Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Fahrenheit 451 (by Ray Bradbury) is a very interesting, disturbing, cynically funny and scary book.
I'm sure that most of you read this book in high school, and know the general story. The entire plot revolves around burning books, and the ignorance of that invisioned future. Frankly, it is a book that says, simply, that all media, (with the exception of books, naturally), is destroying literature. That, when we go out and buy a newspaper, watch TV or listen to the radio, literature suffers.
In a way, this is true. The media condense everything into politically correct, "safe", and bite-size pieces of knowlage, which entertain us, anger us, incite us, encoureage us. They don't give us the whole story, but just enough to make us interested.

For the thirty seconds the story airs. I want to make an experiment. Two people watch the news re-caps for half and hour. One is taking notes about the program, the other isn't. How many news stories will the latter remember? I don't think it will be a large number.

So, yes, the media isn't helping the state of book sales. I could go on and on about this forever, so I think that I'll get back to Farenheit 451. This book is cynically funny, because it was written in the early fifties, and yet, it has carried into the future. The "relatives" that Ms. Montag is so fond of? Take a look at Lost, or even the Chronicles. We feel we have a connection with those charecters, we feel that they're nearly family. When they get hurt, we feel bad. When they yell at each other, we feel bad.
When someone turns off the television, we're sad to see them go. Internet, is worse. The fact that I'm doing this, now, could be considered hypocritical.

So, it's a book that delivers a great narrative (you'll have to read it to find out what that is) and a strong message. It made me think, and moved me like a book usually doesn't.

9.5/10