Lesley S. reviewed on 2/4/2009 + 50 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 3

Any book worth its salt will offend someone in some way; and if it makes you question why, all the better. The power of this book is not in the simplistic tale of a society where fireman set fires and burn books, not because it's illegal to own them, but because it's a crime to read them. Rather, it's the insidious nature of censorship that fascinated Bradbury. In the Coda at the end of the book, he vehemently protests any defanging of books in pursuit of political correctness. "For it is a mad world," he writes, "and it will get madder if we allow the minorities, be they dwarf or giant, orangutan or dolphin, nuclear-head or Neo-Luddite, simpleton or sage, to interfere with aesthetics."

In an interesting passage halfway through Fahrenheit, Bradbury discusses where good books derive their magic - the way they "stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us" - as well as their proper context and purpose: 1. for a book to be considered good, it must contain "truthfully recorded details of life"; 2. there should be an appropriate amount of leisure time to contemplate & digest what you've read; 3. based on what you've read & digested - proceeding to act thoughtfully.

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