Fahrenheit 451

I loved this book from the first pages once you open it you'll find out there's a reason why this book always shows in the top 10 sci-fi lists.[a:Ray Bradbury 1630 Ray Bradbury https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1361491094p2/1630.jpg] described a hell in earth for readers.

A stunning piece of literature.
Despite being a well-read lover of science fiction, I never got around to reading Bradbury before. I think because this was commonly known as a high school book, often compared to Orwell, and because I understood and read dystopian books inspired by F451, I figured I'd sufficiently absorbed the story through cultural osmosis, and didn't actually need to read the book.

I now realize that I have done myself a grave disservice for not reading this earlier. While I did indeed know what the jist of it would be, this book really proves that how a story is told can be just as important as the story itself. Bradbury elicits such powerful feelings around the steady changing of the protagonist's mind, that as a reader I felt like I could fully empathize with the whirlwind of emotions he was experiencing. And that ultimately makes all the difference.

One can always just say “yes, books are important, no we shouldn't let government or corporate interests tell us how to think or feel, and yes art and culture has value,” but these values that so many of us hold (Hello Goodreads audience) can sometimes be hard to articulate, because after all wouldn't it be easier to not worry about what's going on in our world, to not have to understand different perspectives. If we had nothing to disagree about, wouldn't that be lovely in a way?

Bradbury really confronts that dissonance, and not with reason so much as with emotion, and that's really what stunned me. Yes, culture is messy, learning is almost always unfairly distributed, and understanding others and disagreeing can all be hard, but what are we without this. Can one feel fulfilled? Or will we lose the very ability to articulate whether or not we're happy or why we feel what we feel?

I fear this book will never lose its relevance, but at least that means there's always a good excuse to read some truly top notch writing.

PS. I listened to the audiobook narrated by Tim Robbins, and he was absolutely spectacular! It was 5.5hrs and finished it in 4 days, so there's another plus: it's short, and good in paper or audio.

știu că o să mă alergați cu torțe pentru notă și recenzie, dar trebuie să spun că, recitind-o acum, m-a plictisit de moarte și, pur și simplu, nu mi-a plăcut (acum am 37, la 16 m-a dat pe spate). A îmbătrânit prost: stilul e foarte vetust, prea artistic și încărcat, precum și superficial, mai degrabă piesă de teatru decât roman.
Pe de altă parte, a șocat prin profunzimea ideii și avertismentului, dar între timp realitatea stalinistă și maoistă a depășit distopia de mii de ori mai rău. Celor care au găsit ”Fahrenheit 451” înspăimântătoare le recomand ”Arhipelagul Gulag” de Soljenițân: față de ororile REALE de acolo, sefeul de aici e o panseluță...

Deze klassieker vond ik toch ietwat ontgoochelend.
Ik weet niet of het komt omdat ik ondertussen al tal van dystopieën heb gelezen of omdat deze effectief, naar mijn gevoel, wat tekort schoot.

Het verhaal blijft constant vrij oppervlakkig.
Het gevoel van onderdrukking wordt goed opgewekt, maar je leert niet veel van het wat en het hoe, behalve dat boeken verboden zijn en mensen dom worden gehouden met schermpjes.
En ik vermoed dat dit ook de hoofdgedachte van de auteur was: TV (of schermpjes) doodt het intellect.

Boek dat eerder gelezen moet worden voor de boodschap die de auteur wou overbrengen, dan het eigenlijke verhaal dus.

The book left me feeling disappointed. It's not necessarily terrible, but the story was boring and didn't grab my attention. It was hard to follow, making it difficult to understand what was going on. It felt too short in important parts and too long in irrelevant ones. It jumped around to different things that didn't really matter to the main story. The main idea of the book is that censorship will ruin society. The reasoning behind this is that people get easily offended. I don't think we'll ever reach a point in real life where this exact scenario happens, which makes this book feel like a watered-down version of a dystopian story with a poorly developed world that wasn't fully explained. Also, the characters were uninteresting and failed to draw me in. The main character was like a typical hero, and his wife didn't do much besides showing how messed up the world was. Clarisse was different from everyone else, but that's about it. That's her whole personality. She's just not like everyone else. Overall, the book didn't live up to the hype.

Copy/paste from BLC: This was quite scary and heavy, being controlled on what we consume, and how the roles of firemen changed over time to burn. I think the scariest was when the woman refused to leave the house and burned herself alive. ;-; I liked Clarisse's role in shifting Guy's mindset but oh why did she have to be gone so quickly..

Gostei!

A escrita do autor, até porque foi escrito em um tempo completamente diferente (apesar de parecer que estamos caminho de volta pra lá atualmente), não me prendeu muito. Terminei o livro relativamente rápido, contando com todas as vezes que cochilei ou apressei um pouquinho as vistas pra passar algumas frases hahahah isso principalmente nos primeiros 30%. Depois disso comecei a me envolver mais com a história e as coisas que estavam acontecendo me pareceram mais claras. Já sabia muito do contexto e do conteúdo do livro, então isso me ajudou a perceber o que estava sendo dito e representado pelas personagens. Confesso que se não soubesse ia ter que matutar um pouquinho mais pra pegar as nuances que o autor quis passar. Não li outros clássicos “semelhantes” como Admirável Mundo Novo ou 1984 ainda, mas esse valeu a leitura e está recomendado, sim.