Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

A friend shared this diagram on facebook, as a commentary on our current political situation.  Having read Nineteen Eighty-Four, Brave New World and A Handmaid's Tale, I may have accidentally on purpose shown DD2 the Buy Now/1-Click Button on Amazon and whoops, it arrived in my Kindle...

The Blurb says:

The hauntingly prophetic classic novel set in a not-too-distant future where books are burned by a special task force of firemen. 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 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 over fifty years from first publication, still has the power to dazzle and shock.

I did not know the story before I started reading the book, and as a book loving person, I hate the idea of burning books.  Even if you disagree with the book, they should be kept.  But it was timely as it reinforced that maybe Biblical Storytelling should make a comeback as a mainstream tool for Evangelism and sharing God's Word?

Though I don't think the book is suitable to young children, my DD2 was interested in what was happening, so every couple of chapters I would paraphrase the plot so she could understand.

One of the central things in the book is the idea that people don't need to think anymore, just have a TV the size of a wall (or instead of one) and have multiple screens competing for your attention all the time, and you will be 'happy'.  Books are not good for you because they encourage thinking, interpretation, and potentially bad conversations, whereas if you spend all your time only talking about superficial things like what happened in the latest reality TV series with your virtual 'family', then that is just fine.  The TV will tell you everything you ever need to know, and you should not question it, else you dare to feel bad emotions.

This is a must-read for anyone who is interested in the counter balance between a dystopian future and the reality we currently find ourselves.