Customer Reviews
"We went right on insulting the dead..." - By: Michael Crane, 05 Aug 2004 
I've been checking out some of the classics that I never gave a chance whilein high school, now that I'm a much more aware & mature reader. "Fahrenheit 451" was something I always wanted to read but never got around to it. Well, I have finally read it & the time was very much well spent. Ray Bradbury offers a bleak & dim future where thinking for yourself is against the law.
Guy Montag's life had always been simple. He understood the order of things, & he understood the nature of his job. He was a fireman, & that entailed burning books & burning down the buildings that hid them. He never questioned it once & never felt guilty for what he was doing. Things take a different route when he meets a peculiar girl who asks the tough questions that he has never had to answer. And with those questions, he starts to think & wonder why things are the way they are. Ever since the meeting with this stranger, Montag is curious about the true nature of his job, leading to dangerous revelations that will put his very lifein jeopardy.
Bradbury has created a magnificent piece of literature that attacks censorship & the numbing of society head on with no regrets & no remorse. He doesn't need to give us an exact year of this future, as that makes it all the more frightening. Even though this is a work of fiction, it seems so realistic & so possible that all of this could really happen to us. Think about it. We are now a "TV Generation" who spend a lot less time reading, people are trying to ban different types of books for different reasons, & anything that is deemed "unpleasant" is demanded to be "fixed" or "taken care of" so we can all feel happy & not deal with the pain & troubles of life. Bradbury captures all of this & does not give you a bitter rant about today's youth, but he uses all of that negative energy & creates something so profound & well established. It's no mistake that this fine novel has sold millions upon millions of copies & is forever deemed a classic.
The writing is simple to read & it is a short book. You will have to give it a few pages before you can really get into it all, but make sure that you stick with it. Once it gets moving, there's no stopping the pages. Bradbury is great with imagery & provides excellent descriptions--but never goes overboard with them. It's such a short read that you could most likely finish itin a day or two if you put the effort into it. Turn off that TV for just a few hours or so & pick this up! It definitely sticksin your head once it's all said & done, & you will be thinking about everything that has transpiredin this book.
"Fahrenheit 451" is a tremendous work of fiction that is both thought-provoking & terrifying (in a subtle way). It really goes to show you how terrible things can get if censorship wins, & it really can happen if you think about it. If you haven't given this a read yet, I strongly encourage you to pick up a copy as soon as you can. This is a book that I know I will be re-reading againin the very near future. -Michael Crane
Excellent premise, variable delivery - By: Maclennane, 24 Jul 2004 
Bradbury wrote the book as a short story & was asked to expand it to be big enough for a novel, & it shows a little.
His arguments are excellently framed & you do get absorbed by a couple of the characters,in the very short time you have with them.
Overall, I felt a little hungry after reading it. It seems to fall between two stools & could have been a great longer novel if the character development had continued, or a fantasically punchy short story. It's neitherin particular, but it's still well worth the read.
A book that continues to touch on modern life - By: Mark Klobas, 17 Jul 2004 Though I was long familiar with many of Bradbury's works, I had put off reading "Fahrenheit 451"in favor of other books until a friend lent it to me recently. After reading it, I'm angry with myself for having taken so long to pick it up. This book is a fantastic tale of a future society that abandons intellectual development & destroys its books. Like all great literature, it offers insight into our society today despite having been written over a half-century ago, & it continues to reward reading today.
This book is more than a seminal work of dystopian literature, however; it is also one of the most elegant meditations on the value of literaturein modern society that I have ever read. In envisioning a society that destroys books, Bradbury has to explain what is lost as a result. His answer, as we seein Faber's expositions during Montag's visit, is the exact thing which makes this book worth reading - the insights we gain into our own world & our own lives through reading. Integral to this process, of course, is the fact that people must read them & put what they take from them to good use for a society to thrive; as Bradbury notes, the first step towards the world of his novel was taken when people stopped reading. It is this message which makes "Fahrenheit 451" essential reading, especiallyin a society where entertainment today bears an ever-closer resemblance to the noise-dominated media depictedin Bradbury's nightmarish future.
"Books ought to have a happy ending !" - By: Jan Dierckx, 07 Jul 2004 Did you notice that nowadays writers & filmmakers tend to make no difference between Horror & Science-Fiction? 'Alien' is not SF but Horror, a very good horror-movie but not really SF. Real Science-Fiction plays not onlyin the future butin a society very different from ours & with people who have habits & a mentality which also are different from ours. Fahrenheit 451 is a very good example of that. Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature that makes books burn & this is the problem we are dealing with (and no longerin the far future I'm afraid). Guy Montag is the hero of the novel. He's a fireman who burns books that arein peoples houses, usually because someone denounced them at the police. It's forbidden to read books because they make you think & therefore make you unhappy. (Clothes have only zippers & no buttons; buttons take to much time so you start thinking & once again this makes you unhappy.) But Montag is a lonely person who has no contact with his wife; she only watches TV from dawn till dusk. The irony is that all the measures which are taken by the government to protect people from being unhappy only make them more unhappy than before. As the story unfolds, Guy Montag starts wondering what books are all about & he starts meeting people who read books (without notifying his superiors). The novel endsin a peculiar way. A psychologist I know once said that all books ought to have a happy ending. I never asked her what would become of the books that don't have a happy ending because I'm afraid what she might answer.
A message that grows more important every day - By: Daniel Jolley, 09 May 2003 It was a pleasure to burn. So begins, with this absolutely perfect opening line, Ray Bradbury’s celebrated exposition of the dangers of censorship. Everybody knows that Fahrenheit 451 is a novel about book-burning, but this story goes much deeper than those not having read it may suspect. Its message truly does become even more germane & prophetic with every passing day. The skeleton of the plot is rather basic, really. Guy Montag is a fireman whose job it is to burn books & the housesin which these dangerous manifestations of inane scribbling reside – usually hidden. Fahrenheit 451’s message is one that all people should be exposed to, & this novel is such a quick (but powerful) read that everyone really should read it. As horrible as it is to envision, I fear that this type of censorship could indeed happen here.
