I just thought I'd bring up this book, and see what everyone here thinks of it. Have you read it? If so, what do you think of it? Did you like it? Did you hate it? How much do you think our society has become like the society in the book, if at all?

I'll put up my opinion first to get the ball rolling...even though this book was written 54 years ago...I think it's extremely relevant today because a lot of things have turned out just as Ray Bradbury wrote. Think about it, they had those shell things to stick in people's ears and they had music, today we have ipods, they had the family parlor walls, we have those flat screen things AND some people on some shows have made it possible to interact with the show with your cellphone. And like the TV shows with the 'family' were pretty senseless, just people talking and not really talking about a thing...let's compare that with the reality TV, there is no real plot, absolutely no intelligence, and a good part of it doesn't mean a thing IN reality.

In 1953, the idea of kids killing other kids was an almost non-existent idea, but that was Clarisse McClellan's main reason for not making friends with kids her own age, because they killed each other. Today there are kids going to school and shooting other kids, poisoning other kids, stabbing other kids, beating them up, all because somebody did something to make the other kid mad. And like in the book, everybody went driving around at about 100 mph regularly, have you seen the way some people drive today? They just zoom by so fast, it's all a blur.

And what Captain Beatty says: "School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored"...yeah, yeah, that about describes schools today perfectly. School lets out all the time for teacher meetings and this and that, nobody disciplines kids anymore when they do something wrong, history dropped...when I was in the 6th grade, my history book had about 10 pages on Hitler and WWII and the Holocaust, come 9th grade they gave us 1 page on the whole thing...in 8th grade there were 2 sections mentioning the KKK, first section was about 3 pages, second one was about 5, come 9th grade it was 3 pages total. English and spelling gradually neglected...nobody seems to notice or care that kids can't write much beyond their own names...I have a 13 year old neighbor who can't pronounce 'gn' or 'kn' or 'tion' or 'ing', he spells history 'histy' and pickle 'pikl' and Confederate 'konfedret', and the school tells him he's right.

So while we're not yet to fire-proofing homes and firemen turning to burning books...I would say that a lot of things have turned out just the way that Ray Bradbury wrote in his book. Any other opinions?

I read it and liked it, but I thought that the book, though very meaningful in terms of the dangers of censorship and, in some cases, utilitarianism (to a lesser extent), I thought it was a bit simple in its message, though definitely more complex than most books.

By the way, you examples of your textbook and your neighbor are just pathetic. I'm glad nothing's like that where I live.