Paperback, 227 pages
English language
Published Aug. 6, 2018 by Harper Voyager.
More than sixty years after its original publication, Ray Bradbury's internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 stands as a classic of world literature. Today its message is more relevant than ever before. Now an HBO original film starring Michael B. Jordan and Michael Shannon.
Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to destroy the most illegal of all commodities, the printed book, along with the homes in which they are hidden. Montag never questions his orders to destroy and to ruin, returning each day to his bland life and to his wife, Mildred, who is content to spend all day with her television 'family'.
But then Montag meets Clarisse, who shows him a past where people didn't live in fear and a present where the world can be seen through ideas in books and not just the screen of a television, and begins to question everything he has …
More than sixty years after its original publication, Ray Bradbury's internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 stands as a classic of world literature. Today its message is more relevant than ever before. Now an HBO original film starring Michael B. Jordan and Michael Shannon.
Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to destroy the most illegal of all commodities, the printed book, along with the homes in which they are hidden. Montag never questions his orders to destroy and to ruin, returning each day to his bland life and to his wife, Mildred, who is content to spend all day with her television 'family'.
But then Montag meets Clarisse, who shows him a past where people didn't live in fear and a present where the world can be seen through ideas in books and not just the screen of a television, and begins to question everything he has ever known. --back cover
It's like it was written today. Spoiler: Protect books at all costs.
It's like it was written today. Spoiler: Protect books at all costs.
It's like it was written today. Spoiler: Protect books at all costs.
It's like it was written today. Spoiler: Protect books at all costs.
As you're reading this book, it's difficult to remember that it was written in 1951. The technological "predictions" are interesting (bluetooth headphones, reality TV). But I think the most interesting portions are the discussions of the nature of books and media. Toward the end, we get a discussion of people as books (using their innate photographic memories to read/scan books that can later be retrieved from them), but this quotation from Faber around the middle of the book is probably my favorite moment...the texture of books, a texture that can be examined closely, and the rewards of that process of examination.
"Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me, it means texture. This book as pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You'd find life under the glass, …
As you're reading this book, it's difficult to remember that it was written in 1951. The technological "predictions" are interesting (bluetooth headphones, reality TV). But I think the most interesting portions are the discussions of the nature of books and media. Toward the end, we get a discussion of people as books (using their innate photographic memories to read/scan books that can later be retrieved from them), but this quotation from Faber around the middle of the book is probably my favorite moment...the texture of books, a texture that can be examined closely, and the rewards of that process of examination.
"Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me, it means texture. This book as pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You'd find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more 'literary' you are. That's my definition, anyway. Telling detail. Fresh detail." (79)
