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Summary: It only takes a spark...
Review: "There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches." -Ray Bradbury (Coda, Fahrenheit 451) This book is outstanding! It is a book for people who love books. It is a testament to the power of books and the importance of the knowledge they hold. It reminded me a lot of 1984 and Brave New World. If you liked either of these two novels, you will like Fahrenheit 451. Guy Montag, the fireman turned fugitive, is a lot like Winston Smith in Orwell's 1984 because he is forced to hide from an organization that wishes to destroy him. He is also like John Savage in Huxley's Brave New World because they both come to see the importance of literature, art, and beauty in the world. All three men are trapped in societies that are all about a quick fix, the easy way out. Fahrenheit 451 offers everything: action, drama, suspense, inner struggle, inspiration, faith. There's isn't really any romance, but the connection between Montag and his young neighbor Clarisse McClellan, who opens his eyes to the world around him, is one of the best I've read. Bradbury makes it clear that this novel is anti-science science fiction. Technology is not important in the great scheme of things. Human interaction, knowledge, beauty, these are what life is all about.
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Summary: Once again, are we going this way?
Review: In a not so distant future, Guy Montag is a fireman. But, paradoxically, his mission is NOT to quench fires, but to set them up in order to burn books. Because in the world in which Montag lives, it is absolutely forbidden to read books. Because reading books forces one to think for oneself. And thinking for oneself might lead you to question the world and not be happy. And in this world, it is mandatory to be happy. This book warns about the dangers of a mechanized civilization which condemns the life of the spirit and the free mind. The prescience of Bradbury is remarkable: in a book written in the fifties, he foresaw the terribly negative effects TV could have. Today, there still are free thinkers in this world, but to most people they seem weird and strange. TV, of course, can be used for constructive purposes, but let's be honest and admit that some 90% of its consequences have been stupidly destructive. So turn off your Oprah (like she could recommend good literature) and read this book: you'll end up wanting to read more.
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Summary: The classic book about books!
Review: In the book, books are banned for making people's minds corrupt. Firemen now don not put out fires, they simply just start them. Guy Montag, a fireman for 10 years, never questioned his job of destroying books. Until he met a 17 year old girl who told him of a great past. Then, Guy meets a doctor who tells him how he can save the planet from another dark age. Ray Bradbury, I salute you! This book contains some of the most thoughtful sentences and words, and talks about such topics as censorship, politics, and the corrupt police. Too bad it was short. This is so good, I might read it again right now! The only thing that's stopping me is that it's a library book. I NEED THIS BOOK!
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Summary: How dare they burn books...
Review: This is about a time so far ahead in history that humans have decided that books are evil. and they are banned. people live very superficial lives. the book, as i remember, i read it like years ago, follows this one guy who starts to think that maybe all this anti-book is wrong. he finds a group of people that had all the classics memorized, each book one person. i was amazed to see how the author had chosen to protect the written world, he brought it back to spoken stories. this book was great. it really brings you to a time where everything u believe in is thought to be wrong. strange thought huh? :) i enjoyed this book a lot. happy reading.
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Summary: A Definite Must Read
Review: This book was really good! It starts off a little odd, but that is only because how crazy the world is in the book, it's a little hard to comprehend. As you keep reading though, you can't put it down! The author keeps you wondering what will happen next, and why things are the way they are!!! The relationship between our world and the book's has teriffying similarities, that you tend to think twice about our lives today. Make sure you read this book!!
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Summary: The 5 stars say it all.
Review: Read the book, you will see.
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Summary: Critical View
Review: Bradbury's view on the future is startling. He has made many correct predictions on how the future would develop. He helps to remind us that books and knowledge are what we crave and need to be happy.
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Summary: Bradbury's views on the future
Review: In Ray Bradbury's Fahenheit 451, we get to look at a futuristic world where books are banned and reading is prohibited. The narrator is a firefighter named Montag and unlike the firefighters of out modern society the firefighters of Montag's world start fires to burn books as opposed to extingushing fires to help citizens. Through the novel, we see how the government controls society by watching the citizens everymove and controlling what they may see or hear by using their own propaganda. This can be seen through Montag's wife, who is a drug using zombie addicted to watching government TV twenty four hours a day. Montag eventually becomes a victim when becomes interested in the books he is hired to destroy, steals them and hides them in his home. Through Montag's experiences we get a close look at how individuals in his world have no control of their destiny. However, when it seems most bleak and Montag is close to being discovered, Bradbury introduces some savior like characters. Fleeing from the law, Montag finally discovers the Book People living in the forest. These people memorize books and then they repeat the book to others so that books will live on forever in their memory even though they are being destroyed by the government. Although Bradbury builds a complex plot, the message is simple, when a society tries to control peoples basic freedoms so that they can manipulate them with their own propaganda, its time to start heading for the woods.
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Summary: A different way of looking at the world
Review: I never really enjoyed science fiction, but something about this book caught my eye. The story revolves around one lone fireman, Guy Montag, who, oddly enough, sets fire to books instead of putting them out. He lives in a world that doesn't like to see unhappiness and the real truth, so they destroy books and all that causes unhappiness. When he meets a girl who, unlike all of the others, "thinks," not only about life and the deeper meaning behind the events which happen in our daily lives, which we don't acknowledge because we are all so busy, he becomes obsessed with finding out the truth behind those books and behind life. Along the way, he meets Faber, the elderly man who guides him on his journey. There is a certain tragedy in this book, and although the events in this book don't happen in life verbatim, it is remarkably similar to events which happen in everyday life. This appeared to have been a spiritual experience, not only for the characters, but for the author Ray Bradley. The characters are so tortured inside, caught between what they are expected to do and what they know is right. This book made me think more about what life really is about. And, as demonstrated in this book so many times, you never know when your life is going to end, so as it says in the book: "Stuff your eyes with wonder. Live as if you'd drop dead in 10 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."
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Summary: Fahrenheit
Review: This is perhaps the most thought provoking book I have ever read. Unfortunately, I missed this book in my earlier days of public education, but I have found a real treasure now. This book is very topical in the policitically-correct world in which we live. I find it hard to believe that so many of the fears that are expressed in Beatty's speech to Montag regarding why books or ideas were burned have come to fruition. In fact, the most stirring part of this edition is the coda where Bradbury's ideas about censorship are expressed in first-person. A must read for any would-be scholar.
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