Rating: 
Summary: Orwell's shadow
Review: 'Fahrenheit 451' is a powerful story that imagines a future world where literature is burned and readers are imprisoned. Bradbury creates a whole dumbed-down society of people who are robbed of creative and independent thought, and where this deficit is enforced by law. I felt that the major shortcoming of the book was that the entire book smacks of '1984,' but it is not nearly as powerful as Orwell's story. 'Fahrenheit 451' focuses much more intently on the relatively narrower issue of censorship in our society, whereas '1984' looks at the complete robbery of free will. I thought all of the characters were a rip-off, from the young girl to the protagonist to the mean authority figure who tries to "help" the protagonist and turns on him in the end. This is a good book, and I like the metaphor, I just felt like the same idea was espoused in a much more gripping fashion in '1984.'
Rating:
Summary: good..
Review: I enjoyed reading this. The book is about a fireman who starts having doubts about his job and his home life. He begins wondering if what he is doing is the right thing to do but it may cost him his job, wife and life. His strugles go on though out the book and in this furture that he lives in he is alone. Just a simple man with his thoughts wondering how different live would be if people were allowed to read books....
Rating:
Summary: It starts a fire in one's mind
Review: Fahrenheit 451: less than 200 pages and has an interesting title. If these two facts weren't enough to make me pick a book to do a project on, I don't know what else would make me. Fortunately, my interest in this book would later become much deeper than simple laziness. What started off as a series of stories in a science fiction magazine would become a novel set in the future world. Books have been banned, and there was a strong force to enforce this policy. Guy Montag, the main character of this story, was one of the many who set ablaze to homes containing books. Montag was happy in a world where the role of the fire department had been reversed from years ago. That is, until he meets a young lady named Clarisse. After a couple of pleasureful conversations and her sudden disappearance, Montag's subconscious dislike of the society he lives in is unlocked. He realizes the shallowness of society starting with his own wife who thinks of her family as three television screens in the parlor. He is also particulary bothered by a woman who was willing to burn with her house after being caught with books. It is all now clear that this society and its censorship has gone terribly wrong. What Bradbury wants to bring our attention to is not that books have been banned, but that restricted society didn't happen in a matter or 24 hours. One word banned over the airwaves leads to another, leads to another leads to another. Pretty soon, free speech and thought aren't even tangible. Though this is a ficticious society, it is realisitic that this type of thing has happened in past civilizations and is still being tried in other areas of the world. At first a slow read became a blazing pace through words of predicition and fear of what could theoretically happen to a society in this world. The fact this could happen will stay with me for a long time. The book makes me want to keep my mind open to everything that i can. I think that's a pretty good thing to come out with after a short 2 hour read. And finally, if I had never heard of the book, I wouldn't know that i really could use the cardboard dish used to cook instant brownies in.
Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant!
Review: Of all the Distopia oriented books I have read this is my favorite. It's also the one that I think had the most probibility of actually happening. Not necessarily book-burning, but the whole complex of censoring things to make everyone happy. That sort of stuff is happening more and more everyday. Nothing else to say besides it's frightening and brilliant.
Rating:
Summary: Overall a great book
Review: I enjoyed this book to an extent. I disliked a lot of things about it also. This book is about a futuristic time where censorship has been taking too far. The idea that as we keep censoring different things to please different minorities we sometimes lose a lot that is good I found very appealing. It seems as if society today does seem to censor too much and is it fixed on appealing to everyone. In this book we find what would happen if we did try to appeal to everyone and not offend anyone. It shows the future without books as being filled with people that have no personalities. People pretty much become drones, each person exactly like the last. The main character, Guy Montag's wife is a perfect example of this. She has no life outside of watching television, which is how most people spend their time in this story. Montag is a fireman who in this day burns books rather than put out fires. He later meets characters who intrigue him and get him to start stealing some books to read and find out what they are about. He soon finds the problems with his society that he is a part of and understands the importance of books. Although this book did have some great points to the negative side of censorship I couldn't really enjoy how unrealistic it was. I just couldn't get over the fact that all people had banned books completely. It was just an unrealistic future in my eyes and I couldn't get over it. Overall, I would recommend this book to all readers even with my dissatisfaction of it.
Rating:
Summary: Book review for english
Review: When I began reading the book Fahrenheit 451 I did not enjoy it very much. But after I put more time into reading this book I started to like it more and more. One of the reasons I liked the book so much was because of the great detail, but it still leaves room for you to think about what is going on. Ray Bradbury's vision of the future does not seem to far fetch for me. With how our society is, and the love for television I could see how the banning of books can occur. This has already happened in history before. This story is about a fireman Guy Montag and his life. His job is to burn books and the houses they are in. He is happy with this until his young neighbor Clarisse Mcclellan. She shows him how horrible the society the live in really is and changes his views in several ways. All of the symbolism in this book was so amazing once you understood it. Light and dark, symbolizing good and bad, was used often in Fahrenheit 451. I also enjoy how rolls reverse in this book, like in our society and in the future society. In the book the fireman are completely the opposite of what ours are today, also in the future society you can not drive under the speed minimum or you get a ticket. This shows how the government doesn't want people to take there time because they could have time to think about new and interesting thins. One thing I didn't like about the book was that throughout it the author goes into less detail about how the society in which they live in is ran and more detail on how he goes about living in it. But I think the author did this to get focus on the problem at hand. I enjoyed how the author makes you find the under lying meaning in the book and that is a good aspect in my opinion. I also like how the book can be compared to Hitler and what he was doing when he was in control of the German government. The way the society does not like having freethinkers and having open minds is almost exactly like what Hitler was trying to do to the people of Germany. I think it is great how it shows how far ahead of his time the author was. I think his interpretation of the future could be accurate. My overall opinion of the book is it is a good read. It can become boring at times but it can also be extremely exciting at points too. I would recommend this book to anyone that likes the thought of futuristic societies and what can happen to the world after we leave. I think it is a very well written book but doesn't define some of its characters as well as it should. But that isn't a reason to not read the book. I think anyone could enjoy reading this book. It makes you think and has so many metaphors and similes that at some points are too much. But it is a great book.
Rating:
Summary: Fahrenheit 451
Review: For Guy Montag burning the books is a way of life. Never once did he give a second thought to the fact that there was a time, and could again be a time when firemen prevented fires instead of starting them, and book were meant, and allowed to be read, not burned.
My favorite aspect of Fahrenheit 451 was how real it was. Although it is a fictional, futuristic novel, the sense that the senerio could happen is chilling to a society that prides itself on freedom of speech and equal liberties.
I like Bradbury's writing style also. At first I had little faith that this book could keep my interest, but not too far into reading I couldn't wait to find out what happened next. The language kept you hanging onto every word. Not only was it catching, it was easy to understand and read, yet had a sense of maturity to it.
Rating: 
Summary: Mrs. Spehar, please give me an A+
Review: If you have ever heard the saying "Don't judge a book by its cover", you'll notice how Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 is a perfect example of that. Since I was assigned this book to read by my mom after she read the reading list Mrs. Spehar gave us, I didn't get that enthusiastic with it at first, especially with that title. I thought it was going to be a book where I had to struggle to keep myself awake to read it. After reading the first 4 or 5 pages though, I was proven totally wrong. I became engulfed in this book and couldn't stop reading it. The story felt so real that I could picture it happening in our society without a doubt in my head.
I enjoyed reading about how Guy Montag's character unfolded throughout the story and how he realized that just because something was the law didn't mean that it was exactly right. It is good how he followed his beliefs and didn't let anyone tell him that he was wrong. A downside to this book though is that my favorite character, Clarisse, was run over by a car. I believe that Bradbury just added that part to just take her away. I believe if Clarisse would have lived, she would have been at Montag's side and the overall story could have been so much better.
Also, I believe that Bradbury could have changed the ending a little. That was the least exciting point of the book. The jets flying by overhead and the city being destroyed was very exciting, but after that, the overall excitement of the book just died off. I am not going to be stereotypical and say that all of Bradbury's books have a dull ending (because I haven't read any other one), but I will say that he should have fixed this one up a little.
All in all, Bradbury has written a good book. Not perfect, but good. I think that this is a book that few should be without reading because it can actually knock some sense into them to not be fools and stand up for what they believe in. The book portrays a world that could possibly be our own in a few years. The fate of this world though, will rest upon our own hands.
Rating:
Summary: Individuality strikes fiery literature
Review: At first I was roped into the idea of a book about book burning by fellow classmates that said it was a "cool" thing to read about. Then, later on I became enamored by this compelling story of the way others can affect the minds of the ignorant.
The book begins with a section Bradbury entitles, "The Hearth and the Salamander." The hearth being a symbol of the home and where the fire is kept/made in the home, the salamander being a symbol of fire immortality. The animal is believed by ancient cultures to be fire resistant. It can be burned and walk out without a mark made. This makes sense for Bradbury to use considering his whole book is shaped on the idea that the new futuristic firemen are unscarred by flames and find a great pleasure in creating them. So in turn the firemen of the story sport salamander logos on the arm of their uniforms. I loved this sort of symbolizing and the way Bradbury ties these facts into the rest of his story makes it a worthwhile reading. Throughout the rest of the book he takes the main character Guy Montag through a whirlwind of emotion and self exploration. After meeting a young girl by the name of Clarisse McClellan who is a self proclaimed individual Guy begins to view his life as he knows it in a different light. Clarisse is even seeing a psychologist for her "tendencies" as prescribed by society's fear of her lack of uniformity. She is a strong willed character that can open the eyes of any reader. I fell in love with her for her uniqueness as she reminded me somewhat of myself.
The new future is a scary place as described by Bradbury. It makes the present and our issues with race and diversity a walk in the park as compared to society in the future. Close-mindedness sets in and people begin to close down and build walls around the passions of simple life. He shows here a real look into a frightening possibility of the way technology could affect every one of us. The idea of burning-books to me symbolizes the way media latched onto the artist and freethinker in all of us. It takes away from the beauty of really capturing a scene in a book that in some cases someone might never see in real life and it injects the fear that you might be blamed for this "instant gratification" that the book gives to you.
I really loved the book and the way it took Montag on a journey to overpower his dedication to the claws of society and see past it's chains. He overcomes his enslavement to his boss and coworkers and begins to follow the path of the McClellans. With a little extra help from a friend he met beforehand Guy attacks the futuristic views and creates a full on war for freedom. Through fighting, and murders Montag ends his journies with the people he belongs with. He stumbles a bit along the way but ultimately ends with happiness in his heart.
Anyone looking for a real eye-opener would enjoy this awesome fiction piece. It'll make you feel really lucky for the freedoms you have today, and look at the book you're holding in your hand in a whole new light. Aspects of family, and how cold family can be will shock you. Pick up Fahrenheit 451 you won't be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book, could have been longer
Review: Before I decided to read this novel, I knew one thing and one thing only about this book, and that was that it was about burning books for some reason. Now that I have read it, I am blown away by how this was written and how thought out it was. The novel starts out set in the future, the main character and the protagonist in this case is a man by the name of Guy Montag. Montag takes great pleasure in his profession, which is a fireman. I like how his job is not to put the fires out but to start them. The fires they start are the burning of contraband, which in this case are books. You aren't allowed to read in the future because reading causes people to think by making them curious and the government jams what they want you to think down your throat. Which isn't too different with today's society, with the video games and television, the reading of books is decreasing, causing people to become less educated. Now a day's television programs force feed you their biased opinions which I think isn't too different from what Bradbury describes. The reality they live in isn't a pretty one. Drivers instead of having a maximum speed limit, have a minimum one. This forces them to drive at blazing speeds and they actually run people over for fun and wars come and go numerously which is absolutely insane. Montag soon becomes bored with his job and his life in general. He steals a book from the collection he was supposed to burn as a means to lower his increasing uneasiness. This leads up to my absolute favorite part in the book. The owner of the books he stole which is an older woman refuses to leave her home, which is to be burned to the ground. Instead, the woman sets fire to her house herself, and stays there as her books and she are destroyed. It makes him realize that the written word is a very valuable thing and only the very enlightened know that. The next thing I liked was that, after hiding the books he had stolen, he was forced to burn his own house and all of his possessions which is a great turn of events. He then gets into a scuffle with his boss and he is warned that he will be dealt with severely. Montag then kills him and is soon perused by a Mechanical hound, which can track anyone down. He then kills that with a flamethrower and retrieves his books. This leads me to the part I disliked, the ending. Montag essentially meets up with a group of intellectuals and hides out until it is once again safe to print books. When bombs destroy the city, they sift through the rubble and begin a new society where man is free to learn and prosper. The reason I disliked this is because it really didn't describe what the new society would have been like. I really wish Bradbury went more in depth on what the new society would have been like. Lastly, although I loved this novel, it could have been way longer, perhaps by not ending the novel where he did and maybe going more into the future and explaining how everything ended up. All in all I am very happy I read this book, and I would recommend this to everyone. Not just the guys.
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