Fahrenheit 451
If any book should be held as a first edition, you need this one in your library. Now, I don't have a copy yet myself, and raising the market price before I get into it is against everything I stand for... except that books need preservation. I spent way too much money once protecting a first edition of Lylell's treatise on Uniformitarianism. Why? Because these books had engravings in them. Engravings are sometimes bought up by repulsive Etsy shop owners, cut from the book, and then framed for resale at double the cost of the whole book set. Books should not be cut to pieces by repulsive middle aged women to sell to each other.
They are for reading, in your library.
HBO's new Fahrenheit 451 is really terrible. It is an complete injustice to call it Fahrenheit 451 when the key components of this story have been scrapped, artlessly torn out and replaced with this new hybrid narrative of technopunk anti-authoritarianism. I don't like it.
Should you watch it ? Yes, but only to irritate me further. Ray Bradbury wrote a play version of Fahrenheit 451 - shocking, but true - which I have never seen staged - also shocking, but true - in which Captain Beatty reveals to Montag that he, Beatty, possessed a massive library of books, but that the "never read one." Beatty is a character of such depth and complexity, I was really glad to hear that Michael Shannon had been cast for the role, and Shannon is delivering an enjoyable performance so far. He seems like a really creepy, megalomaniac-tier douche bag with a pain receptor malfunction. It's ideal casting.
My issue is not with the acting, so far it is all pretty good. The directing does something really interesting, which is unintentional, but excellent, in having all the characters read aloud, imperfectly. In the Middle Ages, everyone read aloud. It was just normal that everyone had to sound words out to understand them. That's Latin for you! But, as English and other vulgate languages emerged, people began to be able to read quietly.
The HBO series tells the story of a Young Adult novel based on the works of Ray Bradbury. I don't like it.