I'm sure Fahrenheit 451 is trying to make a worthy point, but there was nothing I liked about it. First, the premise is just unbelievable. People want their entertainment faster and faster, so books are shortened until they are just a sentence or two. And various people found offense with different books, so the solution was just to burn them until there was no writing and books left. Huh?
The writing style is over-wrought and tiresome, going on and on with sentences of utter nonsense. It reads like some experimental fiction written during English class when the lesson of the day was how to turn a simple sentence into as many stuffy, emotional paragraphs as possible without repeating yourself. At one point, there was even a monologue of a made-up dialogue of opposing arguments for reading versus not reading, consisting entirely of obscure quotes from books.
On top of all that, the main character Montag is a freaking idiot. He goes through his entire life not questioning his occupation of book burning, then meets a girl a handful of times while out walking, and she mentions how it's important to talk to people. At this point, he has an epiphany, pulls out a book while his wife's friends are around, and badgers them with a reading of poetry. Then afterwards when he's found out to have a book, he's all like ZOMG and freaks out. I was afraid I had bruised my eyes from rolling them so much.
Everyone in here talks like they are either super dumb or in code that is so subtle I'm surprised anyone can hold a conversation with anyone else. Bradbury makes an effort to incorporate future tech, which just results in vague descriptions of existing technologies, like 3 walls of TVs (... or something like that? I still haven't figured that one out).
Perhaps Bradbury is making the point that if books were to be banned and burned, then over time people will forget how to write convincing stories with good plots, interesting characters, and understandable paragraphs. In which case, he's got me. Otherwise, having a worthy idea for a book is not enough to save this one from being a complete dud.
Readaroo Rating: 1 star
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