megwasmer

Okay, I finally read Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. I somehow missed it high school (but get tortured with Ethan Frome thrice) and thought that since I subjected so many high schoolers to it while recommending summer reading at Borders, that I should probably get around to reading it. I knew the premise well before I picked it up (I love my freedom of speech). I think, however, since I understood a little of what I was getting before I opened the book it suffered from the weight of my expectations. I knew going into it that I agreed with the author but didn’t know if I actually liked him. As it turns out, I don’t. I direly wanted to love Fahrenheit 451 and I didn’t. I dragged myself through the first hundred and forty pages (no mean feat when the book is only one hundred and eighty). Bradbury wrote in a way that I found rather dizzying. It seemed that you jumped from what Guy was thinking, to what he was doing, to a possible outcome of his actions, to something that happened ten years ago, back to what he was thinking now. I struggled with it a lot, which caused me to not want to read incessantly, so the book took forever to get through which was a bit disheartening for someone who can usually knock out at least a hundred pages a day.I think, I would have liked this book much more had I read it in a more structured environment. If I had a teacher telling me to read 20 pages a night and then got to discuss what was going on with other humans that were experiencing it at the same rate as me, I would have found my reading experience much more enriching.I will still recommend it, but with disclaimer from now on.