Ack! I'm four books behind in posting, so, the next few entries are going to be quick and dirty. **Book Club Pick** Literature has no place in the dystopian world of Fahrenheit 451, where people spend days listening to eerily-iPod-like "shells," and watching reality programs on big-screen televisions. Fire no longer threatens homes, but firemen still exist for burning books, incendiary literature being the danger. Guy Montag (a superb literary name, I must say), one of these fireman, meets a young woman who makes him believe that there is more to life than distraction, that conversation and thought, long forgotten and suppressed, are the source of ultimate freedom. The book tells of Guy's personal journey in rejecting the system and searching for meaning, as the greater society implodes. I'd never read Fahrenheit 451. It made me think about control of information and my luddite fear that placing information in electronic files is a way of ceding ownership of that information, probably one of the reasons I keep buying books. Bradbury's predictions about distractions to keep society from thinking, have come to pass. I hope book burning isn't looming.
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