aliciaclarereads's Reviews (1.25k)

Not really sure how I feel about this one.

A world where books are burned... Quite possibly one of the scariest dystopias I could ever imagine. A place where society has become so advanced and so quick thinking, that they don't have time for books. Books are replaced with television and movies, which are generally superficial and not at all thought provoking. People insipidly watch television all day, and report their neighbors at the slightest suspicion of a book. I'd like to think, hey there's no way this could happen today. But Bradbury's cautionary tale of the effects of technology still ring true. Books are slowly being replaced with ereaders, newspapers are going extinct due to the Internet. Obviously our government is not promoting the destruction of books, but it is still amazing just how technology is such a fixture in our lives.

But I guess the beauty of the Internet is that where censorship goes to die. So Bradbury might be freaked out by today's technology, but we certainly aren't as doomed as he might suspect.

I don't like Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats, but I did enjoy the poetry that inspired the show.

Also I sang all of Macavity. And now it's stuck in my head.

I'm bouncing between 3 and 4 for this. I loved the concept because I've always been fascinated with dystopian situations. And this is the quintessential dystopian novel. But I guess I was expecting... more? This book spends so much more time on the philosophy of the environment (including a 17 page book within a book just preaching on socialism. Because you know I didn't get enough of that from Native Son and The Jungle) rather than an actual plot. Book 2 was the best part and is the reason I pushed it up to for, but Book 1 and 3 are much slower paced and generally depressing.

Great last paragraph though.

Wow. I don't know what to say, except that I loved it. Now I just want to run to the library and pick up all of his other works, which wouldn't work considering I'm at the high school all week for musical and need to reading Whitman.

Weirdly, I though that his prose sounded very similar to John Green's. Or, John Green's sound like Fitzgerald's. I just became so engrossed in this novel, which we don't actually need to finish until next week.

On the plus side, Joseph Conrad has a great vocabulary. On the negative side, he cannot construct an interesting story.

There is a reason that Poe is the master of suspense.