| Fahrenheit 451 | 
 enlarge | Author: Ray Bradbury
Publisher: Del Rey
Category: Book
List Price: CDN$ 7.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  971 reviews
Sales Rank: 1666
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Edition: Reissue
Pages: 208
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 6.8 x 4.1 x 0.7
ISBN: 0345342968
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780345342966
ASIN: 0345342968
Publication Date: August 12, 1987
Availability: Usually ships within 1 - 2 business days
Condition: A tradition of southern quality and service. All books guaranteed at the Atlanta Book Company.
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| Customer Reviews:
Feels Like a Real-Life Thriller May 18, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
In a futuristic society when firefighters don't put out fires anymore. Their job now it to create fires. When an alarm is called in, firemen gear up as they use to and speed to the scene, a house with forbidden books in it. All the books are gathered up and hosed down with not water, but kerosene, then set a blaze. Montag is one of those firemen.
This is a time when in most homes, the walls in the living room aren't walls, their giant screen televisions. The shows on mostly comprise of nonsensical bickering, for entertainment. People are not concerned about any issues, except forbidden books. Ignorance is bliss.
When Montag meets Clarrise, a 17-year-old girl, at first she annoys him. She likes to ask a lot of questions and notices things that most people just don't notice or even care about. However, as he gets to know her better, he starts to question things himself. A question that he has is a very dangerous question: why are books so dangerous that we have to burn them? What's in them? As he pursues this question, he gets in trouble.
This book was first published in 1951. I found this it quite frightening because there are some countries that seemed to have arrived to this in our world, and others seem to be heading towards it. In the West, people turn on their televisions and watch sitcoms much more then crack open a book. When most people ask me what I like to watch on TV, I respond that I only watch a couple things, mostly on PBS. I mostly read books, they look at me like am strange and proceed to name off all the shows that they watch.
Bradbury does a great job describing the futuristic society with great detail. If you like books like A Brave New World, then you will also like Fahrenheit 451. Bradbury hit a home run with this timeless classic!
 A Wake-up Call! November 14, 2007
"Fahrenheit 451" is a futuristic fantasy set in an America in which reading is forbidden, firemen burn books and everyone rushes without taking time to "stop and smell the flowers." I believe that the people who compare this work to McCarthyism and Nazism are missing the point. It depicts a world in which reading has fallen out of favor, people watch television constantly, engage in shallow conversations and are in incessant rushes to get somewhere. Funerals are banned because they bring sadness and people have forgotten to appreciate nature, contemplate beauty and love one another.
The principal action of this book occurs when a seventeen year old neighbor introduces the protagonist, Montag, to the world of nature. The book progresses as Montag gradually changes into a person more to our ideal.
Although set in the future, this book contains much that is familiar. Portions remind the reader of "Lost Horizon". More moving than that are factors which we see in our own world. Have we arrived in a world in which television has decreased reading and shortened attention spans? Is our literature and discourse made blander because minorities and special interest groups demand protection from anything which may hurt their feelings? Do we try to equalize the weak by weakening the strong? I am afraid that we see much of this future world in our own. "Fahrenheit 451" provides, not only a pleasant read, but also a wake up call for all who are concerned about our culture.
Science Fiction? September 27, 2007
If you want a description of the plot on this novel, you'll need to read another review. What I want to say is that I didn't know "science fiction" could be this good. Don't get me wrong, I have read more than a few sci fi books in my life, but despite the futuristic setting (though not so far in the future now as it was when written in the 50's) this book reads like a classic. It has all the heart and soul of any other piece of "literature", it sits on my shelf next to John Steinbeck and Charles Dickens and rightfully has a place with them. There is a sublime beauty and intricacy present here. It is an an easy read, but it's full of intelligent thoughts and heart felt sincerity.
Flaming Out Knowledge March 20, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
The novel is set in a futuristic America, where people's hedonist attitude has led them to abandon any self-enlightenment and the possession of books is considered illegal. A fireman's job in this era is not to extinguish fires, but to light them over houses that are guilty of harboring books.
The protagonist, Guy Montag is a fireman who seems content with his job at the start of the novel. This changes once he meets Clarisse McClellan, a sixteen year old girl who is full of life. Montag finds himself disillusioned, and doubts the life he's cherished with his wife and job over the past ten years. Thereafter, he sets on a quest to bring books back to life.
In his journey, Montag is aided by an old retired professor, Faber, who is also in support of the cause.
Montag finds himself on the run after murdering the fire chief, Captain Beatty. He ends up outside the city with a group of educated men, who have dedicated their lives in protecting the books by memorizing them.
Bradbury does not give a clear picture as to why censorship becomes so important in the future. He shows how the obtuseness of man, to attain happiness, leads them to commit unthinkable atrocities. At the same time keeping the reader uncertain throughout, whether to believe if "ignorance is bliss" or that knowledge and learning provides true happiness.
Despite its short length, (about 200 pages) the novel gives detailed description of the characters emotions, while keeping the language simple.
451 is not the half of it February 2, 2007
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
For those who enjoyed Brave New World and 1984, you'll love this book also. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is a novel about a futuristic society where censorship reigns supreme and independent thought is deeply scrutinized. This is a world where the televisions talk to you, vehicular manslaughter is an innocent charge as long as you have insurance, and fireman burn books instead of putting fires out. The main character in this novel is a fireman named Guy Montag, a man happy with his job, his wife, his place in society, and life in general. All of this holds true until one fateful evening, after a successful night of setting millions of pages ablaze, Montag runs into a wistful teenager named Clarisse. She is an introverted girl by this future society's standards because she doesn't enjoy playing sports, or driving fast. Her main interests are thinking and talking about what she's thinking--very anti-social to everyone else. Clarisse is the catalyst for Montag's rise from subservient book burner to independent thinking intellectual. Montag begins to take books from the houses he burns and hide them in his air conditioner, promising to read them one day. One night, the firemen come to an old woman's house where they are to burn her collection of books. Beatty, the firehouse captain, douses her collection of books with kerosene, but instead of letting that be the end of it, the old woman decides to set herself on fire along with her treasures. Montag becomes very sickened by this event and decides not to be a fireman anymore. This is where one of the most crucial scenes comes into play, Beatty comes to Montag's house to talk him into staying a fireman, using all of his cunning and sly words to tell him how things were, and how they are better now. Montag makes a choice not go with what society wants, and to become a rebel. Montag meets with a professor to learn how to fully understand what he's reading, and they come upon an insidious plan to plant books in fireman's houses and call alarms on them, effectively destroying the idea that books should be burned if the burners themselves want them. Montag decides to go into work one last time, and after they get a call, much to his surprise, they arrive at his house. Montag's own wife Mildred had called in an alarm, and quickly left. Montag kills the other firemen and goes on the run, eventually meeting a gang of old college professors in the woods, and becoming one of them. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, along with two other I recently purchased: Jackson McCrae's Katzenjammer and David Sedaris' Me Talk Pretty--nothing at all like Fahrenheit 451, but then you wouldn't want to read the same thing over and over, would you?
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