Fahrenheit 451

While reading this book I traveled back to my childhood days under Communism and relieved the book burnings in front of schools who in the past were mansions of the rich. Schools without textbooks was the result, only the teachers had propaganda manuals from which we learned our lessons. My frightened father burning a prohibited book in the backyard, a book written by a man that escaped the Hungarian revolution of 1956 in which Eva Gabor and others fled Hungary, he would have been killed if this book would have been found in his possesion. Hundreds of these books were listed in the newspapers of the day as a warning to all, hundreds of books were burned throughout the country by equally horrified people and hundreds more sold in the black market and later burned.

this is a book that all book lovers should read <3

After all of the hype, this book isn't really about burning books, it's not even about censorship. It does however reflect everything we lovers of bound paper fear in the evolution of ebooks and works as a warning against reality television and the dumbing down of our society. Bradbury has written a call to arms for the intellectual, he asks us not to be snobs, not to alienate the intellectually challenged amongst us and instead encourage the spark of imagination in them, it's almost as if he predicted our reaction to Dan Brown and EL James from 60 years in the past. One day these readers might stumble across a new idea that changes their lives, it might even change the world. If we don't encourage them they will turn on us, the playground bullying we were on the wrong end of will evolve in to everyday adult life and those mouth breathers will take their vengeance and the frustrations out on us, they'll burn our books and imprison our minds whilst they play Angry Birds all day to the sounds of Pop Idols et al.It's not a bad book actually but it didn't fire me up inside, I especially disliked the rushed ending and its anti-nuclear message but until then it was a quite enjoyable read that made me appreciate Stephen King's [b:The Running Man|11607|The Running Man|Stephen King|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1333160557s/11607.jpg|3652165] a lot more than I did previously.