Tuesday Intros and Teaser Tuesday - 'Fahrenheit 451' by Ray Bradbury

It is officially December and my housemates have started to decorate the house for Christmas. Being Dutch I'm still in the process of getting excited for Sinterklaas on the 5th of December! But Christmas cookies will be baked tomorrow so I guess it's inevitable, Christmas is coming and the year is almost over! Before we get depressed at the quick passage of time, let's get on with the memes! Tuesday Intros are hosted by Diane over at Bibliophile by the Sea and Teaser Tuesday is hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading. This week I'm using Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, which I have started reading for my 100 Classics List.

The terrifyingly prophetic novel of a post-literate future.

Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to burn books, which are forbidden, being the source of all discord and unhappiness. Even so, Montag is unhappy; there is discord in his marriage. Are books hidden in his house? The Mechanical Hound of the Fire Department, armed with a lethal hypodermic, escorted by helicopters, is ready to track down those dissidents who defy society to preserve and read books.

The classic dystopian novel of a post-literate future, Fahrenheit 451 stands alongside Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World as a prophetic account of Western civilization’s enslavement by the media, drugs and conformity.

Bradbury’s powerful and poetic prose combines with uncanny insight into the potential of technology to create a novel which, decades on from first publication, still has the power to dazzle and shock.

I don't think I need to explain why I want to read this one!


Intro:

'IT WAS A PLEASURE TO BURN! 

IT was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought ofwhat came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black. He strode in a swarm of fireflies. He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house. While the books went up in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning.' p.1

This is an amazing beginning! The first line immediately sucks you in because it is a very unnatural concept. Then there's also the ambiguity of the sentence. Is the narrator enjoying burning or being burnt?


Teaser:

'Then moaning, she ran forward, seized a book and ran toward the kitchen incinerator.He caught her, shrieking. He held her and she tried to fight away from him, scratching.' p.31

This is a great moment and very tense. Clearly books are something illegal and the owning of it is a danger to both people involved here. Although her response seems very natural in those circumstances I simply can't imagine burning a book.

So, what is the book you're using? And what do you think about Fahrenheit 451?