Fahrenheit 451
I read the stage adaptation in junior high and saw the movie, both as part of an assignment. Recently after the author Ray Bradbury died I checked out the audiobook from the library on a whim and listened to it while exercising and doing house chores. I liked it so much I checked out the book and read it properly because I felt I may have missed parts of it while listening. I then checked out the authorized graphic novel adaptation, which was also brilliant. So apparently I really liked it and wanted more.
The neat thing about these dystopian novels is when the protagonist undergoes a kind of awakening, where he or she is an oddball who has an inkling that something is wrong. Events in the middle third of the book kindle that unease, and in the third part he rebels and becomes an exile from that society or reaches a refuge or somehow throws a wrench into the system he has come to hate. This formula always thrills me.
Montag, the hero, is the establishment type who is an oddball inside. I really like Ray Bradbury’s preface where he describes how the idea for the book began: he was walking with a friend in Los Angeles when a police officer stopped them and questioned them, as if challenging their right to be pedestrians, as if singling out the oddballs as threatening and suspicious.
At the same time the author’s contempt for practical knowledge sometimes seems a little over-the-top.
The Giver
The Giver is a book I read at the age of ten or eleven, and I have long meant to revisit it. I like the dinnertime conversations where the family unit discusses the emotions they had that day and inevitably label them and come to some kind of neat resolution. Later the protagonist scoffs at this little family scene and reflects on how they hadn’t truly felt anything.
Moby Dick
I think this book was pre-loaded on my Kindle. I read the first few pages, expecting to lose interest quickly. But it turned out the narrator was quite clever and funny, and the funny parts were interspersed with moments of true insight. Many chapters follow a pattern where there is some kind of emotional climax at the end. I couldn’t put it down and found myself wanting to underline passages, so I bought a physical copy. But the physical copy doesn’t have a built-in dictionary function to look up the many words in the book that I am unfamiliar with. Plus the Kindle is easier to read in bed. So this is one instance where the physical book and the digital copy are on an equal footing for me, and I find myself reading the book half on the Kindle and half on paper.
I almost feel silly when people ask me what I’m reading, because Moby Dick is one of those books that everyone feels they ought to read, but have little inclination to do so. It seems so bland. I was never assigned it in school but almost would have been grateful if I had. I am about half way through and find that there are endless threads to follow in this book. It is one of those books that makes you feel an awakening inside. I especially like the narrator’s description of his friend Queequeg.
I look forward to finishing it, but it’s so good that I am in no rush to get there. I fear the “book hangover” that I recently found on urbandictionary.com where the real world feels surreal or incomplete because your mind is still in the book’s world. Finally I will understand the many cultural references we have to this towering novel. I look forward to watching a movie adaptation of it (the one whose screenplay happened to be written by Ray Bradbury) and maybe reading a comic adaptation.
Program or Be Programmed
A neat little book by one of the creators of the documentary “Merchants of Cool” (which was shown to me by at least three different high school teachers and one college professor over the years). The book is composed of ten commands for the digital age.
His thesis is exactly as the title implies: everyone needs to learn about information technology despite the education system’s slowness to teach programming languages and digital literacy and digital skepticism. We all must learn a programming language or at least be aware that the programs we use have their own code behind them, their own design and biases, and to some extent their own predetermined set of outcomes, created by the programmer and implicit in the code.
I recall a college class where the room was loaded with projectors, outlets, microphones, and numerous hookups and screens for each student to connect their computers to the projectors. One day the professor asked us to use the technology to put together a presentation on something we were talking about. On other days we didn’t use the computers and connections at all. I think this scenario is sort of what the author is talking about: if we are saturated with technology, we have to at least be aware of it. We have to use it to our advantage, not just use it because it is there. Nor should we refuse to engage with such tools simply because they have very serious downsides.
The focus of the book is mostly on the internet and the culture it fosters. The author writes a lot about the bias inherent in different technologies. For instance, the underlying technology of the internet is biased toward anonymity and instantaneity and a lack of respect for copyright. The author cites “Alone Together,” which I also really enjoyed.
pseudoisaac 