I’m going to preface this review of Fahrenheit 451 by saying that I’m not one of these readers who feels obligated to read and review “the classics.” It’s perfectly okay to not feel the inclination to read them and it’s really ok to not enjoy them. It doesn’t make you any less of a reader to not read and enjoy them. I, myself find it hard to read any of the classics – I don’t have a great track record with the likes of Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy. The only success I truly experienced with them was with Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle…until now.
I really don’t know what made me pick up Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. I’ve had it on my TBR for years with no idea when I’d be brave enough to pick it up. Apparently, a new year is a perfect time. I don’t know what I was expecting but this certainly wasn’t it. I quickly became lost in another time and the writing was laser sharp.
“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.”
Set in a dystopian time – Books are outlawed, and anyone found with any in their possession has them burned immediately and arrested. Guy Montag is a fireman, no, they no longer put out fires in buildings but to destroy books. It’s a vivid piece of imagery and made me wonder how far I would go to keep my prized possessions…I’d go all the way. Books are so wonderful; in what other art form can the reader live many lives through the medium of stories? It’s the freedom of expression, it’s the passion and ability to see the passage of time without a time machine.
It’s a cautionary tale, it takes us to a place we have no wish to be. Guy Montag our friendly fireman with a flamethrower after a series of events starts to awaken from society’s indoctrination. A meeting with a young girl sets it all in motion and witnessing a woman willing to be burned with her books is the runaway train that is Montag’s psyche. He really wants to know what books could contain to make a woman lay down the ultimate sacrifice.
I was completely blown away by this reading experience and can only imagine the uproar it would’ve caused upon its release in 1953.
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Popular highlights in this book
If you hid your ignorance, no one will hit you and you’ll never learn.Highlighted by 2,959 Kindle readers- We stand against the small tide of those who want to make everyone unhappy with conflicting theory and thought.Highlighted by 2,647 Kindle readers
- The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that!Highlighted by 2,037 Kindle readers
From the Publisher
Fahrenheit 451
Voyager Classics – timeless masterworks of science fiction and fantasy.
A beautiful clothbound edition of the internationally acclaimed Fahrenheit 451 – a masterwork of twentieth-century literature.
The terrifyingly prophetic novel of a post-literate future.
Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to burn books, which are forbidden, being the source of all discord and unhappiness. Even so, Montag is unhappy; there is discord in his marriage. Are books hidden in his house? The Mechanical Hound of the Fire Department, armed with a lethal hypodermic, escorted by helicopters, is ready to track down those dissidents who defy society to preserve and read books.
The classic dystopian novel of a post-literate future, Fahrenheit 451 stands alongside Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World as a prophetic account of Western civilisation’s enslavement by the media, drugs and conformity.
Bradbury’s powerful and poetic prose combines with uncanny insight into the potential of technology to create a novel which, decades on from first publication, still has the power to dazzle and shock.
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This book has been annotated throughout - almost every page all the way through the book there are passages highlighted in red ink with accompanying words in black ink at the side of the page. I bought this book because it was supposed to be in ‘good’ condition.
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