Bookclub Books:

This book wasn't quite what I expected it to be, for a start it read much more like an extended short story than a full blown novel. I suppose I also anticipated a lot more of the "astonishing prescience" and "power to dazzle and shock" promised on the inside cover. As it is, Fahrenheit 451 is an interesting read, with some enjoyable and at times surprising forsight as a 1950s Bradbury predicted a bleak 24th century future.

Here he presents a dystopia where books are illegal and instead of putting fires out, firemen are tasked with the job of searching out and burning books. The title, Fahrenheit 451, refers to the temperature at which paper burns. In this future, it is a crime to own books because knowledge is considered dangerous, along with any kind of questioning thinking. People listen zombie-like to in-ear radios and homes contain rooms in which the walls are actually tv surround screens playing a constant fodder of Big Brother-style reality TV: this being the future-prediction bit that impressed me most!

The main character, fireman Guy Montag, has never questioned his work or the way the world works until he meets a young girl with a family that prefers to have discussions than stare at the tv-room walls. Soon Guy starts stealing instead of burning the books he's meant to destroy.

Fahrenheit 451 is certainly worth reading, but I guess I expected it to make me think more. My main criticism of it is that it felt a bit flimsy and undeveloped. I discovered after I'd finished that it was actually worked up from a short story called The Fireman, published by Bradbury in Galaxy Science Fiction in 1951. I'm not sure there was really enough there to make it into a satisfying short novel. That said, a couple of the other femmes noted that it's very filmic and I agree; I'm off to hunt down a copy of Francois Truffaut's film version made in 1966. 3/5