Fahrenheit 451 in Overdue Podcast

May 08, 2014 Tiffani rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, read-in-2014, lit-explorer-2014

Fahrenheit 451 takes place in a society where houses are fireproof (unlike the “stick houses” of today) and the job of the fire department is to start fires not stop them. Specifically the job of the fire department is to burn books. I’m not sure entirely why. There was something about preventing inequality and unhappiness but that seems like a cop out on so many levels. Even if Bradbury was trying to play devil’s advocate nothing about that argument makes sense.

I wish I had read Fahrenheit 451 ...more

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May 11, 2015 David rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Maybe there's still hope for me, since I've finally read a Bradbury book I wholeheartedly enjoyed. Halloween Tree was good, but not great. Something Wicked was an exercise in tedium, poorly written dialogue, and prose so purple it could easily have replaced seashells as a source of dye for royalty.

I still think his prose gets in the way of the story, although much less so here than in Something Wicked. Some of the descriptions were a little overwrought, but nothing too bad at all. More important Maybe there's still hope for me, since I've finally read a Bradbury book I wholeheartedly enjoyed. Halloween Tree was good, but not great. Something Wicked was an exercise in tedium, poorly written dialogue, and prose so purple it could easily have replaced seashells as a source of dye for royalty.

I still think his prose gets in the way of the story, although much less so here than in Something Wicked. Some of the descriptions were a little overwrought, but nothing too bad at all. More importantly, the dialogue is good, and the characters are good. The boys in Something Wicked seemed so archetypal of all boys that they failed to have any identity of their own. They were boring, bland, and their dialogue was stilted as all hell.

The dialogue here is so much better. It's punchy and, *gasp*, conveys actual character! It reminded me a lot of Neil Gaiman, an author who is talented at many aspects of storytelling, but perhaps dialogue most of all. At least, he's the first person I think of when I think of good dialogue, so it's probably the best compliment I can give.

There were a few bits of internal dialogue in particular that tried to use word repetition to convey obsessive thoughts, and it just fell completely flat for me. I would have vastly preferred an actual metaphor there, rather than just a gimmick of the text itself. And that's part and parcel with my overall problem with Bradbury as a writer, even though some of his books are, apparently, far more prone to it than others.

He uses metaphor excessively where he shouldn't, such as basic descriptions of things we absolutely need to know to understand what's happening. In Something Wicked there were entire paragraphs of metaphor-laden description to describe a single act, and they left you with the murkiest of pictures as to what's actually happening while bringing the pace of the book to a grinding halt. If practically any other author had written that book, it would be a third of the length.

The first appearance of the "fire dog" was a particular sore spot for me here. He describes it in such vague and metaphorical terms that I was sure I'd glossed over a sentence at first and went back to re-read what I just read. That's not something I often feel like I need to do, and god is it an annoying feeling, especially when I didn't actually gloss over anything and the author just wasn't being very clear. Wax poetic only after we have a good grasp on what you're waxing poetic about, please.

Then he often abandons metaphor when it's much more appropriate, such as internal dialogue, instead falling back on these weird gimmicks and straightforward statements. I honestly don't get it.

Whatever though. I can deal with it if it's not too bad, and if the story is great. I've heard from others that Something Wicked and Dandelion Wine are, by an incredibly wide margin, his most "overwritten" books, which is encouraging. I enjoyed this book an awful lot, despite all my complaining, so I won't be giving up just yet. ...more

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Jan 25, 2016 Liam Berry rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2016

There was some excellent prose in this book and a lot to empathise with. Considering it was published in 1953 it felt unnervingly prescient of the world of today, what with the gigantic TV screens and the dehumanising effect of modern media, not to mention the blame for the destruction of literature being laid at the foot of the people rather than with any government. But there were aspects of the book itself that felt a bit off, especially how the last section kind of both tapers off and reveal ...more

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