Bristol Bookfest invites all readers to join us January through early April 2025 in our community-wide look into Ray Bradbury’s best-known novel, Fahrenheit 451.
Consequential works of art pass the test of time and meet us throughout our lives. They warrant reading and re-reading. Fahrenheit 451 has been in print for all its 71 years. Maybe you’ve read the book, and maybe it’s on that other list of books “I’ve been meaning to read.”
The book is a fast-moving cliff-hanger with moments that drew Aldous Huxley to tell Bradbury he was “a poet.” Read with your phone at hand; look up books and authors Bradbury obviously recommends to us. Note that the dialogue between Fire Captain Beatty and our hero, Fireman Montag, near the end of part two, almost insists Fahrenheit 451 be a “gateway book” for us, at any age. Here Bradbury quotes, but doesn’t identify, Shakespeare’s contemporary Thomas Dekker, while naming Dr. (Samuel) Johnson, an Eighteenth-Century English titan who produced the best English-language dictionary before the OED from a garret in London, a two-volume masterwork that helped regularize our spelling.
In our annual winter weekly seminar (Tuesdays 6-7:30, January 21 to February 11) at the Rogers Free Library, we will explore the cultural setting that made Fahrenheit 451 so timely, its relevance today, the many ways Bradbury challenges our ideas of what matters in life, the strengths and weaknesses of Bradbury’s writing, and Bradbury’s relationship to dystopian narratives and science fiction.
We invite you to join us between January and April, when, in addition to the reading seminar, we’ll offer varied Fahrenheit 451-related programs through our partnership with the Rogers Free Library. It all leads to our big April 4 and 5 2025 weekend of lectures, people, books, and conversation.
If you don’t have a copy on your shelf, the Bristol BookFest Committee donated six copies of Fahrenheit 451 to the Rogers Free Library, and Ink Fish Books in Warren, RI, offers a 10% discount on the paperback to anyone who mentions Bristol BookFest.
See you over the winter! In the meantime, enjoy this two-minute video introducing Bristol Bookfest.
Please visit our website bristolbookfest.com and for updates, follow us on social media.
BookFest is back with a classic. We are delighted to announce that Fahrenheit 451 is the book selected to engage readers for BookFest 2025. Ray Bradbury’s acclaimed novel explores a future society controlled by censorship and the media. Its central theme of intellectual freedom has resonated throughout history and continues to challenge our modern perspectives on all aspects of life. This fall, the BookFest Committee has begun the work of designing an engaging, interactive series of programs around the novel, with the help of our valued partner and sponsor, the Rogers Free Library.
