Temporary Liberation and Another Eulogy

As of Tuesday morning, I am free! Well, until late August that is. School should be starting again then. But until that day, I am free to read, write, draw, and many other things. Among these other things I might hopefully return to Dead Broke Farm to ride their beautiful horses. Life seems good about now.

It came to my attention that recently Ray Bradbury, the author of Fahrenheit 451 and many other brilliant books, passed away at the age of ninety-one. As saddened as I am, I think he had a very long and productive life. I'm sure he enjoyed his run. Rest in peace, sir; I love you and your work. The weird thing is, I am currently reading his novel Something Wicked This Way Comes, and was when he died. Well, he was a great writer, and I look forward to reading more of his life's work.

Book Review: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Indeed, this is a rather famous novel. Like Orwell's Animal Farm, I should have read it in my freshman year, but the county school system is awful and due to a scheduling mishap (which they did nothing to fix), I was placed in average English I instead of Honors. However, I have now read both of them on my own time.

For those of you who do not know, Mr. Bradbury's novel is set in a dystopian future in which reading books has become illegal. Guy Montag, a fire-starting fireman who burns books, meets a teenage girl named Clarisse McClellan, with whom he speaks of books and becomes interested in them. He begins to stash books secretly and is eventually caught. I won't give away too much.

What threw me off about this is that it was very unclear what happened to Clarisse: did she die? Did she escape? The author never really explained that. Other than that sort of issue, it was a wonderful book, and scarily prophetic. It was published in, I believe, 1953, and while we do not have book-burning laws, people are turning to slop without reading or other stimulation. A great number of humans sit on their asses and watch the telly but do not read great books such as Fahrenheit 451. It worries me.

Final grade: B