowledge as being composed of factoids, partial information devoid of context." That's scarily familiar, isn't it?

I've read too much old SF to expect it to predict the future, but Bradbury did a better job than most.
- It has biometrics. Montag comes home & sticks his hand in the glove on his door & it recognizes him. Wow.
- Ear shells that constantly blast entertainment into his wife's head. iPod anyone?
- TV screens that cover the walls & inane programs that are more important than real life since they also allow user input. We're just seeing that today.
- Montag's run is eerily familiar to King's "The Running Man" & 'reality' TV.
- Short wars that no one understands a thing about.
- A presidential race decided on which candidate looked & sounded better.

Written in 1953 - really? Was he such a visionary or are such problems perennial? I think both.

I love Captain Beatty's explanation of how the society came to be. Everyone wants to be happy & they don't have time for real thought, so...
...If the Government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Peace, Montag. 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. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely `brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change. Don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy....

On the way home I was listening to this & one of the characters says that one of the best things about books is that you can shut them when you need to think, unlike the TV & advertising of the book's world. I got home & read some of Education of a Wandering Man by Louis L'Amour. The epigraph to one of the chapters I read was "A book is a friend that will do what no friend does - be silent when we wish to think." - Will Durant, the author of Story of Civilization
Kind of neat getting the same sentiment from two such different sources within an hour of each other.

The Afterword was perhaps the best part this time around. Bradbury explains that fire isn't the only way that books get burned, every minority is a fireman when they remove words or content that offends them & he'll have none of it. This edition of "Fahrenheit 451" is supposed to be the original, complete & uncut. He said that he had been shocked to find that previous editions had been edited down until 75 sections had been missing. He received letters in the same week complaining that he was prejudiced for/against the same group in this book.

He points to an anthology that contains 400 short stories by famous authors. How did they all fit into one volume? Because they were edited until every author's writing resembled the others. They were stripped of anything that made them unique. Very scary.

There have been many remakes of this story. Beatty & his ability to quote is explained in one such contained in the afterword. What had been an unexplained weakness became chilling. Beatty really is the devil incarnate.

Anyway, fantastic read(listen) yet again. I highly recommend this version & media. Hurt does a great job picking up the rhythms of Bradbury's writing & about tore my heart out a couple of times. Almost like poetry.

----------------

Review from 2007 when I joined GR & about the paperback edition of this book:
I don't usually review classics for obvious reasons, but I flipped through this again the other day & it's still one of the most chilling books I've ever read.

Conform & remember meaningless trivia to be happy. Don't bother with the thorny problems or think for yourself! Immerse yourself in the fantasy world of TV that covers entire walls, so you can be a part of the virtual, mindless world. The shows remind me strongly of the current 'reality TV' craze.

Originally published in 1953, it strikes as close to home today as it did when I first read it over 35 years ago, perhaps more so as TV's have gotten bigger, interaction with the shows is more commonplace & the virtual worlds of social networking sites have become as important to some people as their physical world. (No? What about the teenager who committed suicide because of MySpace harassment?)

The idea of running around with flame throwers to burn books (451 degrees F. is the heat at which a book combusts, according to the story) is a little weird, but shredders weren't around then (first manufactured in 1959) & it's a cool twist to have firemen who burn things. It also makes the point of the government's violent opposition to uncontrolled information - another current theme.

That's why this is a classic. It contains ideas that are still quite pertinent today, perhaps more so than when it was written.

Maybe the dystopian elements aren't so credible, but I liked how this book made me think about books, about words.

Yes, we don't see many people burn books, but we see a lot who try to censor them. So, this book feels very important today.

It deserves its place next to 1984 and Brave new world.

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

"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.

Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

Fahrenheit 451 is a dystopian novel by American writer Ray Bradbury, published in 1953. Fahrenheit 451 is set in an unspecified city at an unspecified time in the future after the year 1960.

Guy Montag is a "fireman" employed to burn houses containing outlawed books. He is married but has no children.

One fall night while returning from work, he meets his new neighbor, a teenage girl named Clarisse McClellan, whose free-thinking ideals and liberating spirit cause him to question his life and his own perceived happiness.

Montag returns home to find that his wife Mildred has overdosed on sleeping pills, and he calls for medical attention. ...

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز سوم ماه فوریه سال 1984میلادی

عنوان: فارنهایت 451؛ نویسنده: ری برادبری؛ مترجم: علاءالدین بهشتی؛ تهران، آشتیانی، 1363، در 200ص؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده 20م

این کتاب را جنابان آقایان «علی شیعه علی» و «معین محب علیان»؛ و «علی عامری مهابادی»؛ و سرکار خانم «سارا زرگر» نیز ترجمه کرده اند

انگار یکی بوده که میدانسته، روزگاری باید هر کس، یکی از کتابهای خوشگوار را، از بر کند، و تا هستیم و هست، نگذارد و نگذاریم، واژه های داستان و شعر و نثر بمیرند، باشند و خوش ببویند، و هماره از واژه های دلدار بگویند، دارم میاندیشم اگر چنین روزی آمد، و این دل سرگشته هنوز زنده بود، کدام کتاب را برخواهد گزید، شاید: غزلیات و دیوان حضرت حافظ را.؛

داستان در جهانی رخ می‌دهد، که خواندن یا داشتن کتاب، جنایتی بزرگ به شمار می‌آید، این مشخصات جامعه ‌ای است که تحت ستم یک نظام سیاسی است که شهروندانش با قرصهای شادی بخش، و داروهای مسکن و خواب‌آور و مخدر، که نسیان‌آور هستند، دلخوشند، صفحه‌ های بزرگ ویدئویی بر دیوارهای منازل، هرگونه دغدغه ‌ای را برطرف می‌کنند؛ آزاداندیشی در آن جهان، قدغن است، زیرا تعادل جامعه را بر هم میزند، و اشخاص را ضد اجتماع بار می‌آورد، کتاب و هرچه خواندنی است، عامل اصلی انحراف شناخته می‌شوند؛ مسئولیت بازیابی و سوزاندن کتاب‌های باقی‌مانده در آن نظام، بر دوش ماموران آتش‌نشانی بگذاشته شده است؛

از آن‌جایی‌که خانه‌های شهر تخیلی ضدآتش هستند، کتاب‌های یافته شده را، در همان محل پنهان شدن کتاب، به آتش می‌کشند؛ برای کشف محل اختفای کتاب، از یک سگ مکانیکی سود می‌برند، و پس از یافتن کتاب، صاحب آن را که دشمن امنیت ملی نامیده می‌شود، به قتل می‌رسانند؛ اونیفرم و کلاه مأموران آتش‌نشانی، به نشان «سمندر»، یا «آتش‌پرست» مزین است؛ این خزنده از دوران باستان، نماد زندگی در آتش بوده‌ است؛ «مونتاگ» آتش‌نشانی است، که از کار خود لذت می‌برد؛ کار او سوزاندن کتاب‌های ممنوعه است؛ و از قضای روزگار همه ی کتاب‌ها ممنوعه هستند؛

اما او یکبار با «کله‌ریس مک‌کله‌لن» دیدار می‌کند، که به او می‌فهماند که زندگی‌اش آنطور که فکر می‌کرده شاد نیست، و این برای «مونتاگ» سرآغاز شیدایی است؛ همان شب «مونتاگ» همسرش را در حالی می‌یابد، که همگی قرص خوابها را نوش جان کرده، و رو به مرگ است، او دیگر به همه چیز زندگی خود، شک می‌کند؛ به زودی برای نخستین بار کسی را می‌بیند، که حاضر نشده همراه پلیسی که او را یافته برود، این زن مسن ترجیح می‌دهد با کتاب‌های خود بسوزد؛ این رویداد «مونتاگ» را وامی‌دارد، که کتابی بردارد و بخواند، و …؛

نقل از متن: (رنگین پوستا از کتاب کاکاسیاه کوچولو خوششون نمیآد؛ بسوزونش؛ سفیدا احساس خوبی نسبت به کلبه عمو تم ندارن؛ بسوزونش؛ هیچ کی تا حالا در مورد توتون و سرطان ریه کتاب ننوشته؟ اشک سیگاریا رو در نیاورده؟ کتابشو بسوزون؛)؛ پایان نقل

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 27/05/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 06/05/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

Obligado, obligado, obligado. Y no le pongo las 5 estrellas porque leído hoy le falla el estilo. Pero su mensaje es eterno.

Eso sí, decepciona casi seguro porque las expectativas sobre este libro son siempre inmensas.

3.5 Very poetic. Loved most of the writing. But something was missing in the plot. Cannot pinpoint.