On this weeks Manuscript Monday Meredith recommends Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
(Audiobook narrated by Tim Robbins)
Once I found out that Book Interrupted Season 3 would be focussed on banned books, I personally kicked it off with this classic—a banned book about banning books. Fahrenheit 451 depicts a dystopian future where all written material is banned. Learning is done through video format only. Firefighters no longer extinguish fires, instead being tasked with burning books along with everything else in the houses in which they are found. This future is rife with fear and melancholy. While most citizens are ignorant of the past, there are some that remember how things used to be and risk their lives for the preservation of the written word. The narrator is a fireman that experiences an existential crisis after meeting one such radical. As he dares to save the books he is tasked to destroy, he is discovered, and must flee to save his life.
I borrowed both the paperback and audio version of this book from my local library. Surprisingly to me, I much preferred the audio version as performed by Tim Robbins. There are some parts of the book that some might find difficult to follow, particularly those parts where the narrator seems like he’s going insane. Lucky for us, Tim Robbins acts the pants off those sections.
It's a short book worth the listen, and will have you thinking about the parallels between our modern world and Bradbury’s dystopian one.
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