I'll admit I might have had some ulterior motives to choosing Fahrenheit 451 as our read-aloud. I read it earlier this year for the first time and wondered why I waited so long. You can read my review here. One reason I wanted to read it to Z was because he has an affinity for the TV. He loves to keep it on even when he's doing something else. He's more likely to be found watching Mythbusters or the Military Channel than anything else, but I notice the Disney channel has been on less lately. That's okay with me.
His first remark about the book was "It's weird". We talked about the future as viewed from the eye of the 1950s. We discussed what technology is available today. We discussed what seems out of place in today's society, like the medical personnel smoking during a procedure.
He picked up on some of the finer points of the book and didn't balk when I almost cried over the burning of the books. We discussed about a few of the things that set us apart from others in society, the books we read being one of those.
We even discussed the generational appeal of the physical book, that encounter is posted here. In the end I was inspired to have us each become a book, in the sense that Montag is the book of Ecclesiastes. For Z I have chosen Goodnight Moon. I have many fond memories of reading this book to him when he was little. Reading it many times in one night. So our next memory work will be Goodnight Moon. I pray he will always carry that with him. He will always be that book, that book will always be a part of him.
I haven't decided what book I am yet. I'm writing a few, maybe that's who I am. There are bits and pieces of many of them in my head. Thankfully we still have the opportunity to pull them off the shelf and look up what we can't remember. What if that choice did not exist?
