[Dazrin]

I am glad we chose this since I am sure I would have continued to push this off for later. I did enjoy it quite a bit but don't feel the need to re-read it again in the near future.

I have read three major books of this type (1984, Animal Farm, Fahrenheit 451) fairly recently and in all cases they have some major historical re-writing and even the people who lived through it forgetting what actually happened. How easily do you think this could happen?

For my part, I don't think I am very well versed in politics and other current events, especially globally, but have some knowledge at least. On the other hand, I was talking with some friends recently and some of the things I know about and assumed everyone would know something about were met with blank stares. Brexit? What's that? France just had a vote?

Maybe re-writing the past and forgetting what you have actually done isn't the problem. Maybe it is just not caring enough about the world around us. From that perspective, F451 might be the most accurate depiction of this going on.

Here are some of the passages I highlighted.

But remember that the Captain belongs to the most dangerous enemy to truth and freedom, the solid unmoving cattle of the majority. Oh, God, the terrible tyranny of the majority.

I wasn't around when this book was written but this was written at the height of McCarthyism and I wonder how many people were feeling then like we do now with our current political situation(s).

Grandfather’s been dead for all these years, but if you lifted my skull, by God, in the convolutions of my brain you’d find the big ridges of his thumbprint. He touched me. As I said, earlier, he was a sculptor. ‘I hate a Roman named Status Quo!’ he said to me.

I really like the first part of this quote, there are a few people who I am sure have thumbprints on my brain.

There was a silly damn bird called a Phoenix back before Christ, every few hundred years he built a pyre and burned himself up. He must have been first cousin to Man.

How true.

The more complete quote:

Granger looked into the fire. “Phoenix.” “What?” “There was a silly damn bird called a Phoenix back before Christ, every few hundred years he built a pyre and burned himself up. He must have been first cousin to Man. But every time he burnt himself up he sprang out of the ashes, he got himself born all over again. And it looks like we’re doing the same thing, over and over, but we’ve got one damn thing the Phoenix never had. We know the damn silly thing we just did. We know all the damn silly things we’ve done for a thousand years and as long as we know that and always have it around where we can see it, some day we’ll stop making the goddam funeral pyres and jumping in the middle of them.

Some days this optimism seems realistic, others...