Fahrenheit 451

16. Read 30 books I haven’t read before (in addition to the above) and blog about them. (5/30)

Fahrenheit 451
by Ray Bradbury

This book has been on my "to-read" list for a very long time.  I never read it in high school or college and it's one of those books that I feel everyone should read.  It's a little hard to get into in the beginning, but I was really into it after about 40 pages.  It also felt quite timely to read as I watched a video online the other day about one woman at a protest saying we need to get back to burning books, especially "those evolution books".  Eeep.

The main point to the book is really obvious and could be extremely simplistic and overstated but Bradbury does a really excellent job of not oversimplifying his point, instead letting the reader fill in some blanks while he explains other points that one might miss (like how the outcasts "are" certain books - I particularly liked that idea).  The book is definitely a clear warning about where entertainment is heading and how it can be used to keep the general population dulled to the world.  Bradbury's vision of personalized entertainment is quite prescient; I think we truly could be heading to a time where our living room walls are full-sized televisions with characters that we see as members of our family. I've been reading a lot of non-fiction, so taking a fiction break was good.  I'm going to read more non-fiction next, but I'm looking forward to my next dalliance with fiction.