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Fahrenheit 451
Cover of Fahrenheit 451
Fahrenheit 451
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Firefighters in the future no longer stop fires, but start them - by burning books. But one has forbidden doubts. A BBC Radio adaptation of Ray Bradbury's dark futuristic tale, starring Michael Pennington.

Firefighters in the future no longer stop fires, but start them - by burning books. But one has forbidden doubts. A BBC Radio adaptation of Ray Bradbury's dark futuristic tale, starring Michael Pennington.

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  • OverDrive Listen
  • OverDrive MP3 Audiobook
Languages:-
Copies-
  • Available:
    1
  • Library copies:
    1
Levels-
  • ATOS:
  • Lexile:
    890
  • Interest Level:
  • Text Difficulty:
    4 - 5


 
Awards-
About the Author-
  • Ray Douglas Bradbury (August 22, 1920 – June 5, 2012) was an American author and screenwriter. He worked in a variety of genres, including fantasy, science fiction, horror and mystery fiction.
    Widely known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953), and his science fiction and horror story collections The Martian Chronicles (1950), The Illustrated Man (1951), and I Sing the Body Electric (1969), Bradbury was one of the most celebrated 20th- and 21st-century American writers. While most of his best known work is in speculative fiction, he also wrote in other genres, such as the coming-of-age novel Dandelion Wine (1957) or the fictionalized memoir Green Shadows, White Whale (1992).
    Recipient of numerous awards, including a 2007 Pulitzer Citation, Bradbury also wrote and consulted on screenplays and television scripts, including Moby Dick[2] and It Came from Outer Space. Many of his works were adapted to comic book, television and film formats.
    On his death in 2012, The New York Times called Bradbury "the writer most responsible for bringing modern science fiction into the literary mainstream"

Reviews-
  • Publisher's Weekly

    Starred review from October 25, 2010
    After years of working as a fireman—one who burns books and enjoys his work—Guy Montag meets a young girl who makes him question his profession and the values of the society in which he lives. Stephen Hoye's narration is perfectly matched to the subject matter: his tone is low and ominous, and his cadence shifts with the prose to ratchet up tension and suspense. He produces spot-on voices, and his versions of the gruff Captain Beatty, the playful Clarisse, and the fearful professor Faber are especially impressive. A Ballantine paperback.

  • AudioFile Magazine This cautionary tale published in the 1950s is even more chilling and disturbing today in this new production. Narrator Scott Brick portrays fireman Guy Montag with the overarching dread of a man realizing that the world he helped to create is not one in which he wishes to live. Guy burns books for a living, but when book-loving neighbor Clarisse "disappears" and leaves her books for Guy, he chooses to take her books and live with a group of intellectuals who are memorizing the contents of books in hopes that one day the world will regain its sanity. Brick's characterizations are so compelling that book-loving listeners may find tears at the corners of their eyes. R.O. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine
  • AudioFile Magazine Bradbury's novel details the eternal war between censorship and freedom of thought and continues to be relevant today more than ever. In Bradbury's future, books are illegal and happily so--citizens are too busy watching their wall-sized televisions and listening to their in-ear "seashell" radios to care about the loss of good literature. Guy Montag begins the novel as a fireman who enforces the temperature of the title--that at which books burn--but then transforms and tries to show his society the mistake of censorship. It's a treat to hear Bradbury read his own work, almost as if a wise elder were sharing a cautionary tale. Sometimes the slower pace seems awkward for a novel of such action, but overall the reading does justice to the timeless classic. L.B.F. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine
  • AudioFile Magazine Was it always like this? Guy Montag asks. "Didn't firemen prevent fires rather than ... get them going?" Thus Montag begins to examine himself and his world, a world ominously like our own, hurtling mindlessly through sensory overload to its own destruction. More than the story, reader William Roberts is added reason to re-examine this '50's classic. Roberts creates character like a virtuoso actor. While the males--Montag, Beatty and Faber--are voiced individually, all females except Clarisse, are characterized as thin, whining and insipid. They, above all, typify the barrenness of this self-destructive world. Thus, Fahrenheit 451 becomes a lively and believable morality play for young head-setters. P.E.F. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine
  • AudioFile Magazine First published in 1953, Ray Bradbury's internationally acclaimed classic of censorship and defiance is his best-known work. Bradbury later observed that the novel also explores human feelings of alienation and the effects of television and other mass media on the reading of literature. Narrator Stephen Hoye is as powerful a storyteller as Bradbury is a writer. Much of the book focuses on Guy Montag, a fireman who lives in a future society that discourages individual thought. Montag is one of the firemen who actually starts fires instead of extinguishing them--and what he burns is books. Despite Hoye's excellent delivery, this audio starts off too slowly but catches fire towards the middle. B.C.E. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine
  • AudioFile Magazine Bradbury's iconic novel about the dangers of complacency and the value of curiosity gains a solid new voice with this audio performance. Tim Robbins puts his acting prowess to use here, creating superb dialogue and striding confidently through powerful speeches that celebrate books and warn against the lure of technology. Protagonist Montag burns with all the earnestness of a man eager for change; Faber's aged scholar simmers with cautious hope; Mildred's vacuous presence echoes emptily. Robbins provides the theatrical with the expected confidence, but he also makes good use of quiet in this production. He makes Bradbury's words even more powerful by remembering to pause at opportune moments to let them sink in. We would all be wise to do the same. L.B.F. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine
  • Publisher's Weekly

    July 13, 2009
    A faithful adaptation of the original, Hamilton's comics version conveys the social commentary of the novel, while using the images to develop the tone. He uses grainy, static colors and images obscured by heavy black shadows and textures to portray the oppressive nature of this world where firemen start fires instead of putting them out. Malevolent forces and danger lurk in the shadows pervading the suburban home of fireman Montag and his wife, Mildred. Montag questions the happiness of his mundane life when prodded by his strange new neighbor, a young girl named Clarisse, as well as his wife's drug overdose. This leads him to throw himself into a dangerous struggle to expose the world's hypocrisy by spreading the forbidden knowledge contained in books. The art solidifies atmospheric elements such as the fire and rain; fire, tapering and curling, is rendered into a crucial additional character. Since the original expounds the importance of valuing and preserving books and knowledge, adapting it into the comics form emphasizes the growth of the medium, as well as its potency across genres and subjects.

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    All copies of this title, including those transferred to portable devices and other media, must be deleted/destroyed at the end of the lending period.

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Ray Bradbury
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