Fahrenheit 451 in Constant Reader

From the Bookshelf of Constant Reader…

Fahrenheit 451

Ray Bradbury

Start date: February 1, 2017

Finish date: February 15, 2017

Discussion: Classics Corner

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What Members Thought

Aug 01, 2008 for-much-deliberation ... rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi

A time when man is unable to think for himself with the worst of attempts to eliminate this practice being executed continually, a rather dreadful time indeed a time we hope never to encounter in the real world...

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Dec 17, 2007 Arctic rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, sf, rgbc

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. some favorite parts:

"It's not books you need, it's some of the things that once were in books. The same things could be in the 'parlor families' today. The same infinite detail and awareness could be projected through the radios and televisors, but are not. No, no, it's not books at all you're looking for! Take it where you can find it, in old phonograph records, old motion pictures, and in old friends; look for it in nature and look for it in yourself. Books were only one type of receptacle whe some favorite parts:

"It's not books you need, it's some of the things that once were in books. The same things could be in the 'parlor families' today. The same infinite detail and awareness could be projected through the radios and televisors, but are not. No, no, it's not books at all you're looking for! Take it where you can find it, in old phonograph records, old motion pictures, and in old friends; look for it in nature and look for it in yourself. Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them, at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us."

"Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality[...]texture[...]pores[...]features. This book can go under the microscope. You'd find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more 'literary' you are. [...]The good writers touch life often."

"The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are. They're Caesar's praetorian gaurd, whispering as the parade roars down the avenue, 'Remember, Caesar, thou are mortal.' Most of us can't rush around, talk to everyone, know all the ciites of the world, we haven't time, money or that many friends. The things you're looking for, Montag, are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine per cent of them is in a book."

"Montag said nothing but stood looking at the women's faces as he had once looked at the faces of saints in a strange church he had entered when he was a child. The faces of those enameled creatures meant nothing to him, though he talked to them and stood in that church for a long time, trying to be of that religion, trying to know what that religion was, trying to get enough of the raw incense and special dust of the place into his lungs and thus into his blood to feel touched and concerned by the meaning of the colorful men and women with the porcelain eyes and the blood-ruby lips. But there was nothing, nothing; it was a stroll through another store, and his currency strange and unusable there, and his passion cold, even when he touched the wood and plaster and clay."

"He took Montag quickly into the bedroom and lifted a picture frame aside revealing a television screen the size of a postal card. "I always wanted something very small, something I could walk to, something I could blot out with the palm of my hand, if necessary, nothing that could shout me down, nothing monstrous big. So, you see." He snapped it on."

"Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there. It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime."

"My grandfather showed me some V-2 rocket films once, fifty years ago. have you ever seen the atom bomb mushroom from two hundred miles up? It's a pinprick, it's nothing. With the wilderness all around it. My randfather ran off the V-2 rocket film a dozen times and then hoped that some day our cities would open up more and let the green and the land and the wilderness in more, to rimind people that we're allotted a little space on earth and that we survive in that wilderness that can take back what it has given, as easily as blowing its breath on us or sending the sea to tell us we are not so big. We we forget how close the wilderness is in the night, my grandpa said, some day it will come in and get us, for we have forgotten how terrible and real it can be."

"The most important single thing we had to pound into ourselves was that we were not important, we mustn't be pedants; we were not to feel superior to anyone else in the world."

"'I hate a Roman named Status Quo!' he said to me. 'Stuff your eyes with wonder,' he said, 'live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away. To hell with that,' he said, 'shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ass.'" ...more

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Jun 11, 2008 Kelly rated it liked it · review of another edition

Alot of what I remember from this book is the overwhelming feeling of grittyness and depressive nature in the future of the human state. If there's anything that will keep you reading and loving books, it's Bradybury's disturbing descriptions of their disintigration. ...more

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Jan 07, 2009 Justin rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I read this book back when I was 13 and couldn't remember anything about it so I picked it up again. I'm really glad I decided to give it another go because it's an excellent, insightful book. I would recommend it to anyone. ...more

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