Fahrenheit 451- Ray Bradbury

Have you ever read a book that you wished you could quote whole pages because they just affected you so profoundly and you know you can't for Copyright reasons? This to me is one of those books.

I hate to admit it but this is the first time I have ever read Fahrenheit 451. I didn't take Honor's English or AP English in High School. Believe it or not I didn't care about school. I didn't think that school work was important because I was learning enough to get a good grade on the test and didn't need to "turn in" my home work even though I did the work. I just thought the teacher should just gauge that I was learning what I needed to learn. I digress I was talking about Ray Bradbury's book.

I have chosen in the past year to pick one classic a month (even if they are books that some people believe should be banned like last years- Catch 22 or Slaughterhouse 5.) I had no idea what this book was about. It was just the book that was next on my list to read. I am so glad that It was. I am in love with the idea of this book. I am grateful that Bradbury decided to write about this subject.

I am amazed that he wrote the original short story that this short novel is based on in 9 days!  Imagine.
I want to read the short story and believe that I have found the short story included in a book called "A Pleasure to Burn" also written by Ray Bradbury (16 short stories that precursor 451.) I ordered it from a used bookstore because I want to devour more of  Mr. Bradbury's mind on his process of writing Fahrenheit 451.

I think it is intriguing that Bradbury would take the firemen of our day and the heros into the firemen of  Montag's day; where they are no longer needed to fight and banish fires of burning buildings, but instead are doing the burning themselves of something I think are even more irreplaceable then structures but books. When the books are gone they were no longer recognizable to the human race. Isn't it interesting that this is a book with the subject of destroying books?  I love that Bradbury even in a day and age when T.V. was in it's nursery showed how obsessively ruinous T.V. can be to cultivating thoughts when blindly watched for hours on end and maybe controlled by powers higher than the average citizen. Seems to be a little too familiar to me.

When Montag runs into the old man in the park and then goes to his house I found that the best part of the whole book. The conversation of the three required items needed to be able to bring books back into the world and have people accept the books. This is the section I could write volumes on.
     "We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren't happy." Montag said to Faber. Faber goes on to tell Montag, "It's not books you need, it's some of the things that once were in books...  The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the Universe together into one garment for us..."

I will stop here so that I don't ruin it for anyone who hasn't read it all I know is Ray Bradbury was an inspired genius!