Fahrenheit 451

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

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.

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