Book completed
Oct. 18th, 2026 11:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eve_primeFahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury. I read this for a book club. I’d read lots of Bradbury as a child (my mom was a fan), and this book was more literary than I remembered the others being (but I could have been too young to notice back then), but the book is also blessedly short (I am not a big fan of dystopias). Our main character is a fireman in a future world where buildings don’t normally catch on fire – their job isn’t to put out fires, but to cause them, specifically to burn down places where people have been reading or storing books. He’s been giving it some thought, though, and thinks that maybe that’s not right. The rest of the book tells us what he does and what results.
There was one particularly violent scene where our protagonist is doing violent things but there’s a sentence in passive voice, and it struck me that he wasn’t really taking ownership of his actions. It reminded me of The Stranger by Camus, when I read it in high school – these things just seemed to happen, with no particular thought, and he’s not taking responsibility. In this book, the character even decides/realizes eventually that a person he’s killed had wanted him to do it. Are we supposed to see this as part of their world’s legacy in taking away the books? I wasn’t convinced, but maybe that was the intention? Something to discuss when book club meets!
There was one particularly violent scene where our protagonist is doing violent things but there’s a sentence in passive voice, and it struck me that he wasn’t really taking ownership of his actions. It reminded me of The Stranger by Camus, when I read it in high school – these things just seemed to happen, with no particular thought, and he’s not taking responsibility. In this book, the character even decides/realizes eventually that a person he’s killed had wanted him to do it. Are we supposed to see this as part of their world’s legacy in taking away the books? I wasn’t convinced, but maybe that was the intention? Something to discuss when book club meets!
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Date: 2026-10-19 06:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-10-19 08:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-10-19 10:25 pm (UTC)Yes, it sure makes for good discussion!
I read a Cozy Mystery by Carola Dunn with Daisy Dalrimple and I was shocked how it ended with her doing something that seemed so wrong. Very strange.
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Date: 2026-10-19 10:51 pm (UTC)I probably don't want to read that book you mentioned, ha!
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Date: 2026-10-21 12:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-10-21 12:58 am (UTC)