It's getting hot in here

Title: Fahrenheit 451
Author: Ray Bradbury
Format: Paperback
Pages: 179
Genre: Alternate reality/Sci-Fi
Date Started: September 10, 2009
Date Finished: September 11, 2009

Rating: A

Description (from Barnes & Noble Review): Fahrenheit 451 is set in a grim alternate-future setting ruled by a tyrannical government in which firemen as we understand them no longer exist: Here, firemen don't douse fires, they ignite them. And they do this specifically in homes that house the most evil of evils: books. Books are illegal in Bradbury's world, but books are not what his fictional -- yet extremely plausible -- government fears: They fear the knowledge one pulls from books. Through the government's incessant preaching, the inhabitants of this place have come to loathe books and fear those who keep and attempt to read them. They see such people as eccentric, dangerous, and threatening to the tranquility of their state. But one day a fireman named Montag meets a young girl who demonstrates to him the beauty of books, of knowledge, of conceiving and sharing ideas; she wakes him up, changing his life forever. When Montag's previously held ideology comes crashing down around him, he is forced to reconsider the meaning of his existence and the part he plays. After Montag discovers that "all isn't well with the world," he sets out to make things right.

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While reading through several different websites' lists of the Top 100 Books of All Time, Fahrenheit 451 showed up on all of them. So I decided to give it a go, and I'm so glad I did. This book was inspiring and thought-provoking. And extremely relevant to me. I work for a media company that specializes in newspapers and magazines, and the number of readers continually drops. Plus, people just don't read books anymore. They'd rather watch movies that do all the work of imagining for them, rather than putting their own imaginations to use.

I'd recommend this to everyone. In this age of technology-- computers, blackberry's, and kindles-- Fahrenheit 451 is a necessary read. A