"At noon..."

I just finished reading Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 for the second time. The first time I read it, I was a senior in high school (about eleven years ago) and I remembered liking it. It's one of the first books I read on my own that I remember enjoying. Sure, Mom and Dad had read to us kids, stories about hobbits and lions and greedy men at Christmas time and little girls growing up on a prairie. I loved those stories because Mom and Dad were reading them to us, because we got to stay up a little bit longer, because we were all crowded on Mom and Dad's bed or on a little foam mattress, spending time together, wrapped up in beautiful words. But this was the one of the first books I enjoyed reading on my own.

Why did I pick it up again, after such a long time? I recently finished reading The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins, and was reminded of Fahrenheit 451. Not that the stories really have anything to do with one another, other than the idea of social upheaval, government control, cover-ups, "the last days," and the like. OK. So maybe they do have a lot in common. And that's why I itched to read it again.

I'm glad to say I still like it. It's a lot different reading it now, with eleven more years and a college education under my belt (in Literature, for that matter). But it's still a great story of censorship, of change, of fighting in a small way that will (hopefully) help in a big way. A story about words and thoughts and feelings. A story meant to inspire words and thoughts and feelings. Great literature. I'm glad I picked it back up. And I'm glad it sits on my shelf.